I caught my first "keeper"!

I caught my first keeper today!

Nice looking fish! Congrats!

Nice job, Liz!

Congrats!

Cool! The water conditions look like it was great.

Congrats!

Thanks everyone   Yes, the water was great, the weather was great, and we saw a pod of dolphins and a whale on our way back into the Santa Cruz yacht harbor!

Congrats on the first keeper and there will be many more to come.  Thanks for the report and picture Liz.

Congrats! Welcome to the madness!

Cool!

Congrats!

Was it tasty 

Yes, it was very tasty for dinner last night, and there's plenty left for lunch today too  

We had hoped to cut it up and pan fry the pieces for fish tacos, but after well over an hour trying to kill and process it, went for baked fillets with seasonings. We'll be watching some videos before our next fishing trip to find out how to deal with the fish after bringing them home. This guy would NOT die. We hit it in the head with a hammer 20+ times, just above the eyes, and it just kept "breathing" (I know it wasn't breathing since it wasn't in water, but it's gills were moving.) We also tried to find the soft spot in the head to spike it, but couldn't find anywhere we could penetrate! Finally had to just cut the head off with a very sharp knife. Gutting it wasn't too difficult, but after that we had a hard time figuring out how to cut it up, there were lots of tough bones; I couldn't even get it cut in half vertically because of all the bones along the spinal column. Finally I just cut through the smaller bones into somewhat fillet shaped pieces and seasoned and baked it. The bones slid right out after baking. I need to get a better idea of how to do this before our next fishing trip!

Fresh fish, yum!  Congrats on the catch.

Congrats on ur catch!   Try ripping or cutting the gills in the boat.  It'll bleed out and die quicker. 

Could you explain "cut the gills?" We read this on the internet but couldn't find any further descriptions or pictures. Does it mean cut the part completely off, the part that opens and closes with the gills inside? Or does it mean put a knife into that part and try to cut up the gills themselves? Or something else? We were kind of lost on exactly what to do and would like to do that next time, on the kayak if possible. Sorry for the beginner questions!