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Last weekend I met an experienced kayak angler at a boat ramp in SOMD as we were both packing up for the morning. We got to talking about cutlassfish and I mentioned how I had never caught one but I'd like to. He told me he catches them near his home on the lower Patuxent and invited me to fish with him. I met him at his private launch on Friday and we set off looking for them.
We trolled around and saw plenty of bait, but were not getting any bites or seeing bigger fish feeding on bait. We trolled the places he had caught them recently, and the places where his friend had caught some recently, and got no bites. We split up to cover more water and eventually I found a school of them in deeper water than we had been fishing earlier.
What an interesting fish! The bite is extremely subtle, just a very light tap-tap. If you're not paying attention you'll miss it. They do not engulf lures like stripers and many other fish, instead they suspend vertically in the water and dart upwards to ambush baitfish, snapping at the bait with their sharp teeth, then eating whatever pieces they bite off as they fall down through the water column. As a result, you get lots of short strikes as the fish hit the head of the lure, the tail, or the underside and lots of gashes on your soft plastics. It seems like you only hook up when they strike exactly where the hook is and you must set the hook immediately or you'll miss them. After hooking one they will make a big drag-pulling surge straight downwards, swimming backwards. The rest of the fight is a little tug-of-war, with the fish swimming straight backwards in short bursts. They don't do headshakes or make any runs from side to side. I ended up catching 9 cutlassfish, and my friend caught 6.
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I brought 5 home for the table, after hearing how good they are to eat. The fillets are interesting... long, thin, narrow strips of meat with the scaleless paper-thin skin still attached. I found out the best way to prepare them is to roll them into pinwheels to make them more manageable. I stuffed some of the pinwheels with crab imperial as I heard this was a good way to spruce them up, then I pan seared them on a cast iron griddle. People compare the taste to flounder - which I cannot recall eating, so I don't have a frame of reference - but the flesh was very mild and tender, not flaky like a rockfish, perch, or many of the other Chesapeake fish I've eaten. I had a hard time telling the fish apart from the crab on the stuffed pinwheels, but I made a few without crab so I could see how the fish itself tasted. Overall it was tasty, a bit more work to prepare than other fish. I think in the future I'd skip the crab meat and just season the fish.
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What a cool and weird fish... very fun to catch, very cool to look at, and good to eat too. I'm glad I was able to add a new species to my list.
We trolled around and saw plenty of bait, but were not getting any bites or seeing bigger fish feeding on bait. We trolled the places he had caught them recently, and the places where his friend had caught some recently, and got no bites. We split up to cover more water and eventually I found a school of them in deeper water than we had been fishing earlier.
What an interesting fish! The bite is extremely subtle, just a very light tap-tap. If you're not paying attention you'll miss it. They do not engulf lures like stripers and many other fish, instead they suspend vertically in the water and dart upwards to ambush baitfish, snapping at the bait with their sharp teeth, then eating whatever pieces they bite off as they fall down through the water column. As a result, you get lots of short strikes as the fish hit the head of the lure, the tail, or the underside and lots of gashes on your soft plastics. It seems like you only hook up when they strike exactly where the hook is and you must set the hook immediately or you'll miss them. After hooking one they will make a big drag-pulling surge straight downwards, swimming backwards. The rest of the fight is a little tug-of-war, with the fish swimming straight backwards in short bursts. They don't do headshakes or make any runs from side to side. I ended up catching 9 cutlassfish, and my friend caught 6.
20220805_101037.jpg
20220805_101140.jpg
I brought 5 home for the table, after hearing how good they are to eat. The fillets are interesting... long, thin, narrow strips of meat with the scaleless paper-thin skin still attached. I found out the best way to prepare them is to roll them into pinwheels to make them more manageable. I stuffed some of the pinwheels with crab imperial as I heard this was a good way to spruce them up, then I pan seared them on a cast iron griddle. People compare the taste to flounder - which I cannot recall eating, so I don't have a frame of reference - but the flesh was very mild and tender, not flaky like a rockfish, perch, or many of the other Chesapeake fish I've eaten. I had a hard time telling the fish apart from the crab on the stuffed pinwheels, but I made a few without crab so I could see how the fish itself tasted. Overall it was tasty, a bit more work to prepare than other fish. I think in the future I'd skip the crab meat and just season the fish.
20220807_210939.jpg
20220807_212318.jpg
What a cool and weird fish... very fun to catch, very cool to look at, and good to eat too. I'm glad I was able to add a new species to my list.
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