Saturday, June 11, 2005

Monkfish



Ah, monkfish (part of the anglerfish family). These were my bread and butter for some time.

These were originally considered a trash fish for years until around the early 90's when a foreign market opened up for them and they then became a prized catch. The Japanese eat them whole, stuff the stomach, and serve them on a platter of rice. The tail (from just behind the wing-like fins back) is where 95% of the meat...and damn is it good. This is one of the firmest, best testing fish that you will ever eat.

The way that we catch them is to set special nets that have pieces of twine tieing the floatline closer to the leadline creating a bag for them to swim into. The mesh size used in the gillnets is much, much bigger on Monk-nets (12-14") to compensate for the large head, than the normal 6". They also move very little, so you only haul the nets once to twice a week instead of the normal daily haulings that you would do for other species.

It is said that when they lunge up to eat a fish after it has been attracted by the fleshy barb hanging from its head, that a camera can't record it because it is so fast. I don't know if it is true but I have had them lunge at me and they had my hand in their mouth before I knew what had happened.

Speaking of that, their teeth are exactly like needles...and their are hundreds of them. They even have a patch of teeth in their throat that pulls fish down their throat. A pretty amazing fish.

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