I’m not a knife expert by any means, but I know a good knife when I see one. I own a few hunting knives, a couple of pocket knives, and several fillet knives; two electric, and one stainless steel. I may never use them again…ANY of them…well, almost!
(scroll to the end of the review to read my disclosure)
I had pretty high expectations for the Havalon Baracuta fillet knife when it arrived in the mail courtesy of Havalon Knives because I already own a Havalon Piranta and it’s been the best knife I’ve owned to date. But the Baracuta surpassed my expectations.
Let me tell you about the Baracuta (and the Piranta for that matter) before I go on with my review. These knives are really unremarkable in regards to the design and function of the handle. They’re a lot like most any other knives. It’s the blade that makes these knives. Why? Because they use replaceable surgical steel blades. They are strong and they are RAZOR sharp-literally RAZOR sharp.
This is how the Baracuta is described on the Havalon site:
The Baracuta-Z Pro Fillet Knife features five inches of micro-honed Japanese stainless steel, a rugged black Zytel plastic handle with gray rubber inserts for better grip and less slippage. This fillet knife has an open back for easy cleaning, plus ambidextrous thumb studs, liner lock construction and a removable pocket clip. Same great concept as the Havalon Piranta, but larger and longer. Overall length is 11 inches yet weight is only 3 ounces. Comes with 5 additional five inch stainless steel #127XT fillet blades.Removing the blade is not that hard, but it’s not easy, and I recommend the first time you do it that you be very careful. I dang near took my hand off the first time I tried removing the blade from my Piranta. The Baracuta is easier to get the blade off because it’s larger. Once you do it a couple of times it forget it was ever an issue but here’s a how to video with a demonstration on removing the blades.
Okay, back to my review of this knife!
I’ll be honest with you, I was pretty skeptical this knife could outdo my electric fillet knife. We catch a lot of sand bass, and they aren’t that big and there are a lot of bones. You plug an electric fillet knife up to a car battery and bones aren’t really a problem. I ws surprised that the Baracuta handled the little sandies perfectly. In fact, I’d rather use it. The reason I now prefer the Baracuta is because it is SO SHARP you can be extremely precise with your cuts. You can carve right around those bones. Using an electric knife, the handle is too big and you can’t be as precise, and with a regular fillet knife you simply won’t get the sharpness.
You never have to sharpen a knife from Havalon. You just discard the blade and replace it with a new one and you’re ready to perform surgery and you could if you were sterile! It’s like having a really big scalpel.
I don’t have pictures from the first time I used this knife because we fished until well after dark and I don’t have a good enough camera to overcome the darkness. We cleaned 4 or 5 walleye from 18 inches to 23 inches, a couple of 2 or 3 pound hybrid bass, a dozen or more sand bass, and one 5 pound channel cat. I used the Baracuta and my brother in law used my Rapala electric fillet knife. We thought we’d make a contest of it, and we came out about even. The difference was I took my time and enjoyed the job and he was frantically cutting away like his life was on the line. The irony in that is that for the last three years I’d been ripping his stainless steel fillet knife and trying to win him over to the dark side of technology.
Here’s the kicker though…I use this knife more at home than I do anywhere else! I used it last night to cut steak into small thin pieces to cook in the wok. I use it to trim chicken every time we cook poultry. I use this knife to trim the fat off any meat that we cook, and I’m not the only one. My wife loves it! I’m not sure if she loves it for the same reasons I do, but I am buying her one for Christmas.
I know it doesn’t sound like the best Christmas gift for the woman you love but it’s only 54 dollars. You can afford to get her plenty of other stuff! I PROMISE YOU it will be one of those gifts where your wife gives you “that look”, but a couple of weeks down the road will come back and apologize for what she was thinking. My wife is the queen of that. She complained when I bought her an ipod when they first came out. “What am I going to do with this!? I don’t need this!?” (she has used an ipod nearly every day for the last five years give or take and is now on her third or fourth generation of the technology) Trust me. She’ll come around.
YOU already know, right? I mean…it’s a durable, lightweight, razor sharp knife with replaceable blades. What more is there to hear!
Cons…there are some cons right? Well, I’m trying hard to come up with any. The Piranta, which I’ve had for about two years, has a little bit of wiggle in it but it’s not anything I’ve ever been concerned about enough to try and fix and it’s not been an issue. Havalon does offer a 100% money back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied, and they have been around for a long time so I’m not concerned and if there’s ever an issue I’m confident they will resolve it.
With the Baracuta, the only complaint I think I can come up with is there are parts that can be hard to clean. It’s likely a non issue for 95% of users, but since I use it in the kitchen to pare up chicken breasts, I’m pretty anal about getting it all cleaned up and disinfected. I’m not going to throw away a perfectly good blade because I got a little chicken on it. I’m paranoid about raw chicken because I once endured Salmonella poisoning. It was 7 days of pure hell. For three of those days, I literally thought I was going to die. I didn’t leave the bathroom once or sleep a minute for a solid 48 hours. I won’t go into any more detail, but I don’t mess around with my chicken!
When you buy a fillet knife from Havalon you also get 5 replacement blades. The Piranta skinning knife comes included with 12 additional replacement blades.
The Baracuta Edge and Baracuta Z fillet knives are both 59.95 but are currently on sale (at the time of this writing) for 54.95.
The original Stainless Steel Piranta skinning knife is 45.00 and the Piranta Edge is 35.00.
Replacement blades for the skinning knife will run you $29.95 for 100 or $5.25 for a dozen. Replacements for the fillet knife are $59.95 for 20 and $14.95 for a 5 pack.
You can buy the Havalon Baracuta here and the Piranta here.
If you do buy a knife from them, make sure and tell them in the comments section that you heard about them here. We don’t get paid a commission or anything like that.Regardless if a million knives are sold through here or zero knives are sold, it has no affect on us. Well, okay, if we got anywhere near a million I’d be hitting them up for a kickback, but you and I both know that ain’t happenin’!
Go buy one of these knives. Heck go buy both of them. And buy one for your wife too!
Come back here to this review and let us know your opinion on them. I’m betting you agree with me!