ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ZACHERY DYKE
Spearo, fisherman, and passionate home cook. I enjoy harvesting my food from the ocean and sharing it with my friends and family. Follow along as I use species local to Florida to make incredible meals you can make at home.
How To Fillet A Hogfish In 10 Easy Steps
The Difference Between Filleting & Breaking Down A Fish
In this tutorial, I’ll show you not just how to fillet a Hogfish, but how to BREAK DOWN a Hogfish. The difference is that simply filleting a fish, only yields two pieces of meat, while the rest of the fish goes to waste. If you properly break down your fish, you’ll be left with several other cuts that can be used to make incredible meals.
What To Do With The Hogfish Head, Collars, Skin & More
Use our Fish Recipes Database to find recipe for the Hogfish “off cuts.” These “off cuts” include but aren’t limited to; the collars, ribs, head, skin, blood line and the fish frame. You can also do more with the internal organs of the fish, but I don’t have much experience with that yet. While there are plenty of resources out there that demonstrate how to fillet a hogfish, I haven’t come across many that really show how to break one down. The video above will be the best way to follow this break down process, but I have also included a how to guide below as well.
How I Got This Hogfish
Opening Day Of Grouper & Hogfish Season
I got this particular hogfish spearfishing off my kayak off of Dania Beach. I had originally gone out for the opening of grouper season, in search of Black Grouper, but I wasn’t able to find any. I had actually seen several hogfish in the area, but I didn’t want to shoot one at first because I didn’t want to spook any grouper that might have been there.
The Only Fish I Needed
After not having any luck with grouper, I made a dive and on the way down I noticed two hogfish off in the distance. I positioned myself so that when I got to the bottom I would be facing them and hopefully be able to get a shot. Once on the bottom, the smaller of the two was already close to me and the bigger one was behind him on the sand. I slowly crawled over the rocks until I was able to get a good shot on the larger one. He made a run for the rocks and got hung up for a second, but I was able to pull him out.
I hope you enjoy this tutorial on How To Fillet A Hogfish:
