Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

The Pacific Northwest is home to literally dozens of species of rockfishes (genus Sebastes; in no way related to striped bass of the Atlantic locally known as “rockfish”). Identification can be tough. Color is the most common indicator, but it’s not always reliable, and anglers are often left scratching their heads as to what species they’ve caught.

So it was when angler Chris Bushman in Ketchikan, Alaska, jigged up this rockfish from about 130 feet of water recently. Even the guide was unsure of the species’ identity. “All of the other area guides were perplexed as well,” Bushman writes. “It would be nice to know exactly what I caught and released.”

In fact, Chris, that’s a yelloweye rockfish, Sebastes ruberrimus. If guides were uncertain, that’s understandable, since yelloweye (widely in Alaska waters referred to as “red snapper”) are generally a brilliant orange-red as adults. But juveniles — and yours appears to be a juvie — are a darker red with two bright white stripes down each side. This fish has a thin stripe but not nearly as wide and prominent as usual. And yours has a great deal of black pigment all over, which is unusual. Fish Facts checked with our northern Pacific expert, Dr. Milton Love, who confirmed this coloration is rare, though in one area it occurs with some regularity.

A bit of intel on the species: Yelloweye (Alaska to California) are very long-lived and slow-growing. NOAA lists them as living up to 150 years. They’re very territorial, often spending their adult lives in one rocky area (usually in 200 to at least 1,200 feet of water). That and their slow growth make them exceptionally vulnerable to overfishing. As a result, it is illegal to possess or fish for (once abundant) yelloweye off California, Oregon and areas of Alaska.

Unfortunately the release of these deepwater, pressure-sensitive fish is challenging, though it’s doable with a good descending device. As you might guess, yelloweye is superb eating. It’s been long coveted for that quality and for the brilliant red color, distinguishing it from other game fish of Northwest waters.

The post Fish Facts: Guess This Rockfish Species appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

I recently read a short article in a fishing magazine extolling the (generally unheralded) virtues of cutlassfish (Trichiurus lepturus) as a fun gamefish in its own right. Having intentionally targeted and caught them, Fish Facts couldn’t agree more.

However, Fish Facts feels the need to set the record straight since the article stated that cutlassfish “use their sharp pointed tail to slash like a knife.” Not so much. It’s true that the odd critters lack any caudal structure: Their body at the stern end simply tapers right down to a point. But sharp? As with the long — rather elegant — dorsal fin that runs the length of the body, the tail is soft, tapering to a thin filament and lacking any spine. Sure, if you grab a cutlassfish, it will squirm and wave its body around, but that tail won’t do any damage.

On the other hand, keep your fingers out of its mouth. One look at the dagger-like fangs should dissuade even the foolhardy. That said, I’ve noticed when handling these fish that they’re generally pretty flaccid creatures and easy to handle, not nearly as fierce as they appear.

About the Cutlassfish

While on the subject, here’s a bit more information on a species that is unique, fascinating and widely available around the world in many inshore and coastal waters.

Cutlassfish are widely called ribbonfish, particularly by Gulf anglers. You won’t find them listed with that name in the IGFA book, though. Their official common name, per the authoritative Fishbase, is largehead hairtail. Cutlassfish (hairtails) can exceed seven feet. The current IGFA all-tackle record stands at 11 pounds, 5 ounces, caught on a saury off Japan in 2020.

The species is characterized by its solid, gleaming silver, chrome-plated hue, its flattened body rather like an eel after an encounter with a steamroller. The cutlass lacks scales. And while you couldn’t tell by the indifference of U.S. anglers, in much of the world it’s a highly sought (and marketed) commercial fish. I’ve filleted and eaten a number of them. Taste is subjective, but I thought they were good — not my fave, but certainly not bad. While few are eaten, many are used as bait in offshore fisheries and particularly by serious kingfish enthusiasts.

One of the most striking visuals I recall from a day in the lower Patuxent River in Maryland last year was my sounder screen. Turned out that that cutlassfish were all over the river, and it proved to be great fun on diving crankbaits. Their strikes are vicious, especially on ultralight tackle. But what really stayed with me from that day was the sounder. It stayed lit up with dozens and dozens of cutlassfish, but they didn’t present like any typical predator. That’s because their hunting style is to ambush small fish by drifting motionless vertically, head toward the surface. So they looked nothing like what I’m used to seeing when marking fish: My screen was loaded with narrow vertical slashes.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Some Fish Facts fans have been wondering about the difference between a “standard” yellowfin tuna and an Allison tuna. References to both names are commonplace. For example, Tom Pytel writes, “I often notice in photos some yellowfin tuna with very long anal fins. I’ve caught yellowfin to 100-plus pounds, but none has had those long fins. Is this strictly associated with size or perhaps sex, or some other factor?”

So Fish Facts thought it should, once and for all, clarify this tuna teaser. To cut to the chase, there is no difference: We’re talking about one species, Thunnus albacares.

But indeed, some yellowfin have clearly elongate second dorsal and anal fins. It’s the only species of tuna that exhibits this variation in fin length, says John Graves. Graves, for years chair of fisheries science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, is one of the world’s leading tuna and billfish experts. He notes that the longer fins occur in only larger yellowfin. “In the extreme, the length of these fins can be greater than 40 percent of the total length of the fish. Some refer to these Allison tuna.”

Graves says this occurs independent of the fishes’ sex, but not of the location. “There’s a lot of geographic variation in the length of these fish.” For example, he says, across the Pacific, the relative lengths of yellowfin second dorsal and anal fins tends to increase from east to west.

In scientific terms, this variation in fin size for years “created havoc with the taxonomy of yellowfin tuna,” he says. As many as seven species of yellowfin tuna have been recognized, based on fin size. “It was only in the mid 1960s that the various geographic populations were combined into a single, circumglobal species.”

So while some anglers will remain convinced they’ve caught an Allison tuna, Fish Facts fans will know the truth: It’s a yellowfin tuna, no matter the length of its fins.

The post Fish Facts: What is an Allison Tuna? appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Steve Wozniak knows his fish, having caught and identified (often with the help of regional scientists) well over 2,000 species the world over. So when the angler, from Alamo, California, caught this robust specimen while fishing the Red Sea off southern Egypt, with guide Amin Abu Rehab, he recognized it as a sky emperor.

“This species exists only in the Red Sea,” he comments. But then he wonders, “What keeps these fish from extending their range beyond the Red Sea?” and adds, tongue in cheek, “Somali pirates?”

Good question, said Fish Facts, so we turned to our Indo-Pacific expert Ben Diggles, Ph.D., based in Australia, for more on this cool fish.

“The sky emperor (known scientifically as Lethrinus mahsena) does in fact occur outside the Red Sea,” Diggles says, “in the Western Indian Ocean mainly along the coast of eastern Africa, but also Mauritius, the Seychelles and as far east as western India and Sri Lanka. Like other emperors within the family Lethrinidae, sky emperor are relatively long-lived, having been aged up to 27 years. They’re also a relatively large fish, growing to 26 inches long (the IGFA all-tackle record stands at just under six pounds).”

Diggles notes that in their larval dispersal stage, sky emperor larvae drift around for a month or so before settling onto coral-reef substrates. This suggests “that sky emperor have the opportunity to disperse widely throughout the Indian Ocean during their lifespan.” However, prevailing currents tend to limit that dispersal, which may account for their remaining prevalent mostly in the Red Sea.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Clearly, says Jean-Francois Helias, of anglingthailand.com, this is a lionfish. But which species? Helias writes that in fact one of his guides, Pro Kik Phanpraphat, and clients were catching “one after the other” while jigging near Koh Kut Island, in the Gulf of Siam. He would like to know more about this impressively spiny fish.

Handle with care, advises Sport Fishing Fish Facts expert Ben Diggles, based in Australia. That is a very venomous plaintail lionfish (Pterois russelii). There are many species of lionfish in tropical and warm-temperate waters around the world. The plaintail grows to around 12 inches, inhabiting muddy areas in shallow estuaries, bays and coastal waters throughout the western Indo-Pacific. Like most lionfishes, they’re voracious predators of small fishes, so snapping up small jigs is hardly surprising.

The plaintail, like most lionfish species, sports venom glands at the base of each spine. These, Diggles says, operate like a hypodermic syringe; when contact is made with the business end of the spine, venom containing a potent and highly painful neurotoxin is released into the puncture wound. “Fortunately the venom is not deadly, but it can cause paralysis in rare cases, so best to neutralize by dousing the affected area with or in hot water,” Diggles says.

The plaintail can be sometimes confused with the common lionfish, Pterois volitans, an invasive species now well established in the Western Atlantic, from the Carolinas south through the Caribbean. But it lacks the many rows of small dark spots on tail, soft dorsal and anal fins found on the common lionfish.

The post Fish Facts: A Dangerous Beauty appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

When an angler in the U.S. mentions fishing for redfish, one species comes to mind: red drum, widely called redfish through its range — a big drum caught primarily inshore, typically in very shallow waters, in Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states. But Capt. Terry Nugent, with Riptide Charters in Sandwich, Massachusetts, caught a very different kind of redfish in 400 feet of water off Chatham, Massachusetts.

“I’ve landed a few of these over the years,” he says of the fish in his photo. The fish are marketed as redfish, he adds, “but obviously they’re not red drum. What are they really?” He also asks how large they grow, what is a normal depth to encounter them, and what is their range.

Nugent did indeed catch a redfish. That is the correct common name for four species in the genus Sebastes. Two of those species are caught off Massachusetts, says Mike Fahay, a Northeast marine fish expert: S. fasciatus, the Acadian redfish, and S. mentalla, the deepwater redfish.

These species are part of the rockfishes complex (genus Sebastes) important in Pacific Northwest recreational and commercial fisheries. They are in no way related or similar to drums and croakers, like the red drum.

Fahay says that, based on depth of capture, this would likely be the Acadian redfish, common from 400 to 900 feet. In fact, the species — found from Iceland as far as south as the Mid-Atlantic — at one time supported an important, major commercial fishery and was a common item in fish markets in the Northeast. But it’s a story too-often told: Landings plummeted from 60,000 metric tons in 1942 to just over 300 metric tons landed in 1996. The species is now considered endangered by the IUCN, yet NOAA says it is not overfished.

Like all rockfish species, redfish are slow growing and long lived, increasing their susceptibility to overfishing. These days, most that are caught weigh in at under two pounds, Fahay reports. (The IGFA all-tackle record, caught in 2010, weighed a whopping 2 ½ pounds.) At one time, redfish weighing up to 24 pounds were caught.

The post A Redfish Caught Hundreds of Feet Deep appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Most U.S. anglers are familiar with various species of croakers as small bottom feeding members of the large family Sciaenidae — which includes redfish, black drum and white seabass — from surf or shallow inshore waters. In the Southeast, for example, spot and Atlantic croakers are available oftentimes in great numbers.

Angling enthusiast and IGFA representative Martini Arostegui is very familiar with such inshore croakers. But to catch some sort of small croaker in about 800 feet of water, well offshore of Buena Vista on the southern Baja peninsula, in the Sea of Cortez, was something of a shocker.

“My friends and I batted around a few potential species’ names, but with our 25-year-old identification guide, we were unable to positively identify it and figured it might not be listed in that book,” says Arostegui, who now lives in Seattle but grew up in Florida.

We turned to an expert for help on this and got a two-fer, since he invoked a second expert. Milton Love, a biologist at the Marine Science Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara, knows his Pacific fishes. But this one gave him trouble.

“I hadn’t seen it before, and it was caught deeper than any published record for a croaker living in the Gulf of California,” he says. So he brought in Ross Robertson at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Robertson recognized it as the bigeye croaker, Umbrina bussingi.

Love says the species has been caught even deeper — from more than 3,000 feet of water — and is found from southernmost Baja to Colombia. It doesn’t get large, reaching only around a foot in length. The bottom dweller likely feeds on crustaceans, worms and small fishes. As common as croakers are worldwide, this is one species very few anglers have ever seen — or caught.

The post Fish Facts: Croaker from the Abyss appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Anglers who spend much time on clear blue offshore waters — particularly when drifting or slow-trolling — have likely seen stunning little blue-and-silver fish darting this way and that. Seen from above they resemble tiny flyingfish thanks to their oversized pectoral fins. Miami resident Scott Salyers provided this photo, after it fell onto the deck amidst “a passel of pogies” from a castnet thrown off Port Canaveral, Florida.

“We didn’t know for sure what it might be,” he says. The answer: a juvenile man-of-war fish, Nomeus gronovii. It’s a member of the family Nomeidae, the driftfishes.

The concept of niche evolution is beautifully illustrated by this species, common in all warm oceans. It’s called man-of-war fish because, at least when young, it lives in symbiosis with the Portuguese man of war, characterized by its brilliantly colored pink- and-blue balloon-like sail or float and its very long strings of tentacles filled with stinging nematocyst cells. Any fisherman or swimmer who’s been nailed by these can be excused for exclaiming “ouch!” or worse.

The man-of-war fish sets up residence beneath these animals, adrift on the ocean. (Erroneously called jellyfish, man o’ wars are siphonophores — each one a floating community of organisms). Darting about the stinging tentacles, the small fish achieve a good bit of protection from predators, though they’re ever vigilant since they’re not immune to the poison of the tentacles.

So how do they coexist with the venomous, sticky strings? Apparently, it has adapted to avoid the tentacles by being alert and agile. The species also has more vertebrae than is typical, making its body more flexible, and relies largely on its big pectoral fins, an adaptation typical of species that must be particularly nimble. Beyond coexistence, there’s evidence that the man-of-war fish may get some sustenance from its partner, nibbling on smaller tentacles.

Symbiosis suggests a two-way street, so the man o’ war presumably gains something from the man-of-war fish swimming freely about its tentacles, most likely luring in other fish with a false sense of security to blunder to their death.

All this describes juveniles, and that’s all we see of Nomeus gronovii. This is because as they grow to be adults — to 15 or 16 inches in length — they descend to live near bottom in as much as 3,000 feet of water. At that stage, the man-of-war fish hardly resembles the colorful, elegant little form it took as a juvenile, looking more like a greyish, somewhat elongate bluefish.

The post Mystery Fish Revealed: A Brave Tentacle Tickler appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

A surprising number of lesser-known fish have crazy, unlikely names. If you take a deep dive into the International Game Fish Association list of world-record game fishes you’ll stumble on true head-scratchers — some fish names sound flat-out ridiculous. It’s hard to resist sharing these with other, inquisitive anglers, so in the last installment, we looked at the pink happy and Darwin’s slimehead. Here are a couple more with oddball names.

What’s important to understand is that we’re talking about common names that are official and recognized in the scientific community. Every fish has one such name. For example, Coryphaena hippurus is a dolphinfish. But dolphinfish are called many different nicknames, including dolphin, mahi, mahi-mahi, dorado, and even “dodos” (anglers in SoCal tend to abbreviate fish names by eliminating a syllable or two). Then, dolphin also have nicknames for different sizes, including peanuts, schoolies, slammers, plus others. The goofy names below aren’t just a local or regional moniker that stuck. These are the species’ actual names.

The Forkbeard Fish

The forkbeard (Phycis phycis) doesn’t look particularly bizarre, but this deepwater dweller — a type of hake, which explains its cod-like appearance — does boast elongated pelvic-fin rays that extend downward from its chin, just behind the gills. Each fin branches near the bottom, hence the “fork,” no doubt offering effective feelers while the fish remains just above the bottom. The forkbeard is found in the Northeast Atlantic, usually in 300 to 2,000 feet, and rarely caught by anglers. It is, however, a popular commercial fish. In the British Isles the species is known as the “sweaty betty.” I am not making that up.

The Slobbering Catfish

I caught one of these and it dribbled all over me! Okay, I did make that up. The slobbering catfish (Brachyplatystoma platynemum) don’t slobber. So how to account for the name? Apparently, local fishermen considered the long, flattened barbels extending from their mouth to be reminiscent of strings of drool. I don’t really see it, but whatever. In any case, these cool cats inhabit the deepest channels of big, fast-flowing rivers in Brazil and in areas of Colombia and Venezuela, where they prey exclusively on smaller fishes. While not evaluated by the IUCN’s list of endangered species, apparently they have been severely overfished commercially.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

The post Funny Fish Names: Forkbeard and Slobbering Catfish appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

When I see a fish listed by a name so unlikely I wonder if it’s a prank or joke, I’m immediately intrigued. What is this fish? And it seems that there are a surprising number of fish with crazy, unlikely names – even in the International Game Fish Association’s list of world record game fishes. It’s hard to resist sharing these with other, inquisitive anglers, so here are a couple to start with. (We may offer more, as part of an ongoing series, in the future.)

It’s important to understand that we’re talking about common names that are official and recognized in the scientific community. Every fish has one such name. For example, Rachycentron canadum is a cobia. It’s variously known in different areas as ling or lemonfish, but it has only one accepted common name: cobia. So these crazy names aren’t just a local handle that some yokel made up and it stuck. These are the species’ actual names.

Pink Happy (Sargochromis giardi)

The IGFA all-tackle world-record pink happy: 5 pounds, 6 ounces, from the Upper Zambezi River in Zambia (1998).

If your buddy said, “Hey man, I’d really like to get some pink happys today,” you might reply, “No way: I don’t do drugs.” But he would be referring to a species of fish, not feel-good pills.

The pink happy’s name derives not from its customary smile, but because it belongs to what are known as haplochromid cichlids, which gives rise to a number of other happys — the rainbow happy, green happy, Greenwood’s happy and others. The pink is found in rivers of southern Africa, notably the Cunene, Okavango and Zambezi rivers. The name can be misleading not only because these fish have no sense of humor but also because they’re not, well – very pink (except during spawning time). They’re a drab grey brown. Go figure.

Darwin’s Slimehead (Gephyroberyx darwinii)

The IGFA all-tackle world record Darwin’s slimehead: 7 pounds, 8 ounces, from the Norfolk Canyon off Virginia (2008).

Based on the name, one can imagine anglers offshore complaining, “Ugh. Another damned slimehead. Don’t even bring that in the boat.” That would be a huge mistake.

Its name notwithstanding, this deepwater dweller is superb eating. They’re actually a commercially important fish but — surprise, surprise — you won’t find them marketed as “slimeheads.” After all, it’s hard to imagine someone’s spouse saying, “Oh, and honey, pick up a couple pounds of slimehead while you’re at the store.”

Rather these bright red-orange fish are more often called roughies or big roughies, a name associated with topnotch, expensive fillets. And in fact they’re very closely related to the well-known orange roughy. Slimeheads live in depths of 600 to more than 1,500 feet in the tropical and temperate Atlantic, western and central (but not eastern) Pacific and Indian oceans. The species derives its name from mucous cavities atop its head. Be that as it may, if you don’t want that slimehead, I’ll take it!

The post Funny Fish Names: Pink Happy and Slimehead appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.