Fillet Knives ~ A Very Personal Choice

I was sorting through that bunch of Kodachrome slides I'd shot in Tarpon Springs, FL back in 1973 and came across a bunch of fishing pictures. I have no idea who this captain was but he was cleaning a mess of fish. The common edible fish in the bay is sea trout while out in the Gulf of Mexico it's most likely to be one of several species of snapper. My guess here would be fishing out in the gulf, and that pile of fillets are snappers. Sea trout fillets have a strip of dark meat running down the middle. In either case they'd be really easy to identify if you could see the outside of the skin and the colors and patterns and the size of the scales. Both species are commonly filleted off the bone, then the fillets are skinned.

There's always been a debate as to whether or not a stainless steel knife was better because it's made of harder metal and holds an edge better, or carbon steel which is softer and easier to get a really good edge, but it'll need frequent touch-ups on the sharpening stone. This guy is working with a stainless steel knife. I'd always been partial to carbon steel myself, and have several hickory handled Old Hickory knives with their brass rivets, but in recent years stainless steel has improved. I rarely use the Old Hickories anymore.