Dedicated to the relentless pursuit of fish on the fly. Welcome to the obsession, I hope you enjoy the pics and ramblings. If you like what you see (or really don't), feel free to drop me an email at fishindog.net@gmail.com. And when you're done, get your waders on and get out there, cause the only way to catch 'em is with your bug in the water.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Rock Fish


The salmos (ok, oncorhynchi technically) are still being stubborn and not coming in so I headed out this afternoon with Lance (Minnesotean extraordinaire) in his Zodiac to go find whatever we could find. We motored a few miles up the coast to check out a creek that I'd eyeballed on Google Earth and proceeded to find nothing but crab pots. Being in a clump of islands, we figured there had to be fish around somewhere and utilizing the latest in ultra techy fish finder gear we were able to find fish of some unknown species in 60 to 180 feet of water. Yesssssss. I know what you're thinking, and yes, that's a hell of a lot of water to drop a fly down. Lance had no qualms about dropping a big fish-shaped chunk of lead or something and proceeded to nail what we think is a Quillback Rockfish.

The AK G&F rockfish ID guide is pretty poor, so "we think" is about as close as we're getting on this one. Not to be outdone, and of course packing my arsenal of piscatorial terrorism for the trip, I rigged up the 300 gr. sinking line and started plumbing the depths. In a matter of a few minutes we BOTH limited out. Yep, you read that right, I used the phrase "limited out" when referring to myself. Unfortunately for us and the fish, the rules up here require you to keep all non-pelagic rockfish because of a fun little physiological quirk. The swim bladders in these guys don't adjust very quickly, and when you bring them up they tend to experience a bit of decompression, aka internal hemmoraging from which they probably won't recover. Soooo legally you've got to keep them. The only real problem, as I later discovered, is that being a non-resident, I can only keep, and therefore only fish until I catch two. Yep, two. This is a problem for three reasons. One: It makes me stop fishing. Two: They're damn good eating and I want to eat more. (I'm of the opinion that AK just hates non resident types. Don't believe me? Check out the regs some time.) And three: It's going to take me a long ass time to catch all the different species of these things if I can only catch two fish on any given day. Laaaaaaaaame.

Another fun factoid: Rockfish are equipped with spines on their dorsal fin which pack a nice little surprise. Not only are they extremely sharp, they have a nice toxin in them that burns like a bastard if you get stuck. They're also equipped with spines on their other fins and gill plates that don't pack the same punch but will tear you up.
Tomorrow's plan: rock fish.

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