Attn species lovers...189 species [pic X-Heavy!]

[Sakana]

...the shiner perch, surf perch, and pile perch?

[Ken]

I caught...

Barred Surfperch in Newport Beach area

Shiner Perch in British Columbia

Pile Perch in British Columbia

[Ca_Bass]

I really like the pics of the sand bass chocking on the plastics!!! It brings back memories from when I used to "work" on the sportfishing boats in So Cal. I can't remember what year, probably around 1998 but they had the the famous "El Nino" The Calico and Sand Bass fishing was AMAZING!!!!!!!!! I got the nickname as the Bass Killer.,..once I'd catch my limit I would top the other peoples bags off. I even got a few calicos and sandies that were over 6lbs! I cant even count the amount of 30+ fish days we had!

These were from the last couple trips I've been able to take fishing the channel islands.

White Sea Bass, kinda small, I broke off 3 before I managed to get that one, I was getting a little frustrated


Chuckle head (i think)


Ken,

Easy way to boost you species number would be to get on one of those sport fishing boats when they're targeting rock fish and ling cod (I think they start that once the weather starts getting cool) There are SOO many different rock fish to catch. Though once they start fishing over about 100 or 150 ft and using sinkers over 4oz I don't enjoy it so much.

[Ken]

I have caught some 12-13" sandy off the 1/2 day boat and the calicos were 11-14" on another 1/2 day trip. I've yet to do a 3/4 day or overnight in Cali.

Those little bass are really greedy for sure! I had a few 7" bass choking on 3" Big Hammers.

I think people call that rockfish Barberpole (I actually don't know the common name of that rockfish on FishBase...I'll have to look it up). I think the name "chucklehead" is usually used on copper rockfish...but I could just as easily be wrong.

I am really looking forward to a 2-week Cali fishing trip some time in the future...maybe in the next year or two.

I made some friends on SCSF and some people even invited me on their boats to fish at Catalina or local shallow rockfish.

SoCal is amazing for variety...you can easily catch 10-15 species in a day's fishing over the rock bottom and in the kelp beds.

Some of my reasonable targets for my next trip is...

Vermillion rockfish
Starry rockfish
Copper rockfish
Barberpole
California sheephead
Black perch
Opayeye
Garibaldi (I know they cannot be targeted...but I'm not really fishing for them )
Halfmoon
Rock wrasse
Bonito
Lingcod
Diamond turbot
Yellowfin croaker
Spotfin croaker
China croaker
Corbina
Walleye surfperch
Leopard shark
Shovelnose guitarfish (wiggles)
Smoothhound shark
Bat Ray

And if I'm lucky...white seabass

So many species...so little time...maybe I'll need 3 weeks

[Ca_Bass]

I have no clue how many different rock fish I've caught on those boats but my favorite were the lingcod. One week I went out mon-Friday and won the jackpot 4 days in a row with lings. Since I was fishing for free I gave the deckhand like 80 percent of my winings. All I did as far as "work" went was srub decks and help clean fish on the way back and they would let me fish for free the overnight trips are awesome especially when you go catch live squid for bait! My dad owns a boat yard in Ventura Ca and after they would finish a job up on a charter boat they would usually take the boat yard employes out for a 1.5 day trip. So much fun!

[Ken]

Man, you guys were set for those 1.5 days!

I was on a 1/2 day on my first trip to SoCal...I was just reeling up my chovy to switch for a lively one when the guy beside me went bendo with a short ling. Should have kept my rig in the water. That was the only ling on the whole trip...we caught too many short rockfish to bother counting

[Ca_Bass]

Gotta use the sardines for the lings! That is if they have em. I remember there being a lot of restrictions on ling cod fishing...you could only target them in certain depths of water or something and only for certain months of the year. I hated fishing in really deep water, especially when you are mostly catching small rock fish, most of the time you had so much lead on(due to current) you could hardly feel the fish bite and were only half sure you even had one on until you saw it! But as soon as you hooked up with a ling you knew it!