making bait & a bat ray (non yak)

 little late getting this out, happened about a week ago, but here it is.. My bait fish stash was getting a little low so I took the boy down to Mad River slough to round up some more. He did dad proud an got me plenty more shark bait. I tossed out a half chunk on my shark rig not really expecting anything as conditions were not ideal. Over by my son helping him unkook and my wife starts yelling " your pole!!" look over and pole is barley caught on concrete lip. Rush over and swooped it up and this guy gave me a nice little fight. Had a great time with wife an son.

NICE!!!!!

WTG on getting out with the whole family, AND catching a cool ray at the same time!!

Congrats on a fun time with great company, and THANK YOU for sharing!
 
Sincerely,

Jim

Its good to see you out with the family.

how did you prepare the ray!?

how did you prepare the ray!?

The wings taste like scallop if you know how to cook it.  The main body makes fine crab bait!

how did you prepare the ray!?

 Let him go. I target them in the bay alot. love to do battle with em. Never keep them though. Have heard diffrent sides to the taste story

Love the first pic of your boy. Looks like he's been well-trained by dad, as he's totally focused on the landing of his fish Definitely would make any father proud!!

Thanks for sharing your family outing with us. Hope the new stock of fresh bait will result in much success

The wings taste like scallop if you know how to cook it.  The main body makes fine crab bait!

What's your method?

I cooked some and it was awful and nothing like scallop.  The meat was tough linguine-like muscle fibers extending from the body towards the tip of the wings, with a layer of cartilage in the middle. 

The wings taste like scallop if you know how to cook it.  The main body makes fine crab bait!

What's your method?

I cooked some and it was awful and nothing like scallop.  The meat was tough linguine-like muscle fibers extending from the body towards the tip of the wings, with a layer of cartilage in the middle.  

This is one of my favorite!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-dorchen/recipe-skate-wing-cakes-w_b_27423.html

General & History

Skates and Rays are sharks that spend a lot of time lying on the ocean floor. Their pectoral fins are so greatly exaggerated they are called "wings". This adaption makes them flat so they can blend into the sand where they are nearly invisible. They are generally non-agressive and live on molusks and crustaceans they find on the bottom.

Like all other sharks (elasmobranks) they have no bones but a skeleton made entirely of flexible cartilage. When modern fish came on the scene and started eating all the previous type of fish placing them under severe evolutionary pressure. Some of them back-evolved characteristics of the primitive fish they themselves had eaten, plus some features more advanced than modern fish like live birth and larger brains. This two way adaptation was so successful the following era is called "the age of sharks".

Skates and Rays evolved from sharks but dropped some of the more advanced features in favor of special adaptions for bottom living. Manta Rays and Eagle Rays later returned to a life of free swiming.

Buying & Storing Skate Wings

Buying: The key to successful skate wing cooking is that the wings are very fresh. Since it's cut from the skate you don't have the usual method to judge freshness, but smell will do. If it smells at all like household ammonia it is not fresh and should be rejected.

Storing: Because freshness is such a big issue, you want to keep skate wings as cold as possible without freezing them and use them as soon as possible - like immediately.

Refresh: Skate wings that smell of ammonia will taste like ammonia. If the smell is strong, toss them out or suffer the consequences - it won't taste good and the dead fish odor may hang around for days. If you've got wings with just a faint ammonia smell you can refresh them. Skin them, bone them and prepare them ready to cook, then soak the pieces in strongly acidulated cold water for half an hour. Preferably acidulate with citric acid (1 T to 2 quarts water). Ammonia is alkaline and will be neutralized by the acid. The pieces of skate should now have a light fish smell and be much more edible.

Preparation & Yield:

Yield: A one pound wing will yield a thick side filet of just over 1/2 pound. What to do with the 1/2 pound of thin side meat and cartilage? Well, I rather like crunchy cartilagenous snacks so I cut it all into squares, deep fry it just a little crisp and eat it with salt and lemon juice. No waste and plenty of calcium.


 Skate skin must be removed. It's basically shark skin and shark skin is gritty with scales that are built more like teeth than like regular fish scales and don't scrape off. Lay out your wing on the cutting board, thick side up. Pry up a corner of the skin at the thick edge and carefully scrape flesh away from the skin until the skin pulls clean without taking any flesh. The skin will now pull off, but takes some strength and it's slippery, so grasp it with a piece of paper towel and pull right off the thin edge. If you'll be using the cartilage and thin side meat (see previous paragraph) skin the thin side too.


 You will now be able to filet the thick side from the cartilage fin rays quite easily with practically no flesh left behind. The thin side has too little meat to filet usefully. Note: not all recipes require this step: skate may be grilled with the fin rays in and for some recipes you flake the meat off the rays after poaching.


Cooking Skate Wings
 Most recipes for skate call for it to be pan fried, though a few call for poaching. In either case, keep in mind that the skate filet is not only thin but it's grooved which allows fast heat penetration so take care not to overcook