Skillet, do you guys catch the big, big lings? We have never had luck with the 30 plus pounders, we've tried to fish with smaller greenling as bait but it just never works.
Not really, that I know of. We rarely target them during open salmon seasons and sometimes release legal ones, since they are just a pain to deal with when you're set up for salmon. When I catch lings as bycatch, I'm usually fishing for kings. And if I'm fishing kings, I'm fishing relatively deep. My starting depth for kings this year was 50 fa, and I fished up to 80 fa in the second king opener. My biggest ling on the Fairweather Grounds was only 30-ish #, and the average carcass was 16#.
Attached is the biggest I kept this year, 48" and went 42#.
Released one much bigger, but was too busy with kings to deal with it for what it was worth. If pressed, I'd guess 54-ish inches and around 55#. I hefted her out of the water to get a sense of her size, but let her go right away.
Here's a cool vid of a marine preserve just out of sitka sound - there's a few really nice fish in there.
