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