Do You Know This Fish?

We're stymied.

Bill and the kids have caught this kind of fish on several of their last trips, and we don't know what it is. So I said I'd put the pictures up and give you all the info we have, and see if anyone recognizes this guy.

It's a salt water fish. Bill was fishing in upper Narragansett Bay, the Buttonwoods area, (in RI) every time. He was fishing for skipjacks (juvenile bluefish) around low tide.

The fish seems to hang out at the bottom. Bill called it an ambush predator because of the way it went after the lures they were using. It just waited til the lure was low and jumped at it, rather than swimming around chasing it. After bill released the fish it headed straight for the bottom every time.

Long, eel-like body but it's not an eel. It has scales. You can see the teeth in the pictures.

Bill thinks it's a mature fish, not a baby.

He's been fishing these waters, this cove, for over thirty years and has never seen or caught one.

Any ideas?

Comments

[Anne]

Maybe this site can help:

http://www.thejump.net/id/id-page-4.htm

I guess the person running the site will try to ID strange fish.

Good luck!

[jayne]

Thanks!