Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Flounder?

On my trip to Juneau a friend who lives there took me halibut fishing. we went into a sheltered bay to eat lunch.
While there I noticed that the bottom was covered with fish. I began fishing for them with a light rod. A small piece of salmon resulted in a bite every cast. The fish I was catching were flounders I think, some type of flat fish. They seemed a decent size fish, my friend thought I was wasting my time catching them. He at least didn't hold them in a very high regard. He didn't recommend that I keep any, but he did keep the crab I snagged. I assume they are good to eat. The only fish you hear people talking much about are salmon and halibut. Are there species that are used a lot but not talked about?

We throw them all back...

I cooked one up once (arrow tooth flounder I think) and it was ok flavor-wise, just kind of a mushy consistency.

Bottom line though, is that we're pretty spoiled on fish up here.

Those flounders aren't really flounders. Soles, and not the good kind. Pure junk. Almost every client on my charter boat thinks they are flounders tho.

Arrow tooth flounders look like halibut and get up to 10lbs, and have the really nasty looking teeth. Many people have been fooled into eating the arrow tooth. They only make that mistake once.

sorry, wrong post

There are alot of different types of flounders/sole in Alaska, so w/o a pic, hard to say what you were catching. Alaskans are spoiled with such a huge variety of large excellent eating fish, so alot of what are referred to as trash fish may be excellent eating.

I ended catching some sole over the 4th of July weekend, it was more of a water based camping shrimping trip, but I decided to do some jigging while we were anchored to see what was down there. I ended up catching several small flounder. Whenever I see a fish I've caught is bleeding from the gills, I keep it if it's a legal fish. So, I end up with a ping pong paddle sized flat fish. Not much meat after cleaning it, but it was decent tasting with good texture.

So just because most people don't talk about a paticular type of fish, doesn't mean they aren't good to eat.

Flounders can be tasty. I've eaten a couple starry flounder and they were pretty good.

As a side note, in Alaska it's illegal to catch crab with a rod and reel. Just FYI.

Interesting. We get some starry flounder dipping the K. I've not tried it because; 1) they are pretty small, and 2) I've been told they are not very good.

Maybe I'll try one or two.

Apparently they can get up to about 28". I caught one that was pushing 24" this spring.

The stary flounder have one of the toughest skins I've ever cut, will take the edge right off of your fillet knife. The flesh does turn mushy quickly, so fillet immediately and ice it. Decent tasting, but not really worth the effort.

The flounder I caught in PWS seemed to be better tasting, but they were immediately filleted and cooked vs. the starty flounder that were on ice for quite awhile before we got home and dealt with them.

The only starries I've eaten have been filleted and in the pan in short order. More of a food of opportunity/curiosity while camping.

Yellow sole cook up nicely as well, but they're pretty small.

I've been told that the starry flounders we catch on the Kenai are all worm ridden..... through them all back.

I've never seen worms in starry flounders, but I've only kept a few.

The wormiest fish I've seen have been cod and pollock in K-bay. Yet I was suprised when we caught six cod in Resserection Bay last weekend that they had very few worms in them, and they were very large, biggest tipped the scale at 9#'s.

They are worth keeping, however, for fish prints. Great school project.

Those are big worms!

We-do-an-annual-flounder-feed-when-the-big-starrys-come-in-during-subsistence-king-time.-Most-times-the-flatfish-are-too-small,-but-they-seem-to-be-the-bigger-spawners,-perhaps,-when-the-kings-are-in.They,re-a-decent-change-from-pink-fleshed-fish.....closest-thing-we-get-to-halibut-locally.

Steak 'em!

http://www.alaskaseafood.org/health/facts/pages/fish-sole.html

My wife is a North Carolina girl and "flounder" is the end all be all fish where she grew up. I am not going to mention that these might be "sole" since that is the only reason I occasionally trick her into going fishing with me. Taste about like any other white fish to me.

The trick seems to be freezing them to below 0 degrees F which is supposed to neutralize the enzymes that cause them to cook into fish flavored mash potatoes. This seems to firm the flesh up enough to fry.

We bay fished in Mystic, CN and ate flounder on the same day that it were caught. We thought that it tasted great, but in KS we kind of like for fish to taste like fish. We know what chicken tastes like.

Arbalester, I never considered a colder freezing temp for fish to keep it firm. Shore caught Lake Trout in Canada is just as good as Walleye, but Lake Trout will not carry back to my home without turning mushy. Food for thought. Thanks.

I did not even think about trying this deep freeze trick on other "soft" fish. Please let me know how it works.

I don't mind fish flavored fish either. We can get so spoiled here by halibut and salmon that I have seen people waste fish (dolly varden and steel head) that a Texan would be tempted to send to taxidermist because they "taste fishy."

My fishing luck is so bad that I don't throw much of anything away.

Those things aren't bad tasting. Problem is they're all head. Once you get them filleted they're isn't much there.