It’salso important to be aware that the red muscle
willhave been working during the fight, creating heat.
Sonotonly is the lactic acid building up and the tuna’s
energy stores dropping, but the muscles are also
heatingup. This can be a really big problem in tuna,
astheheat combined with the acid can actually start
topickle and cook the muscle after the fish dies. The
resultis commonly known as ‘burnt tuna’ – which can
ruin your fish for eating. The more the muscle heats
up,thelonger it takes to cool it down.KILL THE TUNA IMMEDIATELY
Tominimise the heat and lactic acid build up to ensure
ourtuna is of premium quality for the table, get the
tunato the boat as quickly as possible. Generally, the
shorter the fight time, the less time for the muscles
to heatup, the less build-up of lactic acid and the less
energylost in the muscles. When you boat the tuna
you then must kill it immediately as this helps stop
themuscles continuing to work and produce lactic acid
andheat. If the tuna is not killed immediately, it will
dieslowly, causing more internal damage. And that’s
alsonot good for the fish.
You can quickly kill a tuna by spiking its brain or
stunning it with a blow to the head. The best way is
byspiking the brain – commonly known as the ikijimi
method. This is done by inserting a sturdy spike (like
a sharpened screwdriver) down
through the middle of the head,
behind the eyes. Aim the spike
slightly backwards. It is quick
and simple, but like all important
procedures, the more you practice
thebetter you will get.
WhenI bring smaller tuna aboard,
I hold them until they’ve been
spiked and cored. This prevents
bruising of the muscle, which often
happens if the tuna is allowed to
thrasharound the deck.EFFECTIVELY BLEED
YOUR TUNA
It is important for the taste of the
tunathat you bleed it well, but you
bleed it after it’s been killed. So
manyanglers I talk to tell me that
they bleed the fish first, because
theythink spiking stops the heart.This is simply not true. The heart will keep beating for
quite a while after spiking or stunning your tuna, so
you will still get a very good bleed. You must kill the
fish first, before you bleed it.
Quickly killing and bleeding is something you should
do with every fish you catch to eat.
Bleeding involves cutting the two lateral blood
vessels on each side of the tuna. For this I use a
specially made knife with a short, triangular-shaped
blade as you do not need to cut very deeply. These
major blood vessels are very shallow – literally less
than 1cm beneath the skin – so cutting deeper than
this only damages the muscle that you want to eat.
A small ridge can be found at the top of the shallow
groove in which the pectoral fins sit flat against the
tuna’s body. The blood vessels lie just under this ridge,
so it’s best to insert the tip of your knife below it and
then make a shallow cut upwards to sever the artery.
Bleeding tuna is obviously done to remove blood
from its muscles. The more blood in the tuna when it
dies, the more chance there is of the fats in its muscle
quickly going rancid. The process of lipid oxidation
results in the build-up of unpleasant tasting products
in the muscle. These unpleasant flavours develop a lot
quicker in fish that have not been bled.After first killing the
tuna, the second
step is to bleed it.
A method far more
effective than cutting
the throat is to sever
the shallow blood
vessels running just
under the skin in the
ridge at the top of
the depression where
the pectoral fin folds
flat. Put the knife in
below the ridge and
then flick it upwards
to cut the blood
vessels.“Lipid
oxidation
results in
unpleasant
tasting
products in
the muscle,
which develop
a lot quicker
in fish that
have not
been bled.”
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From boatside to plate