Fried Spade Fish

Filet the fish and remove the skin from the filet. Cut into fairly small pieces so they will fry quickly. Place them in a bowl and cover with buttermilk for 5 to 10 minutes ( while your grease is heating to a temperature of 375 degrees - note this works great with a fry daddy because that is the temperature it heats to). I recommend peanut oil for fish frying. Roll the fish in your preferred breading mixture (I recommend Tony Chachere's or Zatarain's seasoned fish fry mix and I like to kick the spice level up some by adding some Tony Chachere Seasoning to the mix.) I like to cook only a few pieces ( 4 or 5) at a time so that it will cook quickly. When the pieces come to the top and the sizzle factor slows they are ready. I line my dish with several layers of news paper covered by a paper towel to wick away the excess grease while I continue to fry. Note this same recipe works great with many salt water fish. Whiting or Ground mullet or Croaker are all excellent fixed this way.

Do you have a good way to get the skin off spadefish? It is so tender, I have trouble cutting it off. Do you cut from the head down, or the tail up?

Hey George! I filet the spade fish from the head down and take the filet completely off each side. Hopefully I have serveral and will filet them all before performing next step. Resharpen your filet knife to make sure all burrs are smothed away and the knife is sharp and smooth. I then start from the tail and go toward the head and remove the skin on each filet. It is critical to keep your knife as level as possible, use a board if working at the pier cleaning station. This makes some fine boneless eating. Hope you pick some up soon to try. For Your Info: my best success in catching them is using a #6 kahle hook and baiting with a very small piece of cut pin fish. I caught quite a few on the PC beach county pier in late May. Enjoy them.

I beer battered and fried some spadefish tonight as well as a whiting. I'd say the spade was actually the better of the two.

For Haywire - about filleting spadefish - I haven't had that problem with them (cutting through the skin). You just catch and clean so many fish that your knife has gotten dull, maybe? I fillet from behind the head down to the tail and fillet the skin off from the tail, up.

I prefer using an electric knife (Piranha) because the process takes seconds.

More about preparing spadefish:
Like "oldfisherman", I'm a Fry-Daddy enthusiast and I wholeheartedly endorse the brand!

I sprinkle sea-salt directly on the fillet pieces and shake the(nearly dry) fillets in McCormick's Cajun Breading. It adheres to the fillets sufficiently to coat them, but not so-as to form a bread-coccoon around them. In that way, it doesn't absorb nearly as much oil.

I usually fish with live shrimp, so I'll use pieces of them to fish for spadefish. After that, I usually use "FishBites", a shrimp-flavored prepared bait. If the spadefish had been biting the other day, I was going to experiment with a piece of GULP! shrimp. I'll try that next time I find them biting. It may be that a GULP piece lasts for several fish.

Haywire, the skin peels off easily too. Remove the head and run knife just under the dorsal side and cut out the top to lift a finger tip space. Now grab it, and peel it off--lifting toward the dorsal side. Repeat other side.

Now, either fillet, or if a small one, just fry whole. Meat falls right off the bone. Big ones work best filleted as suggested by oldfisherman.