Butter is delicious, but you must watch it carefully to keep it from burning.įor me, there is an affinity between fish (especially fried snapper blues) and ripe tomatoes. I usually use peanut oil, though canola oil also works fine. Keep the fish warm in a 175 degrees F oven as you fry the next batch. Remove the fish and cook in hot oil over medium heat until nicely brown and crisp on both sides.
Put this mixture, or one of your own devising (I often use half flour/half cornmeal or corn) into a plastic bag, then toss in four fish and shake the bag until they are coated. At this point, you should pull the head down, removing it from the body along with the entrails, and “Bob’s your uncle!” You have a perfect little delicacy ready to be coated with seasoned flour and pan-fried to achieve immortality. You merely take them in hand and make a diagonal cut behind the head and gill covers, cutting through the backbone. II Pan-fried until golden brown, snapper blues match well with the season’s ripe garden tomatoes. Snapper Blue Recipeįrom Cooking The Catch vol. Usually a small, trout-sized metal lure or a pre-made snapper rig is enough to entice the snappers to bite, but if they need a little encouragement, I simply bring out the bait and act like it was my plan all along.
Now when I go prospecting for snapper blues, I bring along a frozen scrap of fish or squid, especially if I’ve brought along a potential future fisherman. In ten minutes we had enough for a meal, pan-fried with a platter of fresh, garden-grown heirloom tomatoes. With a little blood in the water, the bluefish showed their true colors.
Bait is often the answer, so when I finally snagged an unlucky silverside, I sliced it into tiny chunks and used them to sweeten the trebles on the Kastmasters. I guess they have more in common with full-sized bluefish than I had realized.Īt 6 inches, snappers already have all the characteristics of full-grown bluefish.ĭespite their reputation as eating machines, bluefish of all sizes can occasionally be picky. The little 6-inch fish were making a fool of me. The snappers were there–wolfpacks of them would chase our Kastmasters all the way back to the dock on every retrieve–but they always stopped just short of snapping at the lure. Twenty minutes later, we had just one lonely bluefish swimming slow laps around our 5-gallon bucket.
At least that’s how I confidently explained it to my fishing partner as we set up on the end of the marina dock on a Sunday afternoon in September. They’re also great eating, and catching three of them to turn into a perfect summer meal often only takes three casts. With a ravenous appetite that’s necessary to fuel their quick growth–they reach about 10 inches in just one summer–they’ll strike at any lure smaller than themselves, making them a great target for beginner fishermen, youngsters, and the young-at-heart. By the time they’ve reached a half-foot in length, “snapper” bluefish are perfect, miniaturized replicas of their big brothers and sisters, in both physical form and aggressive, tooth-gnashing attitude.