Species Fishing Blog: San Francisco Rockfish

Monday 14 November 2011

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.