This is a demonstration on how to handle dalag, probably the slipperiest freshwater fish in the world.
There are other ways of course, like hitting its head with a blunt object, pouring vinegar, sprinkling salt on its body, with the risk that it jumps and escapes - or it hits you hard in the process. Imagine if your dalag is 5 kilos - twice the size of the specimen in the photos.
First, stake behind and be gentle. With both hands, hold the ventral part of the head and the body behind the pectoral fin. Simultaneously, press - or insert insert fingers into the gills, if necssaryand hold until fish stops wriggling.
If you want it alive, don't further hurt the fish. Gently put it in a bucket of water, then transfer it, say to the pond.
If it's for culinary (pesang dalag), deftly detach the skull from the atlas (first vertebral bone) with a real hard downward thrust. Don't twist. The fish is instantly killed this way. Instantly killed fish, poultry and animals taste better because they are prevented from releasing distress hormones during their struggle.
Why don't you try handling a live snakehead or mudfish? How about catfish or hito? The procedure is basically the same, except that you have to be careful with the sharp pectoral spines. Catching live fish, and animals, like catching piglets (biik) in the mud, is now an endangered village game.~ ~ ~
Living with Nature, Volume 3, All Rights Reserved
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