BBQ bream, to de-scale or not de-scale?

[Ianpick]

Another couple of hours out on my boat yesterday this time I anchored about 200 yards off the end of Fort Victoria pier.
The old pier is a structure that has long past it's prime and some organisation has plans to develop it, and the beachfront that goes with it, into luxury housing and a fish processing factory.
Yes, luxury housing and a fish, and shellfish processing plant, have they thought that through?
There is much local opposition to the plan and I think it would be a tragedy to spoil that part of the area.
I lowered the anchor and it just kept going down, 62' deep at that point, so had to let a lot of rope out to line up with the pier and give me an easy reference point if it proved to be a good spot.
Squid strip tipped with a cube of cuttle fish as usual for bream. One two hook rig, one single hook.
I'm trying to get a double shot of bream otherwise I'd just use single hook rigs.
Bites from the first drop as a shoal of fish must have swum past my bait and I hooked into my first fish, good start. Even in 60' of water you know you have a bream on.
Then as I was unhooking a fish the other rod really pulled over, double shot?
Much heavier and not much of a fight so it could be a pair pulling in different directions.
Not so, a smoothound, not big but a nice pretty fish, just hooked on a size four Aberdeen.

The fish came and went and by the time I'd run out of bait my total in the boat was five with three more spitting the hook and countless missed bites, but that's what bream fishing is like. I also tried prawn and razor fish baits but they were ignored.

Back home and the fish were prepared for the BBQ.
Gutted, de-finned and de-scaled and one was filleted for my mother.

Taking the scales off is a long and messy business, I do it in the sink under water to control where they end up.
The fillets were wrapped in foil with some butter and garlic and pronounced delicious by the mother.
Three fish were cooked in the burger grill thing and the fifth cooked like the fillets but as a whole fish.
I should have left the scales on one of them to answer my own question, next time I will.
They were not really BBQ'd as such. My BBQ has a fire box at one end which I load with wood and heat up the other end as an oven.
The outcome was delicious and another trip out called for by my mother, wife and son.
I don't expect I'll disappoint them.

 

[Valleyboy]

De scale every time for me. The skin is the best bit if cooked right

 

[John Mitchell]

Great stuff I just leave the skin on and then carefully just scrape the meat away from the skin

 

[Thrasher]

Why dont you get a trug/bucket of water on the boat and descale what you catch in between bites before you land?'

 

[Thrasher]

Nice catch btw.

 

[Trampster]

Well done Ian - lovely batch of Bream. I've never caught one, but I'd imagine, like Bass they definitely need de-scaling. I always try to clean and sometimes fillet fish before I leave the mark to avoid taking the smelly rubbish home & rinse in the salt water. Like @Thrasher said, get a big bucket of water & do them before you leave the boat. ????

 

[Valleyboy]

Great stuff I just leave the skin on and then carefully just scrape the meat away from the skin

The skin is the best bit as long as it's cooked properly

 

[Ianpick]

Descaling in the boat is what I'd like to do, and I have done it, but the nature of the Solent means that, in a boat like mine, you have to get the timing right.
My boat is only 12' long and space is at a premium, every extra bucket is taking up space.
That said I need to get a system sorted so that I can make the best of the space I have. Work in progress.
Fish for too long and the drive back to Yarmouth Harbour can be a bit like a roller coaster. Not nasty but very lumpy.
I can only get on the water about 3 hours before high tide as I'm on a dry out pontoon so need to take advantage of every minute on the water. Once the tide turns I have to head home before a gazillion tonnes of water sliding down the Solent make it hard work getting back in.
Cleaning and gutting fish in amongst the floating gin palaces of the harbour might get me a few sideways looks!
I'm very wary of fish skin, I don't eat it unless is as crispy as a deep fried crisp thing. I had fish in a restaurant a couple of months ago and the skin was definitely the best bit, I can never get it like that.
I think I'm going to have to find a way of doing it on-board or maybe at the bottom of the garden.

 

[Wolf]

Nice catches Ian,great piccys and write up ,can't help you on the descaling, question as all my fish go back ??????