Light-Tackle Lingcod

Why mess with deepwater setups when these toothy predators take lures and even flies in the shallows?

- Sam Lungren

It looked like they were bass fishing: bow-mounted trolling motor, underhanded pitch casts tight to the shoreline, active retrieves. You could have been excused for guessing these dudes were bouncing tube jigs for ditch pickles were it not for our mutual location deep in the San Juan Islands of Washington's Puget Sound. This was two decades ago, but I remember my dad and Uncle Keith practically scoffing as we drifted by. That's not how you catch lingcod. You need to be way out in the deep channel, probing the rock piles-like us. And not catching fishlike us. Then I saw a lingcod hit the "bass boat's" net. Twenty minutes later, another one. Limited out, these know-nothings who had just fished us under the table departed for the ramp. Equal parts irritated and intrigued, we motored over to the rocky point and kelp beds they'd been working. Good anglers are curious and learn new things. What happened next was nothing short of revelatory.

NEITHER LING NOR COD

Ophiodon elongatus, lingcod to you and me, is not at all related to the cod family, Gadidae, nor the several species called ling within it. Rather, it is a member of the greenling family, much like the kelp greenlings lingcod love to eat. That branch of the family tree isn't far removed from the sculpins lingcod more closely resemble. But their closest counterpart in spirit would have to be muskellunge or barracuda-toothy, lurking apex predators hungry for large meals.

Like muskies and 'cudas, lingcod are highly versatile. They've been recorded at depths as great as 1,000 feet all the way to the shoreline. I swear that I've seen them break the surface in hot pursuit of a meal. They'll eat just about anything they can fit in their fearsome mouths, with some favorites being rockfish, surf perch, greenling and octopus. They attack these snacks primarily via ambush, hiding among the rocks, reefs, wrecks, kelp beds and other structure they call home.