Skate question

[PA BEN]

Caught a large Skate Saturday Halibut fishing. I'm guessing 70 to 80 lbs, he was about 5 ft or so across the wings. What a nice fight, thought I had a nice Butt on the line. Anyway, I'm told you can eat the wings, make scallops with a round cookey cutter. Anybody eat one? BTW, I did get a 45 lb'er

[JKEEN33]

I have caught several off Neah bay, up to 10' across the wing. I have never eaten them, but have been told by several of the locals they are pretty good. Curious to see if anyone else has tried it too. This one had to be at least 8' across.

[STIKNSTRINGBOW]

We used to eat them when I was a teenager, we cut the wings off and the first 4-6" (ours were smaller) in a strip, skin and make fish and chips.
they were not too bad, but would not plan a trip around catching them...

[PA BEN]

Did a google and found this video
http://youtu.be/u33tJFkota0

[h20hunter]

Weird how the thing keeps flopping around as he cuts the mucles. Kind of like gripping your wrist as your fingers flex.

[MooseStock]

PA Ben......did you get the Halibut at PA.....what area? I was in town today seeing in-laws for Mothers day and I went to both the spit and Y club and never saw one Halibut carcus. Last year they were everywhere on the spit. Hoping to make it up to fish next Friday/Sat. Thanks for the info.................Les

[PA BEN]

It's not open on Sunday's. The tides were bad. 68 fish out of all the boats that came in on the hook the 5th and 6th. There were a lot of boats too, it looked like the derby was in town. Caught mine out front off the hook. The best tides will be this weekend. Good luck. PM me if you have an open seat.

[robodad]

My experience with the skates have been that you need a REALLY BIG one to offer much to eat, they are all wing which is mostly cartilage and the meat that is there is like noodles and very hard to fillet, taste is good but really not worth the time and slime to mess with. They suck to catch cause your expecting a halibut but I just snip the leader and let them go without harm even though I'd like to bash their skull !!

[groundhog]

I kept one once when I was a kid and that was enough for me. I will save you the gory details but lets just say they are hard to kill and even harder to fillet. We release them now.
 We fished around Protection Island on Thursday and Friday and it was slow. Got checked by WDFW and they had checked twenty boats and only one fish. I did catch one 35 pound fish later that day, but that was it.