Fish"N"Dive's Leopard Shark................

Hey, I was looking at your photo's and saw the picture of you holding a three foot plus leopard shark with the comment that you shot it and ate it.
    Well, I caught several leopard sharks this past summer, while kayaking between the dumbarten bridge and the redwood creek area. I released all but one that I tried to bleed and eat, but apparently I did something wrong. Maybe you could give me some advice as to how I can bleed, butcher, and cook this kind of shark.
    Right after I caught it I put it under with my fish club and slit its gill's from front to back ( the gills run vertically and I slit them horizontally) and let it bleed out in the water. When I got home, cleaned it, cut it into steaks and removed the skin. The ammonia smell was not signalling success. Grilled it and it just didn't taste good. Now, this was a four foot shark.......do they need to be smaller or bigger for the meat to taste good or am I just using the wrong techniques for bleeding, butchering and cooking? By the way, I never feel good about taking an animal to consume and having to throw it away. If I am not going to eat it I release it. Fish on!

Columbus,
I speared this leopard shark while freediving off Arrowhead point (left of it) at Stillwater Cove south (Carmel).
I had always heard that shark flesh and especially shark liver oil was good for you so I thought hey why not cook some nice steaks. I am like you I don't shoot or catch fish I don't intend to consume.
I slit its gills after loading it onto the kayak that took care of the thrashing. I brought it back home and even took that picture before preparing it. I just simply cut steaks out of the body and sauteed them in a pan with olive oil, garlic, ginger, coriander and it tasted great (I drizzled some lemon juice as we were ready to eat the steaks). It actually tasted great! I did not notice the taste or smell of ammonia. I might have been lucky with this particular specimen..I am not sure.
Alain (fish'n'dive)

I pulled a shark out of the bay once and the guy who was with me wanted to barbecue it

I cleaned it for him and the stink was so bad I couldn't look at it without wanting to wretch, but they ate it and liked it

I've cleaned deer sheep birds all kinds of fish etc and never smelled something so nauseating as that shark

I know people eat fish caught in those waters, I worked as a diver all over the bay and most of that stuff I wouldn't feed my dog, that's if I had a dog

I once tried a leopard from the bay.  It didn't taste all the good, but it didn't have any ammonia smell whatsoever, perhaps because I bled it right away.  Unless someone really wants one, I release them all.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it. As Chuck said, I think I will just keep releasing them. I think the amonia smell was of course the urine that passes through their skin wall, but I know that I will catch more because they are always hanging out at the edge of the channel in the middle of the bay. But, they are fun to catch.

What I would really like to catch would be a four to six foot thresher out at moss landing, that would be wild.

Well, I hope you all have the best of luck, fish on!
Chris K.

Some things you might try are soaking the steaks or fillets in water, or even milk over night. That helps remove some of the bad odor and taste.

Also, I've caught A LOT of leopard sharks and some just smell worse than others. I think if it already smells really bad when you land it, then you're probably better off letting it go.

i used to eat a lot of leopard sharks when i was a starving student, but now i find the smell  revolting. the smell is very similiar to a garter snake, very bitter.