# Do you eat shark



## johnf

Do you eat sharks? Pretty simple. What kind do you eat? How big/small do they need to be. How do you cook them?


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## TheRoguePirate

*shark*

mako...its whats for dinner! :thumbup:

Black tips are also tasty. 

Mako prepair it like a steak.....black tips same thing but marinade the BT steaks over night in italian dressing then throw them on the grille.

TRP


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## J.Sharit

Mako is a very tasty fish but hard to come by for the normal guy.Sometimes they have it at the seafood market. Smaller coastal sharks like the BT and the bulls are decent table fare. Also Tiger shark is very tasty close to mako but now unkeepable in in land waters to 9miles out because of recent law changes. I like mine grilled also but the smaller fish also taste good fried properly.


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## johnf

I caught this little guy off Orange beach last summer, but a lady told me it was too small and I had to throw it back. I didn't know the law so I did. I think it was a legal fish after looking at the law. Is this a black tip?

How do you clean these? 
Are there any parts you don't wat to eat?
Do you leave the skin on while cooking?
Do you cook them well done or like you would a tuna?
What's the meat like red, white?
How do you get the jaws out and do you just boil them down to get the meat off?
Would this fish be legal in FL?
I've heard storys of little guys like this biting chunks out of people when they are holding them. Can they really do that? 

Sorry that's all the questions I can think of right now.


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## johnf

Just experimenting with the picture post.









The toes on the right are not mine.


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## TheRoguePirate

*sharks*

Sure they are not! :whistling:

Florida Regs:

-1 per harvester or 2 per vessel per day, whichever is less

-54" fork for all sharks except Atlantic sharpnose, blacknose, blacktip, bonnethead, finetooth and smooth dogfish

TRP


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## johnf

What does 54" fork mean? What is the fork? Is that a min. or max?

Was that a black tip?
So would that fish be legal?


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## TheRoguePirate

Measure from the tip of the snout to the fork in the tail. min 54" for most shark species except those listed above

TRP


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## Clay-Doh

Shark is great to eat like Kane and Rouge said.

If it's not Mako (which is in a class by itself, more like sowdfish) you definitely need to marinate it like Rogue said. Sharks have a high amount of ammonia in there meat (they do not piss through there skin like the myth says). Ammonia is an alkali, and you want to counteract it with an acid. Thus italian dressing because of the vinegar. 

If you don't want that flavor added to the meat, you can use a solution of lemon juice and water. Just don't use the "RealLemon" brand. It's full of sulfites and sodium benzoate and leaves about as nasty a taste as the ammonia. Use either Minute made brand (frozen container sold by the frozen orange juice, but getting harder and harder to find) or fresh squeezed lemon juice. And if you don't want ANY "tangy" flavor at all, you can use milk.

Shark meat is a very firm, low fat, white meaty flesh. Very similar to boneless skinless chicken breast. And you need to cook it the same. It dries out very easily because of the low fat content, and one way is to cut into nuggets and breaded and deepfry. Comes out just like chicken nuggets. At least a few dozen kids have gorged themselves on them with either ranch, bbq, sweet and sour, honey mustard, etc., and loved them. All my nieces and nephews beg me to pull some out of the freezer and make them when they come over. For adults, spicy peanut tia sauce rocks to dip them in.









If you grill steaks, then the oil in the itailian dressing will seal them and keep them moiust, and it doesn't hurt to brush more on while there grilling. Also taste great wrapped in bacon and put some skewers thru it to hold the bacon in place while grilling. (what doesn't taste good wrapped in bacon?)

Ttry adding a little worchester and a touch of soy to the salad dressing. Also Chipoltle Tabasco sause in the marinade. And you can't marinade it too long. Being the same consistency as chicken breast, it is a very dense firm meat.

If you got an indirect smoker/grill, and smoke it, it makes an AWESOME smoked shark dip. Use it instead of tuna or makeral. Brought some to a party at either Lanes or OldFlatHeads, and it was gone in an instant.

Cook thouroughly like pork or chicken, they are nothing like tuna.

And What Kane said about state waters just got passed last fall. There is a size limit, forgot what it is, look it up online. But federal waters, no size limit.

You will first need to gut and bleed it. To do that, cut it from it's pee hole to it's throat, and then a cross cut across at both ends of the cut, at it's tail and throat. The sooner you do this after catching, the better. After you cut it open, pull out all the guts. You'll have to cut the guts at both ends, and up by the throat is pretty slippery and tough (on larger ones). Then along it's back bone (actually not a bone, sharks have no bone, all cartilage) you will see a "pocket" running the entire length reddish in color. Cut it open all the way from end to end, and the coagulated blood/spinal fluid will start to fall out. Run your hand through there and scrape it out, and flush it all with plenty of water, the whole cavity too. 

If you are in a boat on the water, this is as far as you can go. It is illegal to remove any fin or tail until your off the water. You can take a bag (or bags for larger) of ice and stuff it in his body cavity to keep it cool.

Cleaning is a pain. There skin will do to your knife what 80 grit sandpaper epoxied to a 1/4" thick piece of leather would do if you cut through it...destroy it. I have several knives that the blade is only half as tall as original from it wearing them down and resharpening. Best route for cleaning is to get a Dexter Russel serrated knife for the cuts through the skin. Lop the tail, head, and fins off.

Then you can either section it into 8" "steaks" that would be horseshoe shaped, or into long slabs by cutting it into sections lengthwise, whatever you find works better. Do all this with that serrated knife. And not a serrated kitchen knife, a Dexter Russel. It has points on it that one slip will take your finger to the bone, and even partway thru that. When you get one you'll see. Good thing about em is when those serrates get warn down bad (after about 3 large sharks) you can take them to the corner of a grinder wheel, and "re-serrate" them just by hitting each of the dips in the serrate on that corner.

After that, use a large fillet knife and skin the meat from the skin. Cut high enough off the skin so as not to get any red meat. Then do a little trimming to cut off any red meat, and you are left with a buttload of beautiful white meat. Vacuum seal what your not going to use. keeps great in teh freezer.

A hint, when cutting your meat into steaks, loin roast...etc, cut it so you are cross-cutting the grain of the meat. Same as you do with beef. If you cut with the grain of beef, you have long tough "strands" of meat. Cutting across the grain makes it tender by your steak being made up of a bunch of short strands of muscle tissue. Plus marinades will soak in faster and better.

As far as the jaws, it's a time consuming pain. Don't boil, and don't even soak in water for a week. It's all cartlidge, and the teeth will just fall out. Realator and Hired hand on here are bad ass at catching sharks, and have done some large jaws, and they will hopefully chime in. basically it's lot's of beer, time, and work with an exacto knifie trimming all flesh off. Gavin (The Maintenance Shoppe) took the set from the tiger we caught few months ago at the last shark tourney, and put it on an ant pile with a bucket and concrete block on it. I'm curious to see if they wreck it.

And last question. Yes yes yes. They will bite you, 2 hours after you took them out of the water, beat them in the head, empty a clip of hollow points, etc. etc. Like a chicken with htere head cut off, there nerves can still fire off long after dead, even gutted. And I guess a shark is hardwired to open his jaws, twist around sideways, and snap his jaws shut. 

After this one got some of this...









And after it had been out of the water for a long time and everybody got on it for a pic, right after this pic was taken...









I got on it with the girl I was with at the time and it folded in half whipping it's head wround and alost got it snapping it's jaws and we had to jump up on the gunnels while it twisted and rolled over thrashing about 4 times!

Couple other tips. Never hold a big one up like this for a picture without a long sleeve shirt on This was me and Josh (Fender bender) about 6 years ago









It scraped the skin off the inside of my arm and looked exactly like road rash and I the whole thing was a giant scab for about 2 weeks.

Also,therre skin abrasians all point backwards, and you can rub againts them one way and it's smooth, but the other direction is rough. If you try pulling them in a boat, it is nearly impossible to pull them in backwards if there rubbing againts the boat, and tou have to pull them in forward, wich is always exiting! Ha ha









I know this was a long response, but you had a lot of questions, and when I moved here 7 years ago from Detroit I had all teh same questions, and Karon (Coryphena) set me straight with a bunch of knowledge about the marinating, identity, ect., and still is my go to person for info (She's a marine biologist!)

If you like catching em, you should think about getting in the next Shark Tournament we have. We do it twice a year, and it's a fun friendly event, not hardcore competitive. Winner take all, and we all have a blast out there on Fort Mccree. About an extra 40 or so people show up to camp and join the fun tooo. Everybody is welcome. Here's a link to a previous one. I'll be getting the dates together soon for our spring one, we always do it on a full moon weekend.
http://www.pensacolafishingforum.com/f27/6th-semi-annual-unofficial-shark-tourney-campout-game-november-19th-76294/


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## J.Sharit

Don't ask Clay what he thinks cause he will tell ya :thumbup:
Good info Clay I think you covered the whole realm
of sharkin in a capsule...........


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## Clay-Doh

I just remember when I first got here Kane, and I wanted to know everything about em! No other fish has an entire week dedivated to it on Discovery channel. I didn't want short answers, I wanted as many details as possible. Figured I would share with him what everybody shared with me and I learned from all of you.

Haven't seen you ion forever either brother! hopefully this spring we'll have the mighty shark hunter from the islands competing??


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## johnf

Great response Clay, and I appriciate all the info. I'll get on the FL game and fish page before I come down and get the specific info on length and species. I think those shark nuggets may just be the winner for me. :thumbup:


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## TheRoguePirate

No kidding! those sound like a great idea! What i posted are the current lengths, I did not post the species, but easy to find online. I def. want to hear about this tourny. PM me with some more intel if you can please!

TRP


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## grey ghost

Clay great info, cool lookin tourney!!!


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## Clay-Doh

Will start looking at dates. Keep an eye over the next month on the "Forum bashes meets and greets" section. 

This will be our 5th year having em. Just a good excuse for everyone to get together and have some fun, and somone goes home with some money!


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## osborne311

Good Night Clay that was an awesome answer / post! That little shark in the photo looks to be a black tip.

I am glad I read that post because I am sort of new to this area and had no idea you guys did a shark thing. Sounds like a blast!


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## Chris V

I want to add that gutting is important but do it AFTER you bleed it. The waste compounds like ammonia, urea and others are stored in the sharks bloodstream for water balance. When they are gutted, the shark obviously dies faster and blood flow ceases. The best thing to do is keep the shark in the water and make a deep cut near the caudal peduncle that severs the spinal cord and the main artery BUT DOES NOT cut the tail completely off. The reason you do not want to cut it off is for measurement purposes in case a game warden checks you. Keep the shark in the water and let him breathe properly. After a few minutes the blood will clot and you will have to make another cut. Repeat this process as needed (usually you only have to re-cut once) and the shark will get a "sunk-in" look. Within 8-10 minutes he will pump himself completely dry. At this point you want to gut and ice down to remove any excess blood and waste. When you clean it, there will be almost zero blood present and no ammonia smell. You can still marinate the steaks in whatever you like but will not have to do so to get rid of any smell or taste.

My favorite marinade is a wasabi-ginger finishing sauce that you can get at most seafood markets. I don't remember the brand but it comes in a tall black bottle. I could eat that stuff alone for a meal and it works very well with shark steaks.


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## Paolo

Now THAT is a nice responce. Great read. Sooo much knowledge. Now I def feel like a leach 😉


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## Trophyhusband

Clay-Doh said:


> Shark is great to eat...


Dude- awesome post. I don't eat them, but I wouldn't mind taking someone out fishing for them that does, they are fun to fish for. I just want a set of jaws.


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## Trophyhusband

Chris V said:


> make a deep cut near the caudal peduncle that severs the spinal cord and the main artery BUT DOES NOT cut the tail completely off.


We do the exact same thing with halibut. It takes the fight out of them and leaves the meat nice and white and blood free.


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## johnf

Chris V said:


> I want to add that gutting is important but do it AFTER you bleed it. The waste compounds like ammonia, urea and others are stored in the sharks bloodstream for water balance. When they are gutted, the shark obviously dies faster and blood flow ceases. The best thing to do is keep the shark in the water and make a deep cut near the caudal peduncle that severs the spinal cord and the main artery BUT DOES NOT cut the tail completely off. The reason you do not want to cut it off is for measurement purposes in case a game warden checks you. Keep the shark in the water and let him breathe properly. After a few minutes the blood will clot and you will have to make another cut. Repeat this process as needed (usually you only have to re-cut once) and the shark will get a "sunk-in" look. Within 8-10 minutes he will pump himself completely dry. At this point you want to gut and ice down to remove any excess blood and waste. When you clean it, there will be almost zero blood present and no ammonia smell. You can still marinate the steaks in whatever you like but will not have to do so to get rid of any smell or taste.
> 
> My favorite marinade is a wasabi-ginger finishing sauce that you can get at most seafood markets. I don't remember the brand but it comes in a tall black bottle. I could eat that stuff alone for a meal and it works very well with shark steaks.


Is that a part of the fish that you can see? What I'm seeing in my head is a cut through the spinal chord just up from the tail. Is that right? Because you need to worry about the length on a black tip couldn't you just cut the tail off?


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## Chris V

Yep, the base of the tail. A friend of mine was fined for having an undersized blacktip. He had cut the tail off of it and AMRD said they couldn't determine an accurate length because of it. The shark was just legal and it was a close call. I doubt that this kind of citation is common, but just to play it safe keep the tail on.


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## Clay-Doh

Actually with any shark you cannot cut the tail off. it is illegal to remove the tail or any fin, due to the practice of "finning" sharks, not really common here, but because of the Asian market for shark fins.

The rules state that a shark must be in whole condition with the tail, and no fins removed.


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## Chris V

Read my post again Clay-doh. I stated DO NOT CUT OFF the tail.

Definitely not if the shark is just barely legal


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