San Francisco Surfperch deja vu

I had fished the Municipal Pier for the past few days and so far, the best bait had been prawns, so I went down to chinatown and got some more prawns and headed to the pier. The first drop resulted in a Walleye Surfperch. It was slightly larger the than previous one, but as with a few days before was the only Walleye Surfperch for the day.




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum


Just like the previous time, I fished a few hours trying to catch something different through the numerous Shiner Perch. I even had a few double headers.




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata

I had lost the will to fish and as the light dimmed, I caught something different. It least it wasn't a Kelp Greenling. In fact, I had no idea what it was. It was like a goby or a blenny, but it had teeth and kept trying to sink them into my hand. This was later identified as a Onespot Fringehead [#135].




Onespot Fringehead - Neoclinus uninotatus #135




Onespot Fringehead - Neoclinus uninotatus




Onespot Fringehead - Neoclinus uninotatus

This concludes my fishing for 2011. I had brought my total up to 135 species with 37 species for the year and 20 of them being new species. Couldn't beat last years record of 54 species with 34 new species. There's always next year.

San Francisco Surfperches and a Greenling

After a whole session catching pretty much nothing but Rockfish, I decided to change the bait in the hope of getting something different. I was staying quite close to chinatown and was able to get a whole pack of prawns quite cheaply and headed straight to the Pier.

On the very first drop, and I really hooked into a decent fish and after a short battle, I landed a nice Surfperch. It was pretty much a bar of silver and with the light certain at angles, there we about a dozen black bars across the top of the body. It also had pretty prominent black tips to the pelvic fins and big eyes. These led me to identify this species as a Walleye Surfperch [#132]. My first surfperch. Although they don't look like wrasse or cichlids, these are the Surfperches nearest relatives.




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum #132




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum


Next I had a smaller fish on, but again, pretty much a non-descript perch like silver fish. This time, with the right light, it had yellowish marks on the front part of its body. It had yellowish fins. A Shiner Perch [#133], another species of surfperch. These were what I saw the anglers were catching a few days earlier. They became a nuisance. I kept catching them and a lot of them were very small down to about 2". A few of them had parasitic isopods in their gills. I also started catching a few Dungeness Crabs as well.




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata #133




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Elthusa californica





Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister

Later on, I got bored of catching shiners so I walked further up the pier and caught a really colourful female Kelp Greenling [#134]. The males are black and were thought to be of a different species when first discovered. This is the second species of Greenling I had caught, the other being the Fat Greenling caught in Japan. A few of the anglers had watched me land this and they were extremely disappointed that I released it to fight another day! The thing was that they weren't catching anything at all.




Kelp Greenling - Hexagrammos decagrammus #134




Kelp Greenling - Hexagrammos decagrammus


The next day, I can down to the pier in the evening with some squid from a wet fish market in chinatown. This bait didn't go down very well all I caught a boat load of dungeness crab.




Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister




Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister

San Francisco Rockfish

I knew that I was going to be in San Francisco for about a week but hadn't done enough preparation for the trip. I thought that I'd end up fishing on a charter boat but when I got there, it seemed that it was the end of the season and it was very difficult for me to book any of the trips. Whenever I go to anywhere new to fish, I usually check out the piers, jetties or beaches to see if people fish and how. On my first day, I walked up and down the Embarcadero and found the Municipal Pier. A few people were fishing here, and only saw a few smaller silver fish being caught, suspecting that they were surf perch of some sort. On the way back, I stumbled upon Pier 7 as well, but didn't see anybody catching anything here.




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus #130




The Bait - Californian Anchovy - Engraulis mordax


The next day, a found a tackle shop to try and get a permit, bait and some tackle and found that you don't need a permit to fish the Municipal Pier, so I bought my bait and headed down to the Pier on a tram. The pier is quite a long curved pier. I notice that most of the fish caught were on the first few pegs on the right side so I settled on one of those. I had bought some Anchovies and some Shrimp (they looked like the Brown Shrimp of British waters). I put on some anchovies and within a few minutes had a nice and spiky rockfish on the end of my line. Whenever I see rockfish, I think of a Grouper or a Perch and not a scorpionfish. In fact, I read studies based on DNA that may prove that Scorpionfish, Groupers and Perch are more closely related to each other than other Perciformes, eg Wrasses or Gobies etc. I identified these as Brown Rockfish, species [#130], when I got back to the hotel. The most prominent feature is the black mark on its cheek




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus

They came out in an array of colours and sizes, but all had the same black marking on its opercule. I caught loads of Rockfish and they were a lot of fun to catch.




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus

Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus

A few times, I hooked into some dead weight but had nothing on the end of the line when it came to the surface. This happened a few times before I landed a nice little Dungeness Crab. Soon after, I hooked into another species of crab which I later identified as a Pacific Rock Crab.




Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister





Pacific Rock Crab - Romaleon antennarium


I caught a few more Rockfish after that and on the very last cast of the day, after the light had started to fade, I caught a little goby which I identified as a blackeye goby bringing my life list up to [#131]. I was quite suprised that all I caught were Rockfish after seeing so many silver fish being caught the previous day but I still had a few days to target them.




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus




Blackeye Goby - Rhinogobiops nicholsii #131




Blackeye Goby - Rhinogobiops nicholsii




Blackeye Goby - Rhinogobiops nicholsii

Brighton Marina

A quick report on an evening trip to the Brighton Marina. Using a pack of fresh prawns from Waitroise, as expected start catching a whole lot of whiting, a few pouting and a Horse Mackerel (or Scad). No new species but this brings my total for the year up to 31 species.



Atlantic Horse Mackerel - Trachurus trachurus



Atlantic Horse Mackerel - Trachurus trachurus



Whiting - Merlangius merlangus



Whiting - Merlangius merlangus



Pouting - Trisopterus luscus

Catching up on Coarse fish

With about three quarters of the year now over, I wasn’t content with having only caught two species of freshwater fish for the year, so I decided to go to a venue to increase my count in a big way. My pick was Sussex fishery where I had caught 10 different species at last year and with a possibility of Golden Orfe and Catfish as well it was worth a trip and I knew it would probably be my last change for these this year.

The trip to the fishery is quite long for someone who relies only on public transport but is well worth it. After a lengthy train and bus ride and about 20 minutes hike through a nice little nature reserve, I went straight to the non-carp lake and starting fishing a float and sent a ledger to an island. The species starting flowing in, with Roach, Perch, Gudgeon, hybrids and Rudd coming onto the bank quite regularly.



European Perch - Perca fluviatilis



Gudgeon - Gobio gobio



Rudd - Scardinius erythrophthalmus



Roach - Rutilus rutilus



Roach Bream Hybrid - Abramis brama x Rutilus rutilus

I had some cracking good roach and by lunchtime I had also added a nice Crucian Carp to the tally. All species so far had fallen to waggler floated maggots. The ledger wasn’t a lost cause though, pulling in a nice Bream and a Tench in the mid afternoon on hair rigged halibut pellets.



Crucian Carp - Carassius carassius



Bream - Abramis brama



Tench - Tinca tinca


Later in the afternoon, I had given up hope for an Orfe so I moved on to one of the carp lakes hoping to get a catfish. I fished with sardine flavoured catfood as well as maggots using both rods. First cast landed a nice looking skimmer bream, followed by a few perch, gudgeon and more skimmers. It went quiet for a little while and then the float just disappeared and I held on to dear life as a large underwater creature took my catfood on the end of my waggler rig with only 4lb of mainline. I was really hoping it was a catfish that took my catfood but after a 10 minutes of run after run, I had a nice 9lb 4oz Common Carp on the landing mat. The same thing followed for another 3 carp, a mirror, a leather and another common all around 6-8lb on the waggler as well.



Bream - Abramis brama



Gudgeon - Gobio gobio



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Mirror Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Leather Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio

After the 4 carp I felt I had caught enough of carp and so was happy hike back uphill to the bus stop. I had caught over 50lb of fish of 8 species, which so happens to be the total number of freshwater fish caught so far this year.