Many moons ago I use to do commercial live cod fishing targeting Coppers and Quilbacks. The Chinese love these fish they cook them whole in deep fryers. That said, I will stick to making fish and chips out of them.
This fishery was very poorly managed by the DFO, we pretty much cleaned out the inside reefs of Tofino within two years. They allowed us to fish during spawning when these fish school up on the reefs. I will say I did feel bad about wiping out reefs including one that was loaded with bullets (rockfish from 7 to 10 pounds) these fish are over 30 years old. The problem is that all sorts of out of town boats mostly from Campbell river would show up during spawning, hence stopping would only have hurt our lively hood and not saved the fishery.
But to be honest I don’t believe you can have a sustainable commercial rockcod fishery with the exception of the blue and black rockfish most of these fish are not sexually mature before 5 to 8 years and of the 100,000 to 300,000 larve each female produces only a handful survive to maturity.