Lingcod with Green Olives

Lingcod is a common name for the large Pacific greenling, sometimes weighing fifty to sixty pounds. Indians used to fish for them with a “hee-hee,” a tricky lure shaped like a shuttlecock that they pushed into deep water with a long pole so that the lure would rise slowly twirling to the surface, attracting on its way any lingcod curious enough to ignore the Indian waiting above with his spear or dip net.

In tender juveniles, the flesh of the lingcod is a rather startling blue-green