7 minutes of Frying Catfish Estuarine Hardhead Catfish.

These hardheaded catfish, every hates and here's why:
They are incredibly slimy when caught, they have 3 seriously dangerous (supposedly) poisonous serrated barbs- each pectoral and another one on the dorsal fin. They have a huge boney indestructible head, so banging them on the head to kill them is out. AND they are a pain to gut and clean.

BUT (and you know what they say about the "BUT"!) They taste super super excellent with a firm white meat which is also flaky and super delicious! We like to fry them up with chilli in the oil.

How we prepared, gut as a normal fish being careful not to get stuck with the barbs. Do not try and remove the skin. Do not fillet. Turn fish on it's dorsal surface and use either a small cleaver or a strong knife and big heavy stick/wooden rolling pin to belt the knife through their spine and sever the head.
Take the house and hose all of the slime off the skin by blasting it until the skin doesn't feel slimy.
Note:
You will not be able to simply cut off the head. Put them in the fridge overnight. The next night thoroughly rinse the skin again. Soak in some salted water one tablespoon/4-5kg of fish, for about 10 minutes, rinse, pat dry and deep fry. If they are big ones, slice the flesh to obtain even cooking.

You will find them very very tasty and worth the effort. The rumours about them being tasting muddy etc are false trust me.

Now the other side of the coin is that they also fight like hell as a sort of "poor man's game fish". But don't get spiked when landing them.

I'll post a video of how I cleaned them up.