Striped Bass is an excellent eating fish, The flesh is light in color, light in flavor without being bland, and tender, flaking apart easily into large flakes - well, actually it practically falls apart into large flakes. It can be filleted and pan fried, pan fried whole or pan dressed, steamed, baked, grilled, or poached whole. When steamed with the usual slashes, skin shrink opens the slashes some but not so much as to be unattractive. The flesh is off white with a thin somewhat darker layer just under the skin. It has a pleasant flavor by any means of cooking.

Buying:   This fish is very common in Asian fish markets here in Los Angeles. Though it is easy to confuse with the freshwater White Bass, getting the wrong one isn't a big problem as they are much alike.

Prep:   The scales on this fish are medium size and scrape off quite easily with only moderat flying about. There are no particular problem for gutting this fish, and the gills pull out fairly easily, but you may want to use kitchen shears to cut them loose at the bottom end. This is an easy fish to fillet. When you get to the rib cage just cut the ribs from the backbone with kitchen shears and pull them from the fillet with long nose pliers - they pull fairly easily. There are also some centerline spines for the first inch or so which should be pulled out forward.

Skin:   The skin has little shrink, but enough to slightly curl a fillet in the frying pan. If you press the fillet back flat with your turner the skin quickly looses its grip and the fillet will continue to fry flat. Fillets can be skinned quite easily with the long knife and cutting board method, but it does not have a strong or unpleasant flavor, so can be left on for most forms of cooking.

Yield:   A 1-3/4 pound fish yielded 14 ounces of fillet skin-on (50%) and 12 ounces with the skin removed (43%).

Cooking:   When frying skin-on, you definitely want at least a light powdering of rice flour to prevent sticking and keep the skin in place. Once it's been heated the skin has almost no grip and will otherwise peel right off and make a mess.

Stock:   The head, bones and fins make a pleasant usable fish stock with little oil, but do separate what oil there is using your gravy separator before use.