How to Bleed and Chill a Yellowtail on the Beach: Ikejime, Step by Step

Catching a yellowtail from the beach is the easy part. Whether it tastes good is decided in the ten minutes after it hits the sand.

A fish left to thrash in a cooler heats up, its blood spreads through the flesh and it ends up with the metallic, “bloody” taste that makes people think beach-caught fish are second-rate. They are not. With a short routine, a surf-caught yellowtail makes sashimi as good as anything in a Japanese fish market. This is that routine, adapted to the one thing a beach does not give you: a bench, a bucket and a big cooler.

The whole thing in four steps

Step 3 takes practice. If you are new to this, do 1, 2 and 4 and skip 3. In fact, doing 1, 2 and 4 properly beats doing 1 and 2 perfectly and chilling badly.

The whole process is what people outside Japan usually call ikejime. In Japan the word is used more loosely, and the individual steps have their own names, which is why I have included them.

1. Spike the brain – stop it moving

Throw a live yellowtail straight into a cooler and it keeps fighting inside. While it does, its body temperature rises, lactic acid builds in the muscle, and the flesh goes soft and loses flavour. So the first job is to stop it moving.

On a yellowtail, the brain sits just above and slightly behind the eye, roughly where a line from the eye meets the extension of the lateral line. Push the tip of a spike or knife in there once, firmly. When you hit it, the fish stiffens for an instant, the mouth and fins flare open, and it goes still.

• If you miss, the fish will thrash hard. Hold it with your hand on the outside of the gill cover, never near the mouth or gill rakers.
• A yellowtail with a treble hook still in its jaw is genuinely dangerous when it kicks. Do not pin it down with bare hands until the hooks are out.

2. Bleed it – cut the gills and put it in seawater

Do this straight after the spike. Blood drains best while the heart is still beating, so do not leave a gap between steps 1 and 2.

1. Lift the gill cover and cut the membrane at the root of the gills, on the spine side.
2. Optionally, make a cut at the base of the tail as well – it helps the blood drain.
3. Hold the fish head-down in seawater for a few minutes.

A bucket of seawater is the reliable way. On a beach, simply holding the fish in the wash at the water’s edge also works – but secure it with a rope or stringer, and stand where the next wave will not take it, or you.

3. Nerve kill – if you can, not if you cannot

After the brain spike, a special wire is fed through the hole in the head and down the channel above the spine, destroying the spinal cord. Stopping the stray nerve signals after death delays the onset of rigor mortis.

It matters most if you want to eat the fish as sashimi the next day or later, or you have a long drive home. If you are eating it the same day, steps 1, 2 and 4 already make a clear difference. Get those reliable first, then add this.

4. Chill it – where the biggest difference is made

Spike and bleed a fish perfectly, chill it slowly, and you have wasted most of the effort. Autumn days on the beach are still warm, and the inside of a cooler heats up.

Make an ice slurry with seawater

A fish lying on plain ice only cools where it touches the ice. Add seawater and the fish is surrounded by ice-cold water, which pulls the heat out of the whole body, right to the core. In Japan this is called shio-kōri, “salt ice”.

1. Put block ice or frozen bottles in the cooler.
2. Pour in seawater until the ice is about half submerged.
3. Put the spiked, bled fish in.

• Always use seawater, never fresh water. Fresh water makes the flesh watery.
• Do not let ice sit directly against the flesh for a long time – it causes ice burn, pale discoloured patches. Wrap the fish in newspaper or a plastic bag.

The beach problem: you cannot carry a big cooler

If you walk a beach covering water, a big cooler is not coming with you. There are really only two options:

When the fish will not fit in the cooler

A proper buri will not fit in most coolers. The usual answers:

• Bend the tail. Cut into the base of the tail and fold it – which also helps bleeding.
• Remove the head. Deal with the guts on the spot. You must take the waste home.
• Wrap it in a large bag with ice packs and get it to the car quickly, giving up on the cooler altogether.

Dumping guts at the fishing spot is bad manners and is prohibited at many beaches. Bag it and take it home.

Gut it early – an anisakis precaution

In yellowtail and many other fish, the parasite Anisakis lives mainly in the gut. It is known to move from the gut into the flesh as time passes after death, so removing the guts early is the basic way to reduce that.

Anisakis is killed by cooking (60°C for at least one minute) or freezing (-20°C for at least 24 hours). If you are eating the fish raw, check the flesh carefully by eye when you fillet it.

The mistakes that cost the most

Common questions

When does it taste best?

As a general rule, it is firm on the day and gains flavour from the next day on. But resting a fish that was badly bled and badly chilled only makes it worse. Get the handling right first.

I am releasing it – do I need to do anything?

The opposite. Unhook it quickly, do not hold it in your hands for long, and get it back in the water. Leaving a fish you intend to release on dry sand damages the protective slime on its skin.

Is it the same for flounder and ribbonfish?

The same basic sequence. Ribbonfish have extremely sharp teeth, so be very careful how you hold them. Flounder struggle less than yellowtail, so careful bleeding and chilling alone make a big difference.

Read next

• How to land a yellowtail in the surf
• Japanese yellowtail from the beach: when they arrive
• Japanese flounder (hirame): a guide for visiting anglers
• Japanese metal jigs for shore fishing

MINAGIMAN

JAPAN ANGLER

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Born in 1994. Originally from Hyogo Prefecture, I moved to Iwata City in Shizuoka Prefecture in search of the sea. I am an Enshunada surf angler who enjoys surf fishing. I am also active on YouTube, and my fishing grounds range from Irago to Iwata.