Any tips on how to cook/prepare Red Morwong

I find the trick with red mowies for myself, is to fillet & skin them, not scale & gut. They have that black stomach lining & under this they also seem to store a lot of oil/fat which gets released during gutting. I don't bother to gut them ever as they make excellent fillets which lend themselves to Asian cooking. Some of my Chinese mates consider them the "perfect" fish for making dumplings. I guess being red also lends to their popularity. If you are going to eat them whole, then that black stomach lining must be removed & the fat also, an old tooth brush is handy for this.

For red mowies its not so much bitter as "kelpie/woody". Mowies eat small crustations, molluscs & what looks like a type of algae which grows on rocks; Im not sure where the oil & distinctive smell comes from, (maybe the algae?), but filleting & skinning them removes it & turns them into very good quality firm white fillets. I have had them when they have been steamed in a wok & lots of ginger & spring onions & asian spices are added, snapper, john dory, coral trout or tuskfish coulndnt have surpassed it. We are lucky, we are allowed 5 per day. I usually dont take them, except in a comp when I will always take one, or when I do want those 5kg of firm white fillets (only a few times per year). They are potentially vunerable to spearos & are an important species for tyros, but in depth beyond 15m they are still abundant & most of us respect & protect our "mowie holes" so we can always find one when needed.