Quick Question WSB Icing or Fielting

[Aaron&Julie]

Originally Posted by icelogger

It looks like I'm doing it all wrong after reading this post.

8. Eat all frozen fish within a month

Is icing absolutely nescessary if you live close to the ocean?

It may not be totally necessary for everyone, as in your case.

But, we've had seasons where we caught 4 WSB in one day, totally about 175 lbs of whole fish. Same season, 3 weeks apart, we each caught her 1st Thresher and my 1st Thresher, 85 lbs and 80 lbs respectively. None of those fish would even fit into the cooler, so we stacked them together into the back of the truck with 8 frozen 2-litre bottles around them, wet towels below and on top of the pile, which are shaded by the kayaks directly above (not on) them.

We also took the care of keeping an old bath towel on them, keeping the towel wet the whole time we were still OTW. We always bring large towels for this purpose.

We live a half hour away from the launch, not 10 minutes.

For the care we take, we still have well over half of those fish left, from 2 years ago, and everytime we pull some out it taste like fresh fish. We also have Bluefin, Yellowtail, Halibut, Clams and Lobster in large supply. We eat a lot of fish, clams, crabs, and lobster, but seems we can never catch up, it's a good thing.

We've done the ziploc method, works okay, for short durations, but for usually less than a year, at best, IMHO.

All the fish we've kept, Thresher, WSB, Halibut, and even Yellowtail, all go for over $7 a pound, so we take the best care possible. The bounty of La Jolla is far too valuable in many ways, and we certainly don't want to waste anything we keep.