Who cried wolf?

[Limits]

Did a season finale rockcodding session with the tupperware nation. In for the day were the1luder (Kevin), his buddy Richard and my buddy Steve.

Conditions were the BEST i've seen all year. Started a bit chilly and slight bump till around 9:30 then by 10 AM it laid down to glassy conditions, temps in the high 70s low 80s, and no wind. Went from waders to t-shirts and shorts weather.

The stand up paddle boarders were out with several bikini clad ladies working on their winter time tans. Awesome.

Ended the day with typical grade of rock fish and a few crabs (i brought a couple of nets for an exploratory crabbing session).

For the Lucanus purists, the knockoffs work just fine!


Got into a wide variety of species including - red vermillion, honeyeye, sculipin, lingcod, starries, chillis, boccacio, olives, mackerel, whitefish, and greenspotted rockfish. The guys would add sanddabs and barber poles to the count. Amazingly, I didn't catch any of the later species.

Had a keeper size sandbass that was a surprise catch. C & R of course. (can you see how choppy the water looks by this time? LOL)


Found a new whitefish hole for all the whitefish we wanted but we were at the end of the day so we 'marked' it for future reference.

While fishing for rockcod, I get absolutely rocked! Nice fight all 200+ feet up. Drag pulling and shaking every 40 feet or so. I had visions of a big lingcod or monster red vermillion.

Then this thing came up....


3 feet of wolf eel. Mean SOB tried to bite me several times then ended up latching onto the lipgripper allowing me to put him on the game clip.

Part of the day's catch. Had 3 nice crabs to go with it as well.




Filleting the wolf eel was a bit challenging as the skin is extremely slimy. I was told to skin it like a snake but getting a good grip proved more challenging that anticipated. I ended up steaking it into 5 sections, then filleted each steak, before removing the skin.

What I had left was very beautiful, firm, white fillets. They didn't stink at all. In fact the eel didn't smell, but the Boccacio I caught that day did! lol



Rather than experiment with my own version of teriyaki seasoning, I went with some store bought unagi sauce. Less than $3 for the bottle and there was plenty to season several pounds of fillets.




Started off coating some aluminum foil with a tiny bit of olive oil (in hindsight, PAM probably would have been just as fine), then placed the eel side by side, and putting them in an oven at around 375. No seasoning or sauce at this point. Just wanted to cook them and dry them out.

After about 25 minutes, and the pieces were cooked and dry, I added the unagi sauce and basted them heavily.

Another 10 minutes or so later, they were done (sorry, the wife got a hold of a piece before I got a picture!)



I will say, it was quite excellent. No fishy taste, no strange texture or smell.

If you like unagi from a sushi restaurant, this was the equivalent.

If I am fortunate enough to catch another one, he will definitely be coming home with me.

Hope y'all had a great New Year.