...or a Black Bass, or any sort of bass. It's a Black Rockfish...or maybe a Blue Rockfish, since most are unable to tell the difference.

Does calling those fish "bass" bother anyone else?

Fish on...

Todd

No.

That's why we call them "bombers."

OK, Black Rockfish are Sebastes Melonops, Blue Rockfish have a smaller mouth and stripes on their head, They both are good eating, but do not
last well when frozen even when shcrinked wrapped more that 3 months.
Bombers are Widow and Yellow Tail rockfish, which usually are high in the water columns except that Blacks and Blues are feeding on isopods on the surface. All are excellent eating when property processed. When Fred Vaner Hoff and I wrote our book on bottom fishing in 1977 there were 53 recognized 53 species of PNW bottom fish. Red Snapper are a southern tropical fisnh and not a PNW bottom fish. That's my picture on our PNW species of our wonderful bottom fish,

My brothers and I grew up on your book - hammered the heck out of the "seabass" and "rockcod", true and ling cod all over the Sound and the San Juans.

I think some of the slang terms grouping all bottomfish together was more prevalent in the past when many of them were considered a nuisance. With better education about preparing and eating them along with reduced opportunity with the sexier fish, fishermen began paying more attention to what they were catching and identifying them correctly. The days of going out in the sound and catching a gunny sack full of bottomfish or "rockcod" are long gone. For the record we always bled and iced even the lowly bottomfish clear back in the '70's.

Yeah, it's just laziness... names like black sea bass and Johnny bass just roll so easily off the tongue.

I suppose it's no different than the dudes who call our local rivers Hump 'nooch 'halis or 'sop.

SERIALLY?

OK I can live with the Hump, but the others sorta bug me.

Long time ago WDF bios interviewed anglers and asked them what they had caught. It was amazing what folks called fish. It is odd that hunters, especially bird, are expected to make species and sex distinctions before firing while many anglers are clueless with fit in hand.

Yeah, but only a little. . .they're the most fun part of May fishing for me actually,

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Really?

Who cares what people call them? People say a fish "cuts red" and that doesn't make any sense at all.

I guess not, the morons misidentifying fish don't seem to care that people think that they are uneducated fools. bob r

It means something when the regs say X is legal and Y is not. If you can't accurately ID fish the only option is something needs protection id to close the fishery. I guess the other option is just to wipe out the rare one....

I can identify Sebastes Melonops and still call it a black sea bass. Safeway calls chums Silverbrites.

That's because Safeway is in the business of selling garbage to idiots...maybe I have too high of expectations of fishermen to call the fish they are catching what it is.

Fish on...

Todd

High expectations from fishermen? lol

You should pay closer attention.

Fish on...

Todd

I agree with Todd, especially when guides and charter skippers misuse the terms. They really should know better. There are about a bazillion fish around the world that folks call a "Red Snapper". But our Yellow Eye rockfish is not a snapper, nor IMHO is it any tastier than the others.

In fact the real bigguns are often wormy and woody. I know Im right because I often fish with Sebastes, and he really did write the book on rockfish.

But because I fear death by fire, Dan is right.

For [Bleeeeep!] sake, political correctness has now reached the fishing world.

Yes. We caught some big butts on my boat this year, but something about the rapid action of a good black rockfish bite is addicting (for me at least).

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How do you know that these rockfish don't self-identify as bass?