Yes, this is really a thing — anglers give rides to hitchhikers, then have them for dinner at home.

Before anyone gets excited, I want to explain I’m talking about encounters with voracious and tenacious lingcod which have a hungry habit that earns them the nickname, “hitchhiker.”

Lingcod, a member of the greenling family, are very even-tempered fish, they are mad all the time!

Well, perhaps not mad, but vicious, voracious and territorial. Plus, they just seem to have a bad attitude, like the junkyard dogs of the rocky reefs they call home.

We love to fish for them because they taste great and they are a challenge to catch. They frequently lie in wait in a lair or grotto between rocks of the reef, then blast out to ambush prey, which might include fish, squid, octopus and an amazing variety of other meals.

It is usually quite interesting to examine the stomach contents of a freshly caught lingcod. They love rockfish, which also live around the rocky reef zone. These are red snapper, copper rockfish and many other members of the Sebastes family.

Frequently, when we hook a small-to-medium-size rockfish and begin to reel it up from the rocks, a hungry lingcod (they are pretty much always hungry) will bite that rockfish and hang on stubbornly. Make that stubbornly, to the point of ridiculous.

To illustrate, I have reeled them up many hundreds of feet, yet they just hang on, unwilling to give up their meal. Much of the time the lingcod is not on the hook, just holding onto the rockfish and unwilling to relinquish its intended feast.

The pressure difference from many hundreds of feet down, and near the surface can be hundreds of pounds, and many fish suffer barotrauma. Not lingcod!

They have no air bladder, and powerful pressure gradients don’t bother them as much as it does most species. Their tenacious attitude isn’t phased in the slightest.

This is maybe the most stubborn act I’ve seen any critter engage in. At times lingcod will totally ignore the dangers of being at the surface of the sea with people around and a gaff or net entering the water.

I’ve had lingcod come aboard my charter boat in a net or on a gaff and still not let go of a rockfish until I pry it out of its mouth.

I feel like lingcod deserve an award for the most stubborn critter in the sea (and maybe on land or in the air).

Lingcod are the only species I nickname after a dinosaur. I often call one a “lingasaur.”

Fortunately for us, a hitchhiking lingcod makes for a delicious dinner, worth taking home.