Fourfinger Threadfin

This Indo-West Pacific fish is common from the Persian Gulf to Papua New Guinea and along the north coast Australia. It enters freshwater during the breeding season so it's sometimes listed as a freshwater fish. It can grow to 6-1/2 feet but the photo specimen was 13 inches and weighed 11 ounces. This fish is highly commercial, both wild catch and aquaculture.

More on the Threadfin Family.

This is an excellent eating fish with mostly white flesh of good flavor. It is excellent for frying, baking and steaming, though I prefer it fried skin-on with a light dusting of rice flour and salt.

Buying:   This fish can be found frozen from Vietnam in Asian markets in Los Angeles. Packages I've purchased were labeled "Threadfin Bream" which they clearly are not.

Scales:   Fourfinger Threadfin is completely covered with small scales that scrape off easily.

Cleaning:   There are no special problems in cleaning except that you may have to use long nose pliers to pull the gills from smaller fish.

Filleting is easy, though smaller fish could be fried whole or pan dressed. You can shave the fillet off the rib cage with very little flesh left behind - when you get to the tips of the ribs just pull the fillet off. There will be a few centerline pinbones worth pulling, depending on the size of the fish.

Skin:   While the skin is easily removed using the standard long knife and cutting board technique, there is no reason to do so. Skin shrink in frying is minimal and the skin is thin with no strong or oily flavor. The heads,

Yield:   Yield is good with a 13 inch 11 ounce fish yielding 5 ounces of fillet (54%). The fillet weight is skin-on because I see no reason to skin this fish.

Stock:   fins and bones make an excellent fish stock for soups with very little oil.