Severn River Quadruple Double 9/24

[Shady]

Fished/crabbed out of Jonas Green today and had a day of firsts. I set out at 6am to do a little jigging before dropping my crab traps at legal time, but I was only able to jig some small Perch up before it was time. So I set my traps and got back to fishing. I jigged all around the marina just up river from Jonas Green and had mostly small Perch but did get one 11" that I decided to keep. First check of my five crab traps yielded two good sized muddy crabs. I kept on with trying to jig around the marina and piers in the area, but couldn't manage any more Perch that I wanted to keep. I checked the traps a few more times every 20 minutes or so in between fishing and picked up a nice crab or two each time. Finally, I decided that jigging around the piers just wasnt working today. At this point I had made it up to the second to last pier before the shoreline with the big mansion and decided to look out towards the middle of the river. This is when I realized that there was quite a lot of activity out there with fish jumping and swirling here and there pretty frequently. I threw my little Perch jig out there and quickly felt a solid tug which turned out to be a 12" Bluefish. I was using my 5' UL, which is what I always use for Perch, so the 12" Bluefish was a great fight on this rod. Well, I continued throwing out there and had a bite nearly on every cast, and was connecting most of the time too. Along with the breaking blues there were 8-14" Stripers too. I probably caught 15-20 Blues, 25-30 Stripers and some white perch were even in the mix out there. I totalled about 15-20 White Perch on the day. I took home 5 12" Blues, 3 10-11" Perch, and a dozen really nice crabs. This was the first time I've ever fished for breaking Blues and it's probably more Blues than I've caught in my entire life. Qaudruple double refers to catching double digits of four species including crabs. I'm pretty sure I've never caught numbers likes this in such a wide variety of fish. Another first today was I netted a doubler off of one of the pier pilings, but the wierd thing was it was a male and female hooked up, but the female was a hard mature female. I thought they could only mate if the female is soft? Anyways, Fun day!

[Shady]

On a related note, anyone ever done bluefish sashimi? I did a quick google search and it looks like quite a few people like it.

[Sun]

Wow, nice catch. Thanks for the report. I had gone last week hoping to hook into some blues and failed =(. I'd like to try again soon, but I'm probably done for the year after next week's mini-meet.

Bluefish sashimi...I have never heard of anyone trying it, and have never seen it on any menus at sashimi places around here. Sounds interesting though...

[chimo]

Nice day of fishing! The ultralight can make even the smaller fish a blast to catch Good Fishin

Chimo

[MetroMan]

Nice going man!

[Yak Fish]

Nice job. I haven't had bluefish in a long time. I need to get myself some of those! You were a curly tail grub? Didn't the blues chomp it up?

[Shady]

I caught all the fish with a tiny road runner jighead and 1" gulp alive minow. It actually held up fairly well to the blues. When I pulled the Bluefish in my yak they were coughing up little minnows that were nearly identical to the gulp alive minnows. There are actually some of the minnow in the picture above.

On another note: I cut three thin slices off of a blue filet today for sashimi. Splashed with a little lemon juice and dipped in soy sauce. I thought it was quite good. I had red snapper sashimi at a restaurant last night and I would say it was pretty comparable to that. My wife said she'll try it if If I don't have any ill effect in 24 hours

[kevinfry]

I love bluefish and I know some oily fishes like tuna and dorado make good sashimi...i'll bet it is a bit strong though. What is fantastic treatment for bluefish is smoking (like a lot of oiy fishes)!!!! You'll love it. Leave the skin on the filets, put 1 min liquid brine, like teriyaki or some such, and then smoke it...hot or cold smoke. You'll love it. and you'll love it even better the next day.

[ronaultmtd]

I release the Blues- just too strong fishy tasting for me- too many other fish that taste good. They are a great fighting fish and super fun to catch on light tackle-

[Shady]

I've found that the 10-12 inchers are not strong tasting at all if you eat them right away and do not freeze them. I filet them and put the filets in water in the fridge until I'm going to eat them. I would love to try them smoked, but I dont have a smoker I catch and eat so much white perch, that something different is good for a change. I wouldn't know if the bigger ones taste strong because I have never caught bigger ones...

[Shield]

Sounds like you had another nice day on the water. I have never tried Blues, heard they were oily. I will try it if I catch a keeper.

[Shady]

The Blues only need to be 8" to keep them, but I think 10" is probably better to make fileting worth while.

[Shield]

Thanks Shady.

[ictalurus]

Nice work on the breakers. That must've been a blast on the ultralight.

I've eaten blues up to about 22-24", but I prefer the 12-18 inchers. Taste-wise, they're in my top 3 favorite species from this area of the Bay. The main thing about blues is that icing them down immediately is pretty critical to keep the meat from getting mushy. If I'm keeping a blue, I'll rip out a couple gill arches as soon as they come over the side, let them bleed a bit in the Hobie drive well, then submerge them completely in ice. I usually eat them that day or the next. I caught some blues from the PLO pier one October night and just threw them in a cooler since it was pretty cold out (I was wearing a winter coat because of the temperature and howling wind). The meat was really mushy when I got home just two hours later. The taste wasn't too bad after I cooked it, but the consistency was kind of nasty. I ended up using the rest in fish cakes, which worked out well.

[MetroMan]

Yeah, I hear they are decent for fish cakes. The last time I cooked blues, I soaked the fillets in salt water, then fried em likeI normally do any other fish. They were palatable that way.