The deba thread made me think about people in different places access to different fish. So for those of you not familiar with Gulf fishhere is what I happened to have on my phone.
Lemonfish
More Lemonfish
Yellowfin 98#
Same Yellowfin
Red Snappers
Very nice. Lemonfish hasn't caught on down here. We still just call them cobia. We've had a couple coon asses come down here from the Hell Divers club to dive with us. Those guys are a blast.
I love cobia for many reasons, not the least of which is that it has minimal negative impact in the fisheries. We buy spear fished so there is zero bycatch and no bottom disruption. It's also delicious and versatile. Because of its shape you can make a lot of interesting cuts off of it.
The Warsaw was actually not very good. I found another picture so you can see scale.
The kegs are full kegs. It was, like most large grouper species, kinda chewy and had that weird squeak when you bite into it. I prefer my grouper in smaller sizes.
I've heard Ling called Cobia by city folks but have not heard Lemonfish before. Hooked one one while fishing for trout. With trout gear. Was an E ticket ride...
Next door neighbor fishes for redfish out of kayak. Always catch and release. And then there was one he didn't release.
Nice redfish! That's about as big as I like em, after that they get wormy. Calling cobia Lemonfish is a Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama coast thing. I'm also curious to see what different places call the same fish, I recently had someone try to sell me sheepshead as "rondeau sea bream". I also like porgy as pink snapper.
Shoooo.... y'all are getting some dope seafood!!! Used to work further up Magazine from y'all and we'd get some nice seafood but nothing like that. I would be geeking out in your kitchen
Dardeau, are you by chance getting your fish from guys who participate in Gulf Wild (http://mygulfwild.com/) ? Do the fish come wish a little barcode tacked to them where you can track that fish to see where it was caught?
Most of them come from coolers in pickup trucks, and guys that that isn't a priority for. Some of it does however and it's a neat little system. There is a lot of politics involved in some of that stuff, especially here in the land of the bp claim.
I fish/spear with guys down here who participate in the program. My buddy Jason started up Wild Seafood down here in Madeira Beach. It's a nice little marketing tool to show people where their seafood came from.
Oh, lordy, those shrimp look good! I haven't had good shrimp since we've moved to the west coast. The ones the restaurants and groceries have aren't fit for bait. I miss mangrove snapper, grouper, and mullet, too.
Most of the wild caught gulf seafood we get is tagged. I like that we can actually track it back. We do a fair bit of work with Tx Pks to promote sustainable harvest. Drop in the bucket really but we're trying to do what we can. We get a lot of snapper, grouper, flounder, redfish, shellfish and shrimp consistently and a good mix of other fish that we see regularly depending on the market. I'd love to see even more variety but it's challenging getting people to push the boundaries of their comfort zones.
Are you guys familiar with hogfish? You can only get them by spearfishing generally speaking. Once in a blue moon you might get one to bite shrimp. So the harvest of them is very selective with no by catch. Goofy looking fish but absolutely delicious.
These are MS I believe. The fishery there is a little more lenient when you can catch them. As far as I know, the only fish you can gill net in LA is Pompano. There are actually guys in VA and MS semi successfully tank raising good pompano without a ton of waste, and they have a bunch of other species they want to try, and specks are among them.