Fly Fishing for Bass

My favorite type of fishing is fly fishing for bass in the sea. It has become popular in the last few years and is called swffing or salt water fly fishing by those in the know. I fish mainly with my two brothers and we are lucky enough that we have a family holiday home in Ballinskelligs near Waterville so we have plenty of opportunity to fish for bass. The bass pictured above was caught on a recent trip with my brothers and weighted about 5.5 lbs. We return the vast majority of fish and only keep the odd one for the table. Bass in Irish waters are extremly slow growing and a 10lb fish may well be 20 years old so catch and release is vital.

We fish often with a local guide called John Quinlan who has taught us a huge amount about this type of fishing. He has some videos of his clients fly fishing in Ballinskelligs Bay(click here for the link)
Anyway we kept one of the 18 bass on a recent weekend mission and here is what we did with it!

I have two favorite ways of cooking the fish. The first is to pan roast a fillet which I will go through in another post in the future, the second way is to BBQ the fish whole or with the head removed if it is too large.

I simply gut the fish and and dry out the cavity. If I am leaving the head on it is important to cut out the gills. One other tip I have found useful is not to descale the fish when cooking like this. The bass have very large thick scales and I find that if you BBQ the fish the scales give some protection to the delicate flesh against the fierce heat of the fire. To finish the preperation cut three deep slashes in each side of the fish and stuff slices of lime into the slashes. I also put some wedges of lime in the cavity along with some salt and pepper.

It is hard to say exactly how long to leave the fish on the heat as each BBQ will vary but I have found 7-8 mins on each side about right. To find out if the fish is cooked see if the flesh lifts off the backbone. If it does it is you are laughing, if not stickit on for a few more minutes! As you can see from the pictures I use a gadget which holds the fish together and avoids sticking to the BBQ. They can be picked up anywhere that sells BBQ stuff.

When the fish is cooked carefully remove the skin (remember that those scales are still on there) I usually serve it in portions rather than bring the whole fish to the table but the choice is yours.

Goes well with rice or maybe a green salad.