Reel Repair by Alan Tani

Quote from: Shellbelly on March 31, 2023, 04:05:51 PM... I could have gone straight to the canal and would have been home by noon....but where's the fun in that?

it feels really strange when I go to the local pier at 5am, fish for few hours and then be at home by noon..   

here in Baja you can find those slimy creatures too, the Sea catfish, nobody want to deal with them LOL, since I was a city boy befome moving to this Port I didnt know anything about fishing and local guys told me to stay away from those sea catfish and I always obey the captain, but I know what you mean about the slim all over since one guy caught one few of those and put them in the same fish bag, so you can imagine how it was at the end of the fishing day

Quote from: Shellbelly on March 30, 2023, 10:45:14 PM......  After all, why eat fish that has no fish taste?  ...  .

oops thats me   

thats why after some time fishing since I moved from the city, I found that my preferable fish on the table are YT and groupers.

Quote from: steelfish on March 31, 2023, 04:58:08 PMnobody want to deal with them LOL,

Try just one, at around 20-24".  They clean real easily.  Guide your electric knife about 3/4" behind the dorsal fin when you start.  They have a hard top around that fin.

On the skin side of the filet, you see red meat.  Slice a v-groove at an angle toward the centerline and just peel that out with your knife.  About 1/4" on both sides of the center and the same in depth.  That's the main source of a gamey taste.  Get that out and it tastes like a catfish.

I should have taken pictures of this.  I'm sure there are other game fish that need a little trimming to tame them down a bit.  Same concept here. 

Beautiful———ly large Drum!
What a fight that musta been in the surf.
I had a Star-fire Eagle  Claw. I really liked the yellow with the cursive writing. Biggest fish on it was a Juvenal 4' Oceanic White-tip shark. Always around the commercial Yellowfin boat, whenever we set on a school(purse seine, actually set around dolphins). Big dumb looking sharks, seemingly slow, until you hooked one. I still have his jaws. Real dangerous, though, wouldn't hesitate to go after a human.

Quote from: Shellbelly on March 31, 2023, 04:42:59 PMOff to the freezer they go!

Reminds me of blue runners from around here. Alot of folks think of them as trash fish, but cleaned the same way you do these cats, and they're excellent.

Quote from: nelz on March 31, 2023, 08:40:57 PMtrash fish

That term has maligned many tasty fish....some only because they are "hard" to clean or can't effectively be cut into a boneless filet suitable for a fine china plate.  More for my paper plate, please!!  Yes, there are fish that are NOT good to eat no matter how you try them and what you drown them in.  Anything with "jack" in its name comes to my mind.  I've tried to like these!   

Many fish carry the "trash" reputation because our fathers said so.

100 years ago snook was used for catfood because it was so plentiful and nobody wanted it. They called it soapfish because if you don't skin them before cooking apparently they taste soapy.

But snook is frankly just about the best tasting fish out there when prepared correctly. And that's not a biased statement at all.

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on April 01, 2023, 01:49:40 AMAnd that's not a biased statement at all.

I believe you.  We don't have them here...well there are some somewhere.  Still, that's a bold statement given that you guys hit those big Pompano pretty hard! That's a tasty fish, too.