The fillets will hold up for a day or two in the fridge, but lose their sweetness and take on an earthier flavor after the first 24 hours. We recently started experimenting with raw bluefish as well, and the results are surprisingly good. Fried bluefish tacos, with a little coarse cornmeal in the batter, are a fish camp staple. The flesh is delicate in texture and sweet, with a depth and complexity of flavor that IвЂ™ve had in few other fish. We pack the fish with plenty of ice in the cooler, and then, back on shore, keep the fillets on ice as we clean them.Д«luefish is incredible eaten the same day. This accomplishes two things- the fish dies quickly, and youвЂ™ve bled the meat. WeвЂ™ve used a pick, a bat and the lid of a cooler to kill bluefish quickly, but our new favorite method is reaching under the gill plate and ripping out the gills. You need to get these fish out of the water, dispatched, and iced immediately. We catch our blues right around the time the water in the shallows of the Chesapeake Bay hits the mid 80s. DonвЂ™t be that person- all fish will spoil quickly when treated poorly, but the fattier the fish, the better care should be taken to keep it cold and fresh. IвЂ™ve seen people catching blues and tossing them into an empty bucket on the hot sand and then complain that they donвЂ™t like eating them.

Bluefish is best when itвЂ™s kept on ice and eaten on the same day. They have a higher fat content than some other fish, which is what makes them so tasty, but that fat can also spoil quickly, giving it a fishy taste. That night, in camp, we had the most incredible bluefish tacos.Д«luefish gets a bad rap for being fishy, but handled correctly and eaten fresh, they are some of the sweetest, most delicious fish around. We pulled anchor and headed to harbor, the tops of the swells just barely breaking over our stern.

The spadefish hanging out on the rocks just a few feet below kept taunting us, but the fun was over and the wind had started to blow out of the west. We kept pitching and pitching, hoping to catch a few more to round out our limit, but they had moved on. We had 26 blues in the box quicker than it took me to write this. Our friend Cam got bitten AND hooked by the same fish, and just about the whole boat had a sheen from the fish slime, blood and tiny scales that covered everything we touched.ДЄnd just like that, it cut off. At the time, the limit for blues was ten per person, so we pretty quickly filled our cooler. We lost more tackle than weвЂ™d care to admit, and the bucktails that survived were completely stripped by their sharp teeth- not even the paint was left. The fish were everywhere, and the surface of the water boiled with the violence of their feeding activity. If you havenвЂ™t been in the middle of a blitz, written word will fail to convey the excitement and chaos of it.

Out of nowhere, a big school of bluefish cruised through, and we quickly re-rigged with bucktails (no leader- we didnвЂ™t bring any) and started casting. We launched our tiny boat and headed a mile offshore on a dead calm day to some structure that we thought might hold spadefish. Our most memorable bluefish day was a few years back, when we were still getting our feet wet with fishing in the Chesapeake Bay.

Bluefish pate