# How to fillet a shark:From beach to freezer



## cpn_aaron

I figured with all the questions on how to prep a shark within the various sections here, I'd give my 2 cents. I'm a catch-and-release kind of sharker, but I keep one or two males of the common species every once in a while. I had a small (36 3/4" FL) blacktip die on my line last night, which bummed me out but made me realize I could use his unfortunate demise as a teaching tool.

There are numerous methods people espouse for cleaning and filleting sharks. The popular one is from a New Zealand kite surfing webpage, Shark Pictures and Shark Recipies, but I find it wasteful, and it doesn't tell you how best to cut fin rays and spines free from the finished trunk. As you get larger sharks, this method wastes a good deal of available meat. As a person who prefers not to kill them, I like to use as much available meat as possible when I keep one. 

So let's get started, shall we?
You will need:
One shark (pretty obvious)
cutting board
lemon juice (~1 qt for a 5 fter)
SHARP fillet knife
Sharpner (you will use this often)
kitchen counter (if your wife is asleep)








Start on the beach. As soon as you realize you want to keep the shark, put it out of its misery. Many people just cut the spine wherever they can. The killing is best accomplished by cutting through the spine near the front of the gills. This will cause the shark to lose function in the heart and gills. This is the difference between making it Christopher Reeves and killing it. Cutting up here will also aid in bleeding out the gills by cutting into them. Now run your knife along the base of the tail to sever the caudal artery and vein. You can cut the tail off, but I worry about FL wardens claiming I'm finning sharks as, by law, all sharks must be maintained whole until you leave the jetty, beach, dock, etc. The shark's slowing heart should now pump most of the blood out of its body via these two central venous systems. I then gut the shark and wash it in the waves until the tail and other gut cavity stops dripping copious blood. Put that bad boy on ice until you're ready to head home








Once departed, depending on your shark's size, you can cut the head free from the body just past the pectoral fins. If you have a larger shark (4.5 ft and up), you can take 2 cuts that run above the gills and end at the cartilaginous projections at the pectoral fins (superficial cuts are made in the picture to show the general area of cuts). These cuts taste like the rest of the fish, but most people throw them out. In a 4.5 ft shark, they can provide a meal for 2 by itself.








Next, flip the shark over and feel the area near the anal fins. You can feel the cartilage that holds them together. Cut this away from the fish, leaving you with a nice ready-to-fillet piece.








The easiest way to remove the spine and halve the fish is to make a cut down the middle of the fish giving wide berth to the dorsal fins as shown. This will give you two pieces of shark, one with fins and spine and one ready to fillet.








Take the piece with the spine and fins and make an incision above and below the spine at a slight diagonal to meet on the other side of the fish mid spine. This sounds difficult, but it's easy to do since sharks only have the spine, and there is nothing but muscle left on the fish by this point. When looking at the fins, you will notice vertical muscles and fibers near the trunk's horizontal muscles. These are the fin rays, and they are inedible. Just cut around the fin rays, and you'll have removed the fins leaving a piece of the shark that is ready for filleting like the other half.








Now segment your two fillets into portions you'd use for typical per-person meals. Here this shark could be split into 3-4 portions (~1/3-1/2 lb) per side. A note, on 4ft and greater sharks, face the shark gut cavity facing you, and you'll see a line showing where belly muscles end and trunk muscles start (see the line in pic 5).  Cut a portion along this line for each 1/2 a shark. Unlike bony fishes with bones and fatty deposits in their bellies, shark belly flaps taste like the rest of the fish. Sharks store all fat in the liver and lack bones, making this area worth portioning and filleting. In a small shark like the one shown, the belly is small enough to fillet with the rest of the trunk.








The next step is when some people make a mistake; they set the fish down and fillet. This will not work since the shark's meat has skin on three sides, and it is difficult to get any good fillet knife action when cutting in 3 dimensions. To solve this problem, cut down the fillet to create steaks with only skin on one side. 
Then fillet the meat as you would for any other fish, with one exception. With bony fish, you tend to run the knife right along the skin to get the most meat possible. Doing this on a shark will result in tons of red meat that tastes off as it's full of blood, and hence urea. I tend to give myself 2-3 mm of room off the skin and fillet the skin free. This will provide you with mostly white fillets. There will be some redness, but this is unavoidable due to this muscle type being found within certain points of the body. The good news is you won't notice it when eating as there is so little of it.








After getting my fillets, I place them in a Tupperware dish and fill it with 100% lemon juice (any brand will do as you see Wal Mart bargain juice works great) to cover the fillets. I prefer numerous shallow dishes to use less juice and cover more shark. The duration of the lemon juice soak depends on fillet size. The fillets pictured range from 1/2" -3/4", and less than 7 min was sufficient. The thickest fillets I've done were 2 1/2" thick, and I just over half covered them and gave them 8 min a side. Lemon juice is an acid that pulls the urea out of the flesh. People also use buttermilk, but I'm unclear about the durations and amounts necessary. I prefer lemon juice because, if done right, it will leave a faint lemon vest to your fillets. One last warning: don't keep the fillets in too long, or the citrus acid will chemically cook the fillets. They'll become shriveled and dry. However, this takes a while, so simply setting a timer and getting them out is sufficient. After a soak, pat them dry with a paper towel and store them in freezer bags however you see fit. 

I hope this helps answer questions about filleting a shark that I've seen asked. My method is fairly quick from bleeding to soaking time (this shark took me 15 min and yielded 5 lbs of meat) and wastes very little shark. Tight lines and I hope this helps everyone out.


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## Big Rad

*Fantastic*

Thanks for the post!

It will now be archived


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## Fishbreath

Thanks cpn_aaron! Very well documented along with the soaking process. Now if only I can tell the difference between a blacktip and a doggie....


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## JIGMAKER

Great post


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## VICIII

Great post ... Thanks...


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## TreednNC

I dont shark fish or nuthin and I thought that was a great post!


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## b3butner

Very nice .


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## Nick

Great post, I have wondered how to do that for awhile. This might make me a bad person, but the part about Christopher Reeve had me rolling. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Now all I have to do is catch one big enought to keep.

-Nick


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## cpn_aaron

Hey thanks guys. I was just trying to help everyone out. I used the kite fishing weblink method for a few sharks but was always unhappy with the turnout. So I experimented with sharks as I kept one or so over the years. I do have to give due notice to my father-in-law who figured out how to cut belly flaps away from the trunk to make them easier to fillet on large sharks.
Nick, I'm glad you liked my own little bit of dark humor. I've always been one for metaphors, and was afraid I might have overstepped that time. Glad to see most took it in good fun.


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## f1b32oPTic

great post!


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## fingersandclaws

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I heard all sharks, except the Mako don't have a urinary tract. Therefore all the urine ends up in the meat (hence the lemon juice to pull out the urea). But does this lemon juice step get out all the urea?


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## Finger_Mullet

*Cleaning shark*

At Croakerfest we filleted a 6' black tip. I cut his tail off and bled him. I then filleted it immediately, much like the above post but with a much bigger shark. I took the meat cut them into big chunks. I then put them in gallon zip lock bags and put them on ice. They stayed on ice all day. They had a strong odor. I am assuming it is the urea. 

When I got back to the house I washed them and soaked them in salt water over night in the fridge. I kept changing the water until they no longer had the urea odor. I then cut the fillets into steaks and froze them in water. 

When I got ready for shark steaks I just thawed them and on teh grill they went. They had no strong urea smell or taste. Very good eating meat. 

Mullet


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## emanuel

I've eaten a number of sharks and quite honestly, those pesky sharpnose and dogfish are excellent eating. I also had nurse shark one time, courtesy of our lost friend, Kozlow. Mmmmmm, the best. As for any of the sharks that catch me in the mood, I soak them in buttermilk overnight and then marinade them in olive oil and spices for a couple hours before introducing them to my good friend, George Foreman. That'll teach them to mess with my snapper bait!  

I'm still waiting on a mako steak though. One of these days, one of them is going to take my swordfish bait and then you'll all hear about it.


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## cpn_aaron

all sharks have urinary tracts. You can experience this up close should you catch a small one hol dhim close to unhook him and squeeze a little to hard. They can piss like a great dane. They have urea in their meat, organs, all tissue to act as a method to make their bodies as salty as the water they live in. Marine fish constantly drink to counteract water loss form being fresher than the water, but sharks just cruise along full of pee. An efficent way that has given that 40 million year edge.
The lemon or buttermilk work best and fastest to get rid of urea because it works as an acid/base reaction that pulls out the urea. With a proper soak time, all the urea is gone.


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