What to do with Jack

Yesterday we caught not one but two Jack Crevalles – at the same time.  These fish are apparently prized by sports fishermen for the fight they give, and they did not disappoint.  We knew immediately that these were not your every day Mahi Mahi that we have caught since Mahi Mahi usually jump out of the water when they get hooked.  These fish immediately dove deep, taking out loads of line with it.  This means more reeling in to do as they fight against you.  The fish took at least 45 minutes each to reel in with great struggle.

As is our routine, when we get a fish we haven’t gotten before, we pull out Fishes of the Pacific Coast, a must-have resource for cruisers in Mexico, and sift through the pages to identify it.  These fish were clearly Jack Crevalles.  The edibility is noted as Fair to Good, with the juveniles being good to eat, and the adults not so much.  We weren’t sure if these 30 plus pounders were adults, so Michael cut them up and we put them in the fridge to figure out how to cook them later.  Perhaps our first clue that we were wasting our time was that the meat was very dark, and that it bled a lot.  Yuk.

Later that night, I googled “Is Jack Crevalle good to eat” and came across several comments such as: “For shark bait” or “For your worst enemy”.  The best, however, was this recipe:

“Place fish on cedar plank, pour bottle of mustard over fish, place in oven at 450 degrees and bake for 5-6 hours.  Throw away the fish and eat the plank.”

The fish filets went to the bottom of the sea this morning.

Signing off from Isla Espiritu Santo in the Sea of Cortez,
Barbara