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Japanese friends get more excited over a Lord than a halibut...

Eating those never crossed my mind. I once had a client hook one that was huge. Never in my life did I think they could get that big.

Sounds like a cabezon... They are sculpins that can exceed 3' and 25 pounds...

First picture I found...
http://www.fishingloft.com/what-is-it.html

That could have been it. Caught it in a rocky, high current area, mooching for kings. I remember thinking WTF at 5am..(grin)

Sounds like cabezon... they often go into tide pools as big fish... Found one in a tide pool in WA (near Friday Harbor, San Juans) that had to go 10#.

It's fun catching the weird stuff. I keep the standard, and shake the rest tho. Ratfish sure have been making a comeback in the last few years. They are starting to be all over the place.

Cabezon ain't bad to eat. You have to get passed the blue tinge to the meat though. Rather similar to Lings.

We've made meals with large starry flounder fliets together with



sculpin filets (slivers)



and these little greenling , filleted.

(And this little fisherman is one relentless drowner of metal baits.)

Love the hockey puck burgers in the background..(grin) Can't tell you how many I've grilled up on my mini grill on the beach, creek side, or in hunting camp with the kids. Keeps em going out.

Now this is steelhead fishin!

That rockfish is actually white-spotted greenling, a Hexigramid... closely related to lingcod and too soft to be a rockfish.

INteresting. Looks like you're on the right track, ('cept some internet 'experts' don't include it as one of the two species of greenling in Alaska.) It's one of my favorite white flesh species we get. Very firm fleshed (easy to filet), and cooks up much like a yellow perch or bluegill; firm, moist, not flaky. I'll have to remember the name; tried to figure them out for a long time. Hard to do when they "don't live here".

They very much live there and the books that count show them all the way along the coast of AK. A very closely related greenling is the Atka mackeral... it is not really a mackeral, obviously... is suppsed to be down on the Aleutians and they have shown up in Kodiak over the last 15 years or so. I have a spot where we catch them virtually every time we fish it.

The first time I took some into the Kodiak ADF&G office no one could ID them...

The rock and kelp greenling are the common ones all along coastal AK and that makes at least four greenling in AK...

Thank you all for making me feel less guilty about keeping Irish Lords and flounder. Irish Lords are fun to catch and so ugly that I have to admire them. It amazes me that something with that big of a head and small of a body can live. You barely get two fish sticks off a big one. It fries up pretty good and somewhere I found a "mock lobster" recipe for it.

My dad was never one to tell me I couldn't eat a fish. He just wasn't going to partake all the time. We kept a couple of red irish lords one time and I grilled them up. A touch fishy, but tasted fine to me. About the only fish I've caught, that I've never eaten has been an Arrow Tooth Flounder. Even took the time to clean a skate one time. Too much work for what I ended up with.

When I was in Dublin I tried what they called skate (& chips) since it sounded a bit odd. I really liked the texture and flavor which was almost pastry like. I have not caught one here in Juneau to try cooking. Do I understand correctly that fake scallops are also stamped out of their wings?

BTW - does anyone dredge for scallops? (It is legal, right?) I found an old book showing how to make a dredge but I have not run across anyone who does this locally. When I ask I just sometimes here that maybe people dredge out around Sitka(?)

Best flat fish for eating is rex sole. Flathead and arrowtooth aren't great. Rex are a better eating fish than halibut. A halibut over 20 lbs, except for the tail portion are as uninteresting as chicken breast. Codfish is also better that halibut. Opinion of a commercial fisherman.

Before I go up again I'll brush up on fish species identifcation.
I'll keep a couple if they are rex sole, or one of the others. There certianly wasn't a shortage of them and they were big enough to put a bend in my med heavy spinning rod. If nothing else they were more fun than not catching halibut, of course I have fun catching carp.

Back to Cabezon - I feel they're one of the better eating bottom fish down here. Of course we have to toss the Yelloweye back...

Biggest I've caught probably went 6-7 pounds at 24", though I've seen plenty bigger.

Scott

I've had Cabezon charge me coming off their nest when diving....one actually knocked my regulator out of my mouth on a charge.