Anyone ever encountered one while diving or snorkeling? I find them hilarious for some reason. But they can be really aggressive! Took this photo the other day:
I've caught them off the Texas gulf coast and they are terrible to eat. A friend of mine says he has a marinade that will make them taste great but I always throw them back. Triggerfish are indeed funny to look at the first time you see them.
Trigger fish might be funny to look at but they are a pain when it comes to fishing. We would have to put 16 ozs of weight on to get our bait passed the trigger fish and down to the bottom where the snapper were. With that much weight, you have to be careful not to birdsnest and you can't slow it down or again...the trigger fish.
It gets its name from the locking mechanism of the spines on its back. One acts as a "trigger" of sorts to lock the 2nd one in an upright position.
My wife got sea sick and chummed over the side of boat. All the fish went ape **** and made the snorkeling better. True story
They are as common as blue damsels in some places. I've seen them pick apart sea urchins...talk about some knarly teeth.
Yep saw plenty of them in Bora Bora last July. They would come up to our bungalow and eat the bread my wife and I would throw at them every night like clock work.
I wonder why this one had such an unusual color, I think usually they are more yellow (the titan trigger fish)?
cleverly disguised "i went snorkeling the other day and want to start a thread with a picture of a fish i took"
Trigger fish aren't aggressive, just unusually curious about divers. And they are in fact excellent to eat but a pain in the ass to clean. But the meat between the spine and the dorsal column is unbelievably good, pinker than any snapper, almost like a pink grapefruit. You can do anything with it but most memorable for me has surely been trigger fish sashimi.
I hate these little bastards, when you go Snapper fishing offshore from Galveston you have to put extra weight on your line in an attempt to get passed the Triggers to get to the Snapper which are a bottom feeder. Half the time you reel in a skeleton of whatever type of bait you were using bc the Triggers rape and pillage it on the way down.
