Fisherman and fish both caught same fish

Danny Linville from Cambria, California was out fishing in his 14-foot kayak at Leffingwell Landing last Saturday. After a couple hours of catching and releasing several blue rockfish, called “blues”, he felt another fish hit his lure, much like previous “bites.”

But as he was reeling it in, a few seconds went by and suddenly he felt another strike, “A big tug, much bigger than the first,” Linville recalled. He kept reeling until he saw what he had caught - two fish for the price of one - and pulled them up onto the kayak deck.



A ling cod had attacked and tried to swallow the rockfish, and the two were attached. “The ling cod’s teeth were biting into the rockfish,” Linville explained. “And the rock fish’s spines were imbedded in the ling cod’s mouth, which kept the little fish from getting away,” he said.

I said ‘Oh man!’ and grabbed the ling cod’s lips with my retrieval tongs, pulled them into the kayak, and put my legs around the two fish so they couldn’t get away.” He managed to get the small rockfish out of the ling cod’s mouth and he let it swim back into the kelp. The ling cod was 30 inches long and weighed 10 pounds - plenty of “good eating,” Linville said.