Whats your favourite Fresh Fish?

I love Fresh Fish especially caught on the line gutted immediately then put straight on a bbq before you even leave the beach. There's nothing like that taste it's the freshness that really hits the tongue. So if you haven't tried it next time you go fishing take a bbq or grill build a fire and as soon as you catch the fish gut it then cook it, totally awesome.

I used to wake up about 5 then wait for my mate to come round then go on a 3 mile walk to the cliffs go down a long path through brush and tunnels made in the trees to get to a place that looked tropical early in the morning. We'd used spinners and we both had our favourites. In the summer you could almost guarantee that on the first cast you'd get a bite. Most of the time it was Mackerel but sometimes it was a Garfish and you could tell because it would start jumping out the water. I would have had the British shore record for a Garfish but we didn't realise it until a couple months after the catch.

I don't go as often as I used to due to work and other commitments but I'm sure i'll start up again soon. My favourite fish brings me back to the day me and my mate went down the beach and spent an hour watching this bloke pull out Bass after Bass. He had 2 hooks and a 3 spiked weight on the bottom, he'd load the hooks up with big juicy lug worm. Then he'd wade in knee deep and cast as far as he could. Then five minutes after bringing his rod back in and putting on the stand he'd get a bite then a big strike got the fish. Took a while to bring it but the sight of a 5-8 pound Bass coming up the beach was great. One got off and me and my mate ran after it we got it and gave it to the bloke. He later gave it to us so we took it back and cooked it straight away. That was the tastiest fish I've ever had and I've tried to get it like that again but never managed it. I put it down to the others I tried not being as fresh as my first Bass was.

Another fish I like fresh is the Pollack or Whiting. These fish can be tricky to catch and small whiting need special handling when you bring it in because squeeze it slightly to hard and it's dead there very delicate and you don't want the small ones so try to get a nice biggin. Pollock and Whiting taste similar but there's something about the Whiting I quite like I don't know if it's just me or what.

A fish i'm not to keen on are the Mullet. Mullet are tricky to catch you need half a loaf of bread mushed up in a bucket that you keep chucking out into the sea to try and attracted them to where you are. Then you need just a small hook with a piece of bread tightly squeezed around the hook. If the mullet are slightly to far out for you to see them under the surface then the best idea is a piece of bread around the hook not to tight so it floats so you can see it on the surface. Then keep an eye on your piece of bread because you'll see the mullet suck it in at this point the bread should loosen due to the sucking and display the hook go ahead strike hopefully you'll get the hook stuck this does not always happen and can take some practice. These fish can put up quite a fight and I enjoy catching them more then eating.

Another fish i'm not keen on is the Dogfish. We had a couple of Winters catching nothing but Dogfish. Somehow this fish took over the South West of England. The place was crawling with them, you cast your guaranteed a Dogfish. They can put up a good fight at times but after a while the arms start to hurt, it's like pulling in brick after brick. careful when you catch them they have a tendency to wrap around your arm and if you've got a bare arm then there skin is like sandpaper and will scrap your arm. These fish are the toughest fish I've ever known and trying to gut and skin one is incredibly difficult. You need a very sharp knife and pliers and some good arm strength possibly 2 of you one holds the fish head and one tugs at the skin. Once gutted, skinned & cooked I found the taste to be bland and the meet was slimy. So after all the effort needed to cook this fish the taste was not great. Shame because there's so many of this fish.

Another fish i can't seem to catch enough of is the Flat Fish. There's many types of these fish and the rare ones i caught on occasions was the Dover Sole, Plaice & 2 inch Turbots. We caught Plaice big enough to eat sometimes and I could not complain about that as it was very tasty. I'd like to catch more of this fish but there far in few around here or it's just me.

So out of all the fish I've caught over the years the best one we didn't even catch was the Bass and that was amazing. It's no wonder why they sell for so much. I've mainly done Sea Fishing so not to knowledgeable on the fresh water scene but I've been a couple of times recently and it's definitely something I'm going to do more often. So I highly recommend catching the fish gutting it then cooking it before you even leave the beach the fresher the better. If your going to buy fish you want it within 24 hours of catching to really keep that taste. So what's your favourite fish and where do we find them?