How to: Fillet a Snakehead

The snakehead is an exotic animal, but cleaning and preparing them is really not much different than any other fish you’d bring to the boat. If you’re lucky enough to come home with a cooler full of these incredibly powerful, finicky, and delicious fish, getting them to the table is fairly simple. They don’t have lots of scales, a complicated bone structure, or tough skin. What they do have is a fair amount of protective slime and an extended rib cage.

Snakeheads are very slimy. Washing them off with a hose helps with this- we like to place a towel under them to keep them from slipping around on the board while we aim the jet of water on them. Filleting them is much like any other fish, but because the ribs extend so far back, you have to angle your knife to work around them once you’re through the top half of the fillet. Other than that, if you can fillet any other fish, this isn't much different.

Step one: Make a vertical cut just behind the pectoral fin, parallel to the gill plate.

Step two: Make a shallow cut along the spine towards the tail. Work the knife along the dorsal fin to stay in line with the spine.

Step three: Following the same cut, slice down the spine until you get to where the ribs meet, and work the knife towards the tail.

Step four: There are a few pin bones behind the pectoral fin that extend ~¼ of the way back towards the tail. You can cut through these and remove them later, or work the knife above them and ignore them. You lose a nice piece of meat by doing this, but you don't have to worry about removing pin bones.

Step five: The rib cage of a snakehead tapers off but extends almost all the way to the tail. Work the knife on top of the ribs and sever the skin on the bottom side.

Step six: I leave the skin of the fillet attached at the base, near the tail, to aid in skinning. Grip the fish, flesh side up, skin side on the cutting board and work your fillet knife from the tail towards the front of the fillet.

Step seven: From here you can pull the pin bones with fish pliers or small needle nose pliers, or you can cut that section of the fillet out.

Step eight: Repeat the process on the other side.

If you’re lucky to be filleting a snakehead with a large roe sac, take care to not damage it- it’s great pan seared or made into caviar.

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