Bonitos, Balloons and Big Rockfish (Redondo Beach King Harbor)
 

Another adventure out of Redondo Beach on 08/31/2021. Did some more exploring of the area before settling down at Jurassic Rock for some nice size Coppers and a PB Sunset.

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Wow, those are some huge rock fish. If I didn't know where you were fishing, I would have guessed about 500 miles north. Congrats, Quang.

Those little bonitos are candy bait in SE Florida. Out on the live bait rods or in the Tuna Tubes is where mine go. They are the only bait that I have had simultaneous double hookups with. The local bait and tackle store pay $5 each for those and sells them for $10. Reviewing BWE archives, I believe it was Madscientist who took a nice Halibut on a Bonito.

Balloon clean-up is a common kayak videoed occurrence on the East Coast also. One of the fringe benefits of fishing close to the water is easy garbage removal -- Bravo!

Cool to see the variety of Rockfish, Congrats on the Sunset! I would have mistaken it for a Vermillion, What is the key difference?

Liked and subscribed again with my other email. Thanks Quang.

Thank you Mark! I am still amazed that these size rockfish in SoCal and not so far from shore.

Thank you John! I just go by the darker colored spots and bands at the top by dorsal fins. It's not the definitive way of telling them apart but I've found that the Vermilions have lighter dark patterns versus the Sunsets. I was fishing a little over 300ft so it was more like to be Sunsets, even though Vermillion are caught as deep as 350ft (I think).

Interesting Quang, I did a quick google and came up with this:

Hyde et al. (2008) reported a common depth range for vermilion rockfish from 30 to 100 m and a deeper range for sunset rockfish, primarily from 100 to 200 m. They noted few sunset in water shallower than 100 m and emphasized a high degree of bathymetric segregation between vermilion and sunset rockfishes at 100 m.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...65783622000522

Back in the days of 15 fish limits, a favorite spot for vermillions was Cherry Banks(sw of San nick) most the fishing was done in 5-600ft of water. Nobody was calling them Sunsets back then, but based on the depth, they must have all been of the Sunset subspecies.

Yeah at 500-600ft, they were Sunsets.

Solid day! Nice release on the Chucklehead :cheers1:

Thank you, sir.