Just finished a parkour parsley crump fresh snapper meal. Life’s good aye. 

It went 16lb. Looked bigger to me, I obviously haven't been fishing enough lately 

Yep, today was a good day. 

Well done.

In truth, I really don't want to catch big snapper, but they seem to come along every so often. There was no way that fish was going to be a successful release. It's a shame, but I enjoyed the experience. 

This particular fish was filleted as normal. The top loins were brined and smoked whole. Lower loins cut in to fish bites across the grain. Frame will be dusted in salt/flour and fried. Wings were skinned and will be deep fried.

I don't think big snapper deserve their reputation for poor eating. I believe it stems from trying to cook a big fat fillet in the same way as a fillet from a pannie which inevitably results in some part over or undercooked. Cutting across the grain also helps to tenderise the final product.

As a point of interest, we had a "bad" snapper recently. We've eaten hundreds, if not thousands of snapper and all have been good. The fish in question was iki'ed, iced and filleted within a few hours of capture. It tasted very fishy. In retrospect, it had a thick blood line and this was the source of the bad taste. Unfortunately, we turned the whole lot in to breaded fish bites for my son and he won't touch them! We are now plodding through it ourselves. Most of it ends up in Japanese curries. With the latest big fish, I removed the blood line just to be on the safe side and it tastes great!