So my friend Bob caught a strange fish yesterday. Four and a half feet long, brown and white, big blue glowy eyes, long round and skinny, tail fins horizontal (so they can lay flat on the sea bottom?) dorsal fin like a sailfish but shorter and with spikes on the end (said fin would lie against the body of the fish but then pop up and be spikey) skinny head with a big long mouth and TEETH like crazy. When he stuck a stick in it's mouth it bit the stick and left teeth in it, not teeth marks, TEETH. He says he doesn't know how much it weighed, but they measured it. He said the fish had been gaffed maybe before he caught it, the meat was white. I said it sounded like a snipe, or a hoop snake, or Nessie maybe. He showed me one of the teeth, it looked like a hollow canine tooth one would normally find in the jaws of a Rottweiler. This tooth was apparently one of the smaller teeth. So I'm like ratfish? crazy ling cod? Fish Story? But here's the rub. Apparently the Seattle Times or the P.I. ran a story regarding a fish such as this approximately 2 weeks ago, according to some who came to inspect the beast. I've searched both papers online to no avail. I searched this board also. Anyone know anything about this? Bob's brother made him throw the fish back in the water... que la chinga!! Which reminds me, the fish was out of the water for quite some time (long enough for all the ol' boys up and down the beach to come and poke it with sticks and declare it unusual indeed), and it had been injured before it's encounter with Bob also. When Bob threw the fish back it was still alive. Barely, methinks. Thanks so much.

Wolf Eel?

The common ratfish.

Four and a half foot long?

I'd go with Wolf Eel, too, based on the description...though it's not an eel at all, and is more properly the "Wolf Fish"...

Fish on...

Todd

Could this be it????

The Long Nose Lancet

http://www.fox11az.com/news/topstories/stories/kmsb20080417-NWjc-fish_ocean_shores.732b1d9c.html

My guess would be lancet. We used to catch them in the Berring sea and the size and the teeth exclude the ratfish, Wolf eels wont shed thier teeth that easily as far as I know and lancet have long scary but brittle teeth. We also caught them out of deep water in the gulf of mexico while long lining for bluefin tuna and swordfish. Pretty crazy. The strangest fish I have seen at pnp was a 45 inch white sturgeon my friend snagged by the tail with a buzz bomb. -T B J

Thanks so much Redside! You too TBJ. Tomorrow morning, news of your timely and accurate information will hit the beach and spread like wildfire, the good ol boys might even say, "You can find out about anything on those intranets." Common ratfish. Please.

Saw a lancet that washed up at snow creek during the last halibut opener.
FreeeeeKeyyy fish

My guess to would be a ratfish. If you do a search on them you will find they can reach lengths up to 2 meters, according to the site?

Uh....

I take it that you did NOT look at the posted article that showed a picture of a Longnose lancet?

But hey, if you want to say ratfish, I'm cool with that!

PS. It's a Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker.

Probably a Kenai Grouper or an Obama look a like.

Wolf Fish:



Long Nose Lancet:



Ratfish:



None of them really look anything at all like each other...it shouldn't be too hard to figure out...if it's shiny, it's a lancet, if it's not, it's probably a wolf fish...I don't think ratfish have the kind of teeth we're talking about.

Fish on...

Todd

I've narrowed it down to two fish:

Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker



Or a Grunt Sculpin



If you heard any sort of a "grunting" noise while near the fish, than that's a dead give away it was a Grunt Sculpin.

Stay clear of both fish, though. They both have a mean streak that is at least a mile long!

It was a longnose lancet, again thanks so much to Redside and TBJ for the info. So not a ratfish, we used to catch those with some frequency in Skunk Bay, back when the Princess was queen and PNP was hoppin'.