Landing the Perfect Catch: The Right Fishing Knife for Australian Waters
June 26, 2024
Australia’s diverse waters are inhabited by a similarly diverse variety of fish, and fishing is something that many of us do quite regularly. Whether you’re an experienced angler or a weekend fisherman, having the right equipment can be essential to your success.
Of all these tools, the knife is a key piece of equipment. In this blog post, we’ll explore the world of fishing, filleting and boning knives to ensure you’re ready with the correct knife when the next meal is safely landed on the shore or the boat.
The Essential Fishing Knife
Versatile, tough, sharp – all of which are the marks of a good fishing knife. A workhorse indeed; we use our fishing knives from cutting lines to gutting and scaling the daily catch to opening bait and stink ’pack’ fillets.
Out on the water, fishing in Australia provides epic watermen with a new set of daily unyielding backcountry challenges – from calm inland estuaries to the rugged offshore. Find a knife with a corrosion-resistant blade and a non-slip handle.
Filleting Knife: The Angler’s Precision Tool
You’ll also need a filleting knife, the real putty knife because the long, thin, flexible blade makes it ideal for separating fillets from the bone. Australian fishers tend to like them with a little flex as this lets the knife form around whatever fish you are filleting, whether it be snapper or barramundi.
Boning Knife: The Deboning Dynamo
It works very well, but unlike the filleting knife, which primarily removes the skin and cuts the flesh around the skeleton, a boning knife has a very narrow, sharp point that can cut right through bones; it is used for removing the bones from fish or poultry, especially game birds. Boning knives are another indisputably essential kitchen implement. All the meat and fish merchants in Australia’s delis and fish markets will use one.
Knives Australia: A Cut Above
It’s all about the quality of the knife in Australia. Because we have a strong outdoors culture. We want kitchen knives you can use in treacherous coral waters on the Coral Sea: you want tough. Knives Australia is about the best quality.
Kentmaster and Giesser
Johannes Giesser Messerfabrik GmbH, in Solingen, Germany. Established in 1776, Giesser is one of the world’s oldest knife manufacturers. For more than six generations, Giesser has been producing top-quality knives with perfection as its goal. More than 8,000 knives are produced each day by Giesser for professional use in various sectors.
He laid the company’s foundations when he started producing knives and other hand-cutting implements. Since then, Giesser has grown continuously, developing new blade steels, such as the stainless steel pioneered with Böhler Edelstahl in 1936 and the first-ever vacuum hardening plant for improving product quality and edge-retention in 1981.
A Powerhouse of Output
Giesser makes hundreds of knives in a wide variety of types and shapes for almost any application – from a chef knife, kitchen knife, butcher knife, hunting, fishing and cutting knives – doing sterling service among commercial meat processors. Each knife is made of quality chrome molybdenum steel with a Rockwell hardness of 56HRC, making them durable and able to hold an edge for a long time.
The Giesser Fish Filleting Knife
This is a testament to the company’s emphasis on quality and functionality. A Giesser has a curved, flexible blade that is perfect for anglers.
This feature acts like a filleting knife and a skinning knife for fish or meat. Their razor-sharp knives make for an easy experience right out of the box.
The handle fits comfortably in the hands even when embellished in fish slime and meets the world’s high hygiene standards.
Owners of Giesser‘s knives are becoming increasingly familiar with the brand, whose pristine workmanship is adeptly displayed in the attention to detail given to their Fishing Knife, which explains why this useful tool is commended in the realm of marine sport fishing down under.
The Giesser and Their Fishing Knife: Grade A Ergonomics
The knives are made of high-carbon steel and ergonomically designed to suit the movement of a professional chef or butcher.
The design prioritises ergonomic features such as grooves on the tang for ‘putting the knife in the fingers’ – enabling a firm grip such that these ‘fingers take over the cutting tasks’ – and lightweight designs that minimise hand fatigue as well as nodules on the ‘progressive finger resting points’ that, when well‑designed, help minimise cutting tremors and thus promote ‘fine, precise and comfortable’ cutting.
It’s Not ALL About the Blade
The handles on classic Giesser knives, including the fish filleting knife, are non-slip; their increased friction ensures a firm grip even in slippery conditions.
The Giesser filleting knife for fish has a flexible blade that flexes with the curvature of the fish so it can be cut cleanly, exactly, in a single clean stroke, following the delicate structure of the fish’s body.
This flexibility ensures the knife glides over the fish easily, following the contours of the bones so there is as little waste as possible, and the fillets are neat and can be fitted together when the knife is finished. The handle is ergonomically formed to fit the contours of the hand so that the available grip allows it to be easily used.
It is ideally suited to the ergonomic demands of the Australian market, where many different species are filleted. Anglers and chefs can work efficiently and productively, whether preparing a catch on board or in commercial kitchens.
The importance the brand places on aesthetics (quality), functionality (ergonomic handgrips), user experience (quality fish fillets, a clean kitchen and a sharp knife that can also be re-honed at home) and value for money (affordable price). For all of these reasons, knives Australia consumers would not make a better recommendation than Giesser knives.
SUMMARY
The perfect knife can distinguish between a good day and the perfect day on the water. For Australian fishermen, the right choice between a fishing knife, filleting knife or boning knife is a badge of honour. So next time you head out, remember that the right cut is the first step after the perfect catch