Help ID these Fish...

[Blesum]

Went out this morning with a buddy, shot me a halibut. Easy enough to ID.

After nearly 4 hours in the water, I still wanted to dive some more so after I got dropped off and ate some of that Halibut, I picked up SurfinSD and we headed back out. No halibuts this time. We looked for YTs and SurfinSD ran into a couple and tried to shoot 'em with my back up reef gun, but alas the power and range wasn't enough to get them.

We explored a bit, and the viz wasn't good during the 2nd outing and in the surf, I saw a long sliver shape streak by - Too narrow to be a WSB, a bit too big for a herring - what could it be? So I banged off a shot and got it. Looks like a cross between a YT and a herring to me. Has scales.

On the way out, I muck around some more in the surf line where I saw a couple of huge corbinas but couldn't get into range. Then a group of 5 or 6 of these fish came tearing by with a small YT in the group. They disappeared in a cloud of sand, and I hung out on the edge in the white water watching and hoping they'd come back out.

This one did for a nano-second - I couldn't tell if it was the YT or another one of these, so I pulled the trigger. Damn it, it wasn't the YT but another one of these! :head

Well, cut 'em up at home. One fish had nice firmness, the other was really firm. One was bled in the water, the other was dragged out of the water and then bled. Not sure which one was the really firm one.

They aced the "dog test" - both dogs loved the scraps.

They got a "B" on the sashimi test. Decent taste, almost like hamachi (YT) but a bit chewy. Very light meat.

They got a B on the cook test but that might have been my fault. A bit dry as I overcooked them when I forgot about them while cleaning up my gear.

So what are these things?

-Blesum

 

[Shadowkiller]

Those be mullet.. Family Mugilidae

Would have had very smelly mud in the stomachs?

Dunno the US species...

 

[Shadowkiller]

A suspect, well the only suspect for the eastern pacific:

http://fishbase.org/Summary/speciesSummary.php?ID=1086&genusname=Mugil&speciesname=curema

 

[Blesum]

Yup, dat's the fish. I can't seem to find the speices on the California Fish and Game page though. I do see some references to a "California Mullet" via google though.

-Blesum

 

[StretchArmStron]

please be on your toes with fish I.D. As spearos we cannot catch and release.
Threads like this give spearos a bad name for someone who might just happen to see this and be on the fence trying to decide whether or not spearing is a good thing.

You got lucky this time but that could have been something you might have gotten in a fair amount of trouble for.

Just a word of caution to you friend...

brush up on your fish ID, don't take the shot unless you know what it is.

 

[Polystigma]

I did not know we had mullet here on the west coast.

 

[Blesum]

I pay attention to the common fish with restrictions here in California and try to stay up to date with the changes/depth/date rules that the Department of Fish and GAme expects us to always know (as hard and confusing as that is).

There are thousands of fish, most which are not even covered by the DFG. I still can't find anything on mullets in the DFG handbook. When hunting, if I'm unsure about the size, I don't shoot. In yesterday's case, I could clearly tell they weren't WSB, and since there isn't a size restriction on YT, anchovies, sardines or mackerel (which are what they most closely resembled) I took the shots. If there was another speices with restrictions that looked like this, I would have made a positive ID before taking the shot (which wouldn't have happened yesterday since I still can't fully ID these fish).

-Blesum

 

[surfinsd]

Those YT kept me up at night haha. I'm going to get a gun that will do the trick in a few weeks though.

On a side note, Swami's was pretty fun surf this AM.