Sea Cucumbers

Hit a bunch more rockfish but no lings yesterday - coppers and quillbacks.  Spent a few hours with an 8" Berkeley curly tail on a 6oz lead head fruitlessly looking for lingzilla.  This is the only thing I brought up on the big bait.  Looks like a weird hybrid rockfish of some sort.  Definitely benthic.  Then spent a couple hours with a GULP! 5" squid on a 3oz leadhead playing with the rockfish.

Sea cucumber! ..... those are good eats! Used to sight fish them in BC when we would get 30+ feet of vis

Sea cucumber! ..... those are good eats! Used to sight fish them in BC when we would get 30+ feet of vis

It put up a surprising fight.  I was waiting for it to spit its guts out, but it never did - C&R.  I've never tried cutting them open and stripping the muscle bands and eating.  Interesting vid.  Looks easy.

Stripping the muscles is much easier if you blanch them first. Just 30 seconds in boiling water does the trick. The muscle cooks up like really tender razor clams. I know the Japanese also eat the skin but I'm not sure on prep methods.

Interesting!  I'd eat them, I love razor clams.  Where does a person get these cucumbers?

On the bottom 20-60 feet .... might be deeper too. Only way I have caught them is accidentally snagging while bottom fishing or sight fishing from the dock or boat in really clear water and using a weighted treble hook. I am guessing that most are taken by divers.

Say I snag one while on the salt, what kind of OTW prep is needed to keep them edible later? 
Gut and bag while still on the salt?

I snag a half dozen plus or minus every year while jigging for rockfish, some decent sized.   Might have to keep one this year, I knew they were edible but hadn't heard they were delectable

Say I snag one while on the salt, what kind of OTW prep is needed to keep them edible later? 
Gut and bag while still on the salt?

Not much in the way of guts. I would just toss in your catch bag or leave in your foot wells if you have some standing water there. Some times they puke out a buck of snot that is used as a defence mechanism.

If you've ever been diving a kelp bed or rocky patch, you'll see sea cucumbers all over.  I wouldn't take long to fill a goody bag if you were so inclined to.  Toss some sea urchins in the bag while you're at it.  Uni = good!!!

-Allen

This may change your mind ... gutting sea cukes:


This seems less icky:

I think the cucumber discussion would be best served if it were split off from the rockfish discussion?  Love the topic and hope to keep it going, just on it's own.

I think the cucumber discussion would be best served if it were split off from the rockfish discussion?  Love the topic and hope to keep it going, just on it's own.

Done.

New AOTY species? 10 points an inch?

It might be fun to add a "Captian's Chioce" category just for fun to AOTY.  It would have to be pretty low point value (say 3 pts per inch or less) but we'd allow pretty much any animal (i.e. you can't post a 60 ft bull kelp or a found 100 ft section of crab pot line).    What I hope would happen would people would post interesting fish and maybe try to measure a wolf eel or an octopus for points.