Prettiest fish in Puget Sound?

[lokidog]

I was cleaning crabs on the dock the other day and just as I was mentioning to Weathergirl that almost every dock I have been on around the world would have all kinds of little fish snarfing up the yummy bits (in 7 years I've seen only a few tiny surfperch under the dock here) several good size Striped (Rainbow) Surfperch came out from underneath and ate the tasty bits.  Hows that for a long sentence?   

So, knowing my boy said he is sick of salmon, and that we were going to have salmon for dinner, I went home and told him if he wanted something other than salmon, he would have to go catch it himself.  We went down to the dock with a few bits of crab guts (I only had one left when I saw the fish) and some fresh salmon eggs for bait.  Well, the first drop of the bobber, he catches one - pretty cool.  It is not huge but edible size so he tries to catch another.  After a while of trying to entice them to bite, my boy gives up, so dad gets to try.  After all, who doesn't like the challenge of trying to catch a finicky fish?  So I try and try, they, including the two really big ones, mouth the bait, even engulf it, but no hook ups.  Well, as you may know, crab goo is pretty soft so most of it was disappearing.  I tried some eggson a piece of the skein, they ignored it, what the heck?  I even tried some bits of a dogfish that someone brought in from their crab trap, not interested said the fish.

After a bit of scrounging, I came up with more crab goo and managed to hook one of the big ones, about 14" long, which promptly wrapped around a ladder pole and broke off as I tried to dive on him.     I finally managed to catch one of the medium large ones though.

This fish is, to me, the prettiest fish in Puget Sound, it looks like something that should be in the tropics or an aquarium.  Too bad for them they are so tasty.   

As far as not seeing any of these around until recently, one of the neighbors said they used to have a lot of them ten or more years ago but he had not seen any in a long time as well.  I think, because we got a new dock last winter, the young successional stage of dock growth is more favorable to them than the crustier established growth on an old dock.  Now, I just have to keep it a little secret from more of the island so they don't pull all of those big breeders out from under the dock.   

[boneaddict]

THey are a pretty fish.   Not sure I have ever seen one.  Cool, and sounds fun with the son as well.

[Crunchy]

Those are good eating.  Ive only seen them caught around docks.  Pile worms is usually the magic trick.

[quadrafire]

Taste like crappie??

[PolarBear]

We use to have hundreds of them around the docks/pilings in Totten inlet but they all of a sudden disappeared.  I haven't seen anything bigger than a pogy for at least 15 years.   

[lokidog]

Taste like crappie??

Yes.   

We use to have hundreds of them around the docks/pilings in Totten inlet but they all of a sudden disappeared.  I haven't seen anything bigger than a pogy for at least 15 years.   

My suggestion would be to go down to the dock with a scraper and scrape off all of the tube worms, barnacles and mussels on a large area of it.  My theory is that the new algae growth will encourage the surfperches to return since this provides better food than crusty old stuff.  Our new dock has been here about six months.

[WAcoueshunter]

We used to catch them now and then in the south sound...agreed, absolutely beautiful fish.  Interesting fact, they give live birth.  Once landed a large, very pregnant female and she started dropping babies all over the beach. 

[Kola16]

Pictures don't tell the whole story. They are super pretty in real life (of course everything is). Good catch

[MLBowhunting]

Very pretty fish.   

[Alchase]

They make awesome fish and chips!

[Becky]

  that's a cool story too.

[bear hunter]

I use to catch them but I stopped fishing for them 20 years ago. I just didn't see any under the pier because of over fishing. Best looking of the perch family.
 

[jay.sharkbait]

We used to catch them now and then in the south sound...agreed, absolutely beautiful fish.  Interesting fact, they give live birth.  Once landed a large, very pregnant female and she started dropping babies all over the beach.

We used to catch them off the Weyerhauser trestle in Henderson inlet

[lokidog]

We used to catch them now and then in the south sound...agreed, absolutely beautiful fish.  Interesting fact, they give live birth.  Once landed a large, very pregnant female and she started dropping babies all over the beach.

Yep, all of the surfperches do. 

Funny story, my neighbor was mowing his yard a few years ago, comes around by his garage and there in the grass are about fifteen one and a half inch long surfperch flopping around.  We figured it was either a heron barfing up a bunch of freshly eaten ones as it flew over, or more likely an eagle or osprey grabbed a female that was about to give birth and they popped out in his yard.

[Heartsblood]

So Lokidog -

Was it good eatin'?