Sunday on the Bay: How to Catch, Clean and Cook Shark

Mom with her catch

PALMETTO -- Any time my mom gets a new fishing idea in her head, she gets so excited that I tell her she needs to take a Xanax. Shark fishing has always been our go-to when the fish aren’t biting, but we were never in it for dinner -- just a little catch and release. Lately, cooking shark steaks has become more popular with residents in the area and Bonne’s been noticing. Catching them is the easy part, it’s the cleaning and cooking that can be a little tricky.

Last year, I saw some shark steaks for sale in Publix. Being the avid seafood consumer that I am, I decided to buy them for me and my boyfriend to enjoy for dinner. They smelled a little funny on the grill, but when we took the first bite we almost puked! The meat tasted like a pork chop that had gone sour. He ended up throwing them out in the back yard, where even his roommate’s dog turned up its nose at them.

When my mom brought up her new fishing scheme, I was a little hesitant. After she explained that there is a certain process required to clean sharks, which of course she knew all about, I decided I’d go along with it.

We took the boat over to the grass flats of Tampa Bay, where we’re guaranteed to catch a shark -- usually bonnethead. Not only are they a great fight, but we soon discovered that they are also good eating. A lot of people assume that you have to catch sharks at night, but we’ve caught them at all hours of the day.

Shark steaks

They will bite just about anything. We like to save our trash fish, like a pin fish or lady fish, and cut them up into chunks. Then we just put them on our hooks and cast. The bait is sometimes wasted on a catfish in the process, but my mother will handle the bottom feeder with her bare hands just to make sure we never have to cut our line.

The FWC has recently put out some requirements on certain species including the lemon shark, which is one of the best tasting, second only to the mako in my opinion. They also prohibited all harvest of sandbar, silky, and Caribbean sharpnose sharks. All keeper sharks are now required to be landed in whole condition with head and fins intact. This is a bit of a nuisance because cleaning the fish as soon as possible is highly recommended, however, the law still allowed us to gut the fish as soon as we brought them on-board which prevented the urine and blood left inside from tainting the meat and taking away from the flavor.

This year, they also established a minimum fork-fin length of 54 inches for all sharks except Atlantic sharpnose, blacknose, blacktip, bonnethead, and finetooth, as well as smooth dogfish. This decision is a little disappointing because the best tasting sharks are usually under 3 feet, however bonnetheads and blacktips are the kind we catch most often.

We got the catch home and used our neighbor Larry’s fish-cleaning station. First, we cut off the head and fins. Then we filleted the meat by cutting from the shoulder down to the tail and as close to the hardened cartilage of the spinal column as we could get. Then we skinned the fillets and finally cut the rest into small steaks.

Finished meal -- yum!

Because the meat will sometimes have a disagreeable odor from the uric acid, The Angler’s Cookbook by Vic Dunaway said to  freeze it first and if it was still smelly, the directions called for a good hour of soaking it in salt water. We didn’t want to take any chances. We froze it, soaked it and marinated it in lemon juice and garlic for 24 hours and that did the trick. Rinsing the meat in clean water and dipping it in lemon juice before freezing will also prevent it.

The result was a delicious bone-free seafood dish grilled to perfection by Manatee’s County’s famous fisherwoman Bonne’. We recommend trying this at home so bon appetite!