Thread: So I gotta ask....

Squid are terrible to eat. May be poisonous. Bonita also. I strongly urge anyone that catches them to turn them over to me as soon as possible.

"The key to happiness is to avoid the things that make you unhappy."

Especially the predatory ones.

Is there a size limit on squid and octopus? I imagine it would be tough to measure a pissed off octopus.

I've had hardtails as sashimi/sushi. Same with Bonita. I thought it tasted good.

Only fish I can say I would never eat again is a hardhead, tried it once just for the hell of it and it tasted like eating fried fish that been dipped into a mud/blood batter. But, Gafftops taste great to me. Are they gonna hold toe-to-toe with some white meat flaky reef fish..probably not. But it's also hell of a lot easier to catch some Gafftop. I think just about every fish can be used in some sort of application (in terms of cooking). The ol saying always holds true..beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

Originally Posted by ReelFishing

Yep that’s it. I didn’t realize there was squid off the pier?

Yes - I caught some in the Spring,last year, as I recall. I think that they gather under the lights at night. The ones I caught hit a sabiki rig and I also caught some on live shrimp.

Originally Posted by ReelFishing

I have been reading through that thread. It’s interesting, but man some of that stuff I don’t know about. Like eating the shark suckers, that doesn’t sound healthy/appetizing at all.

Remora are delicious! They're scavengers, but so are crabs, catfish, pinfish and many other creatures out in the gulf. Since I was a kid, I've heard people say, "those aren't any good to eat". I've learned to ask the question, "Have you ever tried them?" The answer is universally, "no". So I set, as my goal, eventually trying every kind of fish. I've never tried mature jack crevalle and maybe if I can find someone cleaning one at the cleaning station I can ask for the carcass so that I can cut a piece from it to try. I just don't want to kill a big fish for a small taste-test. And I haven't tried ladyfish, though I did fillet one that I ended up using for cut bait when I determined that there were no parts of the fish that didn't have bones when you fillet them in the conventional manner. I'll give the fishcakes thing a try, maybe this year. And I haven't tried bait. Sometime, I'll try herrring and "L-Ys", maybe when the big ones are experiencing the late summer die-off. Bonita, Guaguanche, squid, sailcats, hardtails, bluefish, stingray, pinfish, baby jacks, croakers and remoras - I've tried and enjoyed them all.

Remora is the closest kin a cobia has.

Gafftops are edible?

Gafftop/Sailcats are fine.

Here's something about Remora:

https://www.gulfshorespierfishing.co...h%20big%20ones.

When I lived in Los Angeles I used to take my son to the beach on summer nights around the full moon. There was a small fish called a grunion that used to ride a wave up on the beach and wiggle his tail into the sand and release their eggs. They would then ride the next wave back out into the ocean. We would catch these fish with our hands while they were vertical sticking up in the air. They were about 6 to 8 inches long. Some nights when the word would get out there would be a lot of people on the beach filling their buckets with fish. We scaled them gutted them and cut off the heads. They were then rolled in a breading of flour corn meal and seasoning and quick fried whole. About 2 to 3 minutes and they were done. Kids really had a blast doing this.
Some people fired them hard and at the whole fish bones and all. I preferred to get them barely done and use a fork to separate the small filet off each side. With a cold beer I could do some damage to a pile of those little fish and they tasted great.

Smelt from the great lakes and elsewhere are the same. Whitebait (think rain minnows) are a European delicacy that are fried and served a lot like French fries. Anyone who has eaten head cheese, scrapple, or ponhoss has no room to look down on anything anyone else eats.