When I visited Alaska in July, I insisted on learning how to filet halibut. How could an Alaska Girl not have already learned this? Sure I’ve always helped, but I haven’t completely fileted a halibut myself.
Lucky for me Captain Jack was more than happy to show me the ropes and my nephew, Caleb, wanted to learn as well. We started off just skinning the halibut that Jack fileted. That boosted our confidence, so we were ready to tackle the hard part.
I’m not good enough to even explain the process here, but I thought I would share some photos of the gory procedure. You’ve been warned. 🙂
Jack could only sit back a short time and watch us butcher our first halibuts before he had to step back in. But, I feel confident enough to know I could do it if I had to. Until then, I’m happy to help out by skinning or cleaning up afterwards.
Getting Rid of the Scraps
The scraps from gutting and fileting can’t be put just any where unless you want visits from local predators. On the save side that might be some Bald Eagles or Sea Gulls…on the less save side it could be bears.
At Deep Creek everyone has been dumping them in the same spot on the beach. It’s a fun experience (if you are not afraid of birds). My dad got swarmed when dumping our scraps and I got some very close photos of Bald Eagles. They didn’t care much that I was there taking photos of them.
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