roofordie

:clapNice fish:clap. Are you sure you were in the Bay? That is a whopper of a ray you caught there. How was it filleted? Anything like filleting a flounder? I would like to learn how to clean 'em so I can keep a couple myself. that's a tasty looking grouper you got there. You should try smoking the King, it tastes AWESOME:letsdrink

HydroTherapy

The grouper and stingray were caught using 30 pound test line on a PENN 9500 and with a leader composed of about 5 feet of 40 pound test flourocarbon.

Thegrouperpulled veryhard at first pulling drag fora few seconds, but luckily I was able to turn him withouttoo much trouble afterhe made that initial run.

The ray was a long drawn out fight. When I first hooked the ray it slowly took me around the boat a couple of times pulling drag the whole way. Then aftera while itwas more or less a tug of war, me getting 3 feet of line and thenit would take 6. After 15- 20 min (guessing) I was finally able to pull him to the boat but it wasn't pretty oncehe was gaffedandmy dadstuck him between the eyes with a fillet knife and left me holding the gaff. I thought he was going to pullthen shake my arms off. Once he was finally subdued it took both my day and I to pull him over the gunwale.

To clean the ray, we started by cutting it's wings off. Then thereisa flat piece of cartilage that goes down the middle of each wing in which we cut- filleted the meat off the top part of the cartilage, then the bottom part.Then the skin was cut- filleted off. Then the meat was cut up into "steaks." I'm sure there are other and better ways to do it, so this is just the way we did it.

I haven't tried the stingray yet. It's still in the freezer.

Fishforlife2

thars the biggest stingray ive ever seen and yea most restuerants(i know its misspelled) use stingray as "scallops" during scallop season you should be able to tell the difference stingray is much tougher meat