La jolla 10/27/13

[Aaron&Julie]

Originally Posted by 619-SWIM-DOG

Nice job, I got a bunch of those flounders but didn't think to keep them. I'm guessing there good eats....

We haven't bothered with our sand dabs in the past either. But, on our last trip we had 2 small rockfish, and then I caught the biggest sand dab we'd seen, and decided to give it a try.

Filleted the rockfish, scaled and gutted the dab.

After picking up some scallops at the store we had ourselves a pretty decent seafood meal. All cooked together in 2 tablespoons of butter and olive oil with minced garlic, chopped onion, pepper, cilantro, and chili power. Turned out to be quite a good meal and variety. The dab held it's own against the rockfish, you just have to watch out for some of the smaller bones.

We'd keep a bunch of those dabs of decent size if that's all LJ is giving up, which can often be the case, because they're almost always down there. If we were to target them specifically, we'd go with much smaller hooks, a 4oz torpedo on the bottom with 2 hooks up above about a foot apart, and use squid strips. We'd probably get all we wanted in the areas we know them to stay around. When we've got them in the past and on this trip it was with an iron and a strip of squid searching for rockfish or lingcod holes. We've also caught them on sabikis and squid strips dropped all the way down searching for mackerel schools. Just FYI for anyone that wants to load up on another kind of good eats.
Aaron