If your goal is to eat what you catch, learn to love the fish.
I find it ironic when spearos brag about eating what they shoot; but at the end of the day, they just throw away 75% of the fish they caught.
Learning to fillet a fish takes time and properly maintained knives. Use common sense when deciding to fillet a fish. For example: a skinny flounder, even if legal it would end up wasted.
Instead of filleting every thing, take a chance just taking the guts and the gills out. Place the whole fish on the grill (or an oven)and you'll be surprised on the result. No need to smother it with a million different things. Fresh fish taste great.
Remember that throats and cheeks of grouper, snapper, cobia, and similar are just delicious. Yes, it does have bones to deal with, but so are chicken wings.
Making a soup with the head of a big fish is just heaven, if you can't deal with the concept then place the head in a cloth mesh and cook it like that. The magnificent flavor will stay and you can easily remove the head bones by just removing the mesh bag. Heads are also perfect to put in traps for stone crabs, and other tasty creatures. Check the local laws.
Another alternative to filleting a big fish (again grouper or similar), just cut the whole 2 sides from the main skeleton and broil them with the skin on. You don't have to eat it, but it will keep it moist and tasty.
Also just scaling and cutting 1 or 1.5 inch chunks will give you perfect steaks where the skin holds the meat together for cooking and the bone is limited to one piece in the middle.
Unless you clean your fish by a shallow marsh, discarding a huge fish skeleton with the head attached goes to waste in the garbage or to pollute marinas and canals. If nothing else cut it in smaller pieces before throwing back in the water (don't use the nice fillet knife for that).
