The Outdoor Line Forum

Fivesourlimit...pipe jig...200 feet of water...Pacific Ocean

Pretty cool man. Any idea how old you think that is?

Carve that baby up and put an candle in it....

Crikey...THAT'S a Yelloweye!!

I would be willing to bet that is a 50 year old fish.
Of course without an ear stone or "otolith" break and burn age analysis, that's just a guess
Smalma: what say you?

That is a huge (and old) yelloweye!

Nelly -
As you know yelloweye are one of the longer lived rockfish with fish documented to reach at least 118 years of age. A fish such as the one pictured is clearly at the upper end of the spectrum for both size and age and could easily be a 100 years old. It would not surprise me to learn that the average age of the yelloweyes caught in Alaskan waters was at least 50 years old.

With such slow growing and long lived fish one would have to believe even relatively low harvest rates would significantly impact both the abundance and average size of yelloweye caught in a recreational fisheries with those older fish becoming increaely rare in even moderately fished areas. Harvesting fish like yelloweye rockfish is akin to logging old growth forests -- it takes a long time to replace the tree/fish removed. Fortuantely for the Alaskan yelloweye the sheer vastness and remoteness of the area protect many local populations and the species as a whole.

Tight lines
Curt

Whoa! Awesome Robbo. That is one heck of a rocky!

Two more huge yelloweye's today...here's Mike's 30 pound monster and we caught another one right at 25 pounds

Can I catch one of those if I come back up there?

Si Senor