Grilling a whole fish is dramatic and thrifty all at the same time: You get to deliver a gorgeous, smoky grilled fish to the table -- and you lose far less meat than you would had you filleted the fish beforehand.
Start with a scaled and gutted fish that has had the gills cut out (There are instructions on how to do this linked below.). First you need to slash the fish on both sides every three inches or so. This helps the whole fish cook evenly. If you did not do this, the thick part would still be raw when the tail end was overcooked.
This step-by-step uses a striped bass, known as rockfish in the South, but other excellent candidates for this treatment include: bluefish, red drum, large walleyes, trout, landlocked salmon, smaller salmon such as sockeye, black seabass, porgies, white seabass, Pacific rockfish, weakfish, snapper and grouper.