Tailor and salmon are two of the best sportfish available to anglers. Tailor have a great reputation as a food fish, but the salmon suffers a little from a poor reputation and they are irregularly caught in Queensland.

Over the years I’ve found one method of cooking tailor and salmon that produces superb results – smoking – but correct preparation of fillets is a must. Here’s how I do it.

Bleeding any tailor or salmon you intend to keep is vital. The quickest and most effective way of doing this is by cutting through the tissue beneath the gills then keeping the fish upside down in a vertical position to let the blood drain out.

This is easy to do when surf fishing because you can stick the fish into the sand headfirst and buried to just above the pectoral fins. It’s a bit trickier on a boat, but I’ve seen some blokes tie a piece of mono around the tail and then hang the fish over the side, just watch out for the inevitable shark encounter if you do this.

Take a fillet off both sides of the fish.

Next, remove the rib cage. The best way to do this is to find the last rib towards the tail end of the fillet, then run the edge of the knife under it and back towards the head end of the fillet.

Try to take as little flesh off the fillet as possible.

Now remove the bones that run down the lateral line. Do this by locating the bones with your fingers, then making an incision on either side of them so that the two incisions create a ‘V’ shape.

These bones generally run about 3/4 of the way down the fillet so if you make long enough incisions you should be able to cut all of them out in one go.

I hate scaling any sort of fish. I find it much quicker and less messy to skin fillets instead.

To skin any sort of fish fillet you must have a sharp knife. If you can’t work up a decent edge on your current filleting knife then do yourself a favour; get rid of it and buy a good quality one.

In this article I’ve used a filleting knife from Frosts. Its blade is made from high carbon steel and holds its edge brilliantly. With a little work on a fine sharpening stone it can be made razor sharp – and I mean razor sharp. This really makes filleting a breeze and maximises the yield of flesh because it works so much more effectively.

I normally start at the tail end of the fillet and work along in a smooth action towards the head end of the fillet. To ensure you leave as little flesh as possible on the skin, run the edge of the knife at a slight angle downwards during this step.

A quick rinse, then wipe down with paper towel and they’re ready to cook or should I say smoke!