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C Bass

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1 hour ago, NHAngler said:

Weeds? Just look at them all! ha ha. ..OK, maybe they are not weeds.  Got a 1/2 dozen keepers out of this but cannot believe how hard it is to catch them with all this bait around. 

 

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Pogies......you would think at least blue fish would be going nuts on them 

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6 hours ago, dark_helmet said:

Got out a little before dawn on a beach close to Boston Saturday morning. Absolutely and totally dead. At least there wasn't much weed in the water. Decided to head to canal for sunrise today (Sunday) instead.

you must of had a good morning then....seen pics from a lot people from there this morning, crazy

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I had nothing going on yesterday afternoon, so even though the conditions were all wrong I headed out anyway. Fished the bottom of the tide from a rocky beach and managed a 30" along with 3 low 20" fish for about an hour of fishing. Not bad for daytime in Mid-August.

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Did alright this morning, picked up a half dozen decent schoolies on fly with a subkeeper to top it off. Sightfished them all in the wash in broad daylight. Had many swipes from fish in the mid 30s, but they were wary. 

 

Just when I arrived before first light, my spot had taken by a few pairs of eyes in the dark. I approached cautiously but as sunrise neared I saw that they happened to be some young raccoons munching on crabs from the tidepools exposed by some astronomically low tides. I fed them some crabs and they decided to hang around. 

 

While looking for some crabs for them I stumbled upon a couple of these fish near the water's edge. I found them in the rocks beneath bubble weed. One was around 4 inches long, the other around 3. Dark-orange-reddish-brown in color, slightly red-spotted. Blends in with the weeds perfectly. Red eyes. No exceptionally large teeth as far as I could see. Around two dozen very small dorsal spines. Caudal fin connects to dorsal and anal fins similarly as an eel. Mucus is also more similar to that of an eel than a typical fish; difficult to remove, thickens as you try to remove it. These fish were very flexible and tried to burrow back into the rocks.

First thoughts: juvenile moray (don't have morays in MA?), juvenile cusk (color and proportions are off), juvenile wolf fish (proportions off, shape different). A suggestion I received was juvenile ocean pout and that seems to be the most likely candidate, although I haven't heard of them off our coast. Any ideas?
 

Both were lightly handled and promptly released. I apologize in advance about it being pic-heavy, but it's hard to see all of the features in one photo. 

 

Thanks in advance, enjoy today's solar show, and tight lines!

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Serious pullage. 

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4 hours ago, mikez2 said:

Rock gunnel aka butterfish aka conger eel (not the real one)

 

Thank you very much! I had a gut feeling it was going to be some kind of small oddball I haven't heard of and not a juvenile cusk or eel pout. Learning something new every day, on the water and off.  

Serious pullage. 

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