No, not you Dogfish, but real dogfish. I saw a guy out at PtD bring a dogfish to the boat. Instead of releasing it, he took his filet knife and slit the gut open and pulled the inards out, then let it fall back into the water dead. Since the dogfish were plentiful this weekend, I imagine he probably did this to many a dogfish, all while his little boy watched, probably 6-8 years old.

I wasn't sure how I felt about this. I hate the dogs as much as the next guy, but I don't kill them on purpose either. I guess they are like the moles of the salt, and I try to kill every mole in my yard, although I have had as much luck with them lately as with the salmon.

What do you all think? Would you think this was an ok thing to do?

Dogfish have their place in the ecosystem--- we should not intentionally kill them, plus it's illegal.

It is illeagal to do that according to the regs.

I have killed my share. I have seen them eat their own guts.

I usually just release them cuz the longer you mess with them, the more grief they cause.

Recently, I noticed that it is illegal to kill them.

I will sometimes kill dogfish. If the hook is easy to get then I will just let them go but, if I have to dig for trhe hook, which happens often, then I stab the dogfish with a knife. I just don't want to get a nasty bite from them. I like to think that I'm feeding other fish and stuff when I kill them, mostly it's just one less dogfish!

My opinion is that it is not OK to do. In 150 years we will hopefully still be fishing for Salmon in PS, and Dogfish will still be caught as incidentally. Killing the few you catch will not reduce the population significantly.

They are also part of the ecosystem, "Underwater Crows" I would assume. They play a role, vital or not, and should be left alone.

Wow, 3 semi-simultaneous posts saying the same thing.

They used to be commercially fished (almost to depletion) in the PS, mainly for thier liver oil. Then a synthetic oil was produced and the fishing abated.

It would be kind of like making mosquitoes extinct.

If there were less doggies, would there be more crab?

That's kind of what we humans think every time we manipulate a species for our own benefit, most times it causes impacts [ usually negative] we don't think of.

When I was a kid my mom always wanted me to bring the dogs home for her. She would use them to furtilize her roses sticking them in holes dug around the roots. She always had the best roses around.

Reminds me of the mentality that killing dolly vardens was benefitial to our salmon-steelhead populations.Look what happened there.

Can't say I havent offed a few dogfish in my past though.We used to fish off the old harpers ferry terminal when we were kids.A friend worked at the local fish farm.He used to get seal explosives.Basicly a waterproof m-80.We used to catch dogfish,shove a lit sealbomb down its throat and let it swim away.I just cut the leader these days though.

I often wonder about the bounty on the squawfish.I guess they are probably alot like the seal populations though.most of us believe that it would be benefitial to kill them?

Hell I am busy shooting crows out of my cherry trees as we speak.They have gotten wise to me though.

Nothing worse than trying to salvage my favorite jig from the mouth of a doggie while bobbing up in down in my kayak...
but dogfish are pretty interesting creatures. While they make up a huge percentage of the Puget Sound biomass (most likely second to ratfish), they are susceptible to fishing pressure. Females can take up to 25 years to reach sexual maturity, and then they only have an average of six pups every two years... and you thought rockfish had a slow reproduction rate!
Anyway, something to think about next time you want to conk one for no reason… but if you do kill ‘em, why not fry them up. If any of you head over to England and have fish and chips, chances are you’re eating doggie! (Probably harvested off the US Atlantic Coast, but also a possibility it came from your backyard here in the Sound).

I have never intentionally killed them. Since I usually fish artificials I dont usually have a problem with them. The occasional one that I do pick up is fairly easy to release since they dont swallow the artificials as deep as bait. I do try to wash off the lure to get their odor off cause its been my experience that a lure will quit catching fish after a doggie's gotten to it. Unless of course its another doggie

I did a lot of surfing on the web for the proper care of a doggy meant for the table. Never found anything.

The back half of some of thse three footers looks pretty good. We took a fillet off of one a few years ago, and it looked veru edibl, so we fed it to the crab pot. No on had the guts to cook it up (they pee through there skin I hear).

There is a movement in the commercial industry to rename them as "Bay Sharks". trying to make a market for them.

RK43

thay was funny! You said "The back half of some of thse three footers looks pretty good. We took a fillet off of one a few years ago, and it looked veru edibl, so we fed it to the crab pot. No one had the guts to cook it up ' (they pee through there skin I hear)."......So do we humans ......kind of!!

Cowlitzfisherman

haven't been out in the sound recently, but yes i used to bonk a few of them out of frustration.

i think it's more of a politically correctness thing to not kill them, since there are so many of these things, and not many people fish for them intentionally(not sure about commercials)

now i think it's too much effort to smack them over the head or stick them with the bait knife, than to just cut the leader. i believe it's an image thing, like banning gaff hooks on all species except dogs, halibut, and albacore

[edit] anybody remember dogfish derbies back in the day? i think it was before my time, but i've heard of constests being held to see how many you could bring in, and that people would drag a dinghy behind their fishing boat just to stack up a pile of those little devils

Killing is wrong! Killing is wrong! Killing is wrong!!

Maybe it's just called the "pecking order"! It sure seem like each specie of life on this planet has a higher species (or pecking order) that dominates and controls the lower specie from its own overpopulation problems!

Just maybe, mankind was the one who was supposed to control the dog fish (pecking order theory)!

No, that would be just too simple of a debate! What will it be next . . . ants . . . flies. . . mosquitoes! Where will it end?

Pretty soon WDFW will be proposing laws that will prohibit you from killing insects because they are a "natural scheme" of life that is part of the ecological system. I can just hear it now (200 years from today); Do not kill bacteria, it is part of the ecological system and it has a right to live, and killing bacteria will effect all of it subspecies of life!

What have we done to good old fashion logic that has keep humans around for all of this time?

OK, I will come off my soap box now and hear all about the "what if's"!


Cowlitzfisherman

As stated earlier the reproductive cycle of dog fish is VERY slow so killing a couple each time you go out fishing can impact the population. Especially if it is a common practice amoungst all salt water fishers. Squafish bounties were mentioned earlier as being possibly the same thing but there is one very important difference squawfish are a non native species. How would you feel if you saw me on the river killing every chum I landed because I was targeting silvers and the chums were annoying me? I probaly would get beat I imagine. Killing for killings sake is not some thing I agree with so just cut the leadere and move on.

A couple of years ago there was a movement to quit planting trout in the high mountain lakes of the Cascade National Park because the trout were "decimating the insect population".

Killing anything you aren't going to eat is bad, wrong and illegal PERIOD!