[bulletbob]

I walked through the Wegmans seafood dept here in Ithaca NY this morning .. Just to see what they had.. Find weird stuff there at times like skate, monk, Hake in varieties I am not accustomed to seeing, they even had Lane Snappers today.. You know, Wegmans.. Home of the $15 a pound Black Sea Bass, which is in the round, not fillets... Live lobster today was $10.99 a pound..
I came up to a display of 6 to 7 inch fish.. about the size of the smelt we would use for fluke or bluefish bait.. Display read thusly
* FRESH WHITING $4.99 a pound...
To my disgust i found they were indeed "our" Whiting, aka Silver Hake,aka
Merluccius Bilinearis... Easily the smallest thinnest, juvenile , most pathetic whiting I had EVER seen.. I had in the past seen 9-11 inch "spikes", but never tiny bait size fish that would barely interest a good size fluke.. No exaggeration at all.. They were all smelt sized.. TINY!.. I walked out annoyed, disgusted, and to be honest a bit frightened.. Is THIS really what boats are netting these days to sell?.. Have the draggers decimated these fish so badly that yearlings or younger are the "catch of the day"?.... I dunno, nothing anyone can do I suppose, but I was just shell shocked.. Are we that hungry for "fresh fish" that we will really buy Whiting that go 6 -7 inches, and will require a dozen to make up a one pound package???.. Sorry for the rant, I am just really pissed off... bob