San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

Juvenile Spotted Cabrilla caught before the rain. Evidence of a breeding population in our local waters? Or just a lost fish…

He's very lost indeed. There are some little groupers around, but none are talked about much.

If I had caught that I would have guessed it was a weird baby spotty

I caught some in East Cape Baja last month. My species book says they are sometimes caught in Southern Calif but rarely
Nice Catch!!!

Beautiful fish. I would have thought spotty too, haha.

Awesome

Range is from southern California to northern Peru.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephel ... ern%20Peru.

Never caught one myself here but have caught gobs of them one trip to Loreto, Mexico. Nice looking fish.

I remember cyborgstarfish posted a pretty decent one from the big bay on the old forums a couple years back. They are definitely pretty rare, certainly once in a lifetime up here. Kind of fished out in the sea of cortez at least in the northern/middriff section. Pinto bass or spotted Cabrilla were nearly wiped out in their northern range by the shrimp trawlers and commercial pangueros. I hear people call leopard grouper cabrilla all the time but these are the true "cabrilla." Pretty cool you were getting into em @gotfish. Seems like they have a pretty healthy deep water fishery down in Loreto. Would love to hit those snowy grouper some day...

That is a pretty fish... Nice...
Butch