Cabezon vs Irish Lord ID

Alright...so until I moved to AK, I hadn't fished in the salt much.  With that being said, some of my species identification isn't perfect yet.

I look around here and hear about cabbies, cabezon, and the sort...but I can't quite figure out (100% for sure) what one looks like.  I go fishing with folks and they say"throw that Irish lord back"...but when I use the google machine, my "Irish lord" looks more like the google machine cabbie.

So what do each look like?  I may have been unknowingly throwing away some valuable AOTY points.

I think the "fleshy skin flap" is one of the key distinguishing morphologies.  Cabezon has "the flap", Irish Lord does not.  There are coloration differences as well.

Washington State's bottomfish quide helps out explaining the difference.
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/bottomfish/identification/sculpins/s_marmoratus.html

They look similar but the irish lord has two obvious bands of scales on their sides and the cabby does not.

They look similar but the irish lord has two obvious bands of scales on their sides and the cabby does not.

what he said

Irish Lords



Cabby

I had to chance to catch a ton of those last summer.  My hosts were calling em Irish Lords but the ones I was catching all appeared to be monster staghorn sculpin to me. I didn't find the telltale frill on the nostrils.  I'll post some pics later.

These were definitely not cabezon.  What really convinced me that they were sculpins was the way the tops of their heads would go concave when they'd flare their gills (oh yeah, and the spikes that would stick up when they'd flare)

-Spot-

Look for the well defined row of scales directly below the dorsal fin on Irish Lords.  They will be 4-5 wide.  Irish lords also have a flatter head and don't have the "shoulders" of a cabby ... at least to me it just looks like that.

-Allen

After some web searching, I'm going to say that what I was catching and what was being called an Irish Lord was actually a Great Sculpin (Myoxocephalus polyacanthocephalus) 

Here are some pics I took last summer.  In the head shot can be seen the 1/2 a pink salmon it tried to eat.

Yeah, that be a Great Sculpin.  Note the lack of scale rows.

-Allen

Cabbies and Lords also have a distinctive notch in their dorsal fins 3 or 4 rays in.  The sculpins don't. 

Just think the irish lord is hard and rough, the cabbie is soft and smooth. You will definitly know the difference when you start to fillet them.

...the cabbie is soft and smooth...

You make it sound so sexy

I have never scene an irish lord over 18 inches, and you can't keep those smooth skinned great tasting cabbies under 18, so problem solves itself. Thanks to wdfw.