9/29/04 - pescadero and the magically shrinking ling cod

[alantani]

i decked today for bill roach aboard his 26 foot osprey "lila belle." we headed down to pescadero. the numbers i gave him were 37.15 and 122.26. that would put us in the general area, then we could hunt. when we arrived, i asked him to put us in 50 feet water, he motored for a while, cut the engine and said "let's fish." we caught several small rock fish and they all came up badly decompressed. they were released and took off swimming, but something was wrong. i asked bill what our depth was, and the answer was "75 feet." my response was to find 50 feet of water and start again. we stayed in 60 feet or less the rest of the day and had no additional problems releasing small rock fish.

we fished the entire day with my single treble hook rig and squid heads or fantail-cut squid bodies. we kept only ten medium to large rockfish, ten vermillions in the 4-8 pound range, 3 large cabs and two legal ling cod, one at 31 inches and one at 33. my 31 inch ling came in on a 14 inch jacksmelt that i had jigged up while cleaning fish. i nose hooked the smelt with a small treble, sent it down to the bottom with an 8 ounce sinker and hooked up on this ling as soon as the weight thunked the bottom. it was a great day of fishing.

here's the interesting part of the story. a dfg fish checker measured the lings while i was getting the truck and trailer. a crowd had formed at the dock and there were alot of long faces. i ignored them, we pulled the boat out and started scrubbing the boat down. on the way to fill the buckets, i asked the fish-checker guy if there was a problem. he said one of the lings was 28.5 inches. my response was "no way!" but my thoughts were related to his fecal matter content. i told him that i measured those two lings myself and that they were waaayyyy legal. he said he wasn't a game warden. i told him that didn't matter. i went straight back to the boat, pulled out my cold stiff ling and it measured 28.5 inches. i flexed the fish back and forth, gave it a tug and measured it again. 30 and a quarter inches, not 31!!!! it still shrank!!! i called him up the boat, he measured the fish and profusely apologized. i'm still mad because a half dozen guys that were at the dock still think that this osprey takes short ling cods. i'm also concerned because my fish shrank 3/4ths of an inch. i guess from now on we leave the lings in the live well.

one last thing. i've made a decision to fish only in 60 feet of water or less. even with a "recompression" device, i am concerned about barotrauma and short-term mortality. without knowing whether a "recompressed" fish will survive more than a few days or not, i've elected to stay in 60 feet or less. it might be something some of you might wish to consider. alan