Weather window opens South of the Border rockfish season wide
The rockfishing in waters below that invisible line that extends from the beach just above the bullring in Tijuana has ranged from fantastic to fairly good thanks to a long stretch of good weather that is supposed to extend at least through this weekend when all the San Diego-area landings will be offering a chance to get out on the water and fill the fry pan and the freezer.

SportfishingReport.com's Edgar Ylanan will be headed out on the Apollo this weekend on a 1 1/2-day trip to Punta Colonet.

SFR sponsor J.J. Gerritsen and his Apollo crew have made the run south the last couple weekends.

"Fishing this past weekend was okay, we had 40 keeper lings, lots of shorts, 75 reds and filled out the rest of the limits with junk," he told SFR. "We went down with visions of grandeur because the weekend before it was straight reds and no junk, but it just wasn't the same.

"We fish the high spots of Colonet Ridge proper," noted the Apollo owner/operator. "We're one of the few boats that actually go there, most stop short somewhere up the line."

Unless there are yellowtail around the point. "Well, we do keep them honest by fishing here every trip," admitted Gerritsen. "But it's the big reds we're after, the reds are the thing."

Coincidentally, right about the time SFR talked to J.J., some research into rockfish turned up the fact that there are actually two species of vermilion rockfish - the fish we lovingly call reds.

On a trip last August on the Pacific Edge with Capt. Mark Wisch and Matt Resnik, the day was topped off with some rockfish drifts off the back of San Clemente Island and two reds came up one after another. One was definitely more blotched and Wisch wondered if it was a different species as Dan Burns held them up for a photo. I sent the picture to Milton Love at UCSB (he has the third edition of his fish book coming out this spring, 600 pages in full color titled "Certainly More Than You Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast") for an i.d.

"The issue here may be that it turns out there are two species of "vermilion" rockfishes (one that will likely be called the vermilion rockfish, one that likely will be called the sunset rockfish)," replied Love. "They both live in southern California and their depths overlap, although one species tends to live deeper than the other. However, if I am correct, I don't know whether one is a sunset and one a vermilion or if both are the same species. So, I am sending this to John Hyde, the person who is describing the new species, to see what he thinks."

Hyde's response:

"Yes, there are 2 species of vermilion. The one on the right is likely a sunset (the deeper dwelling species) and the one on the left may be a vermilion. The best way I've found to separate them, short of genetic analysis, is to count the gill rakers on the first gill arch. Typically 39 or more = sunset, 38 or fewer = vermilion. The sunsets also have smaller eyes and slimmer caudal peduncles (base of tail) than vermilions of the same length. Coloration is variable but the sunsets often have that mottled dark pattern covered with yellow-orange coloration while the vermilions tend to be me more solidly red. From my sampling almost all fish caught in water deeper than ~300ft are sunsets, however you will catch smaller sunsets in shallower water."

We were drifting over high spots in 200 to 300 feet of water when the photogenic pair of reds was taken on live squid on a dropper loop rig. Gerritsen said his trips, which leave Friday night from Fisherman's Landing and get in about 6 Sunday morning, have been targeting the reds with the basic dropper loop rig with live sardines and squid. "Lately I think the best fishing was on the live sardines - a good live bait presentation," he said. "You can fish the jigs and do well on the lingcod. It's just a matter of which style you like."

You may not know it, but J.J.'s favorite style of fishing is with the fly - and not a shrimp fly. When told that this writer and Chad Woods were going to spend the weekend steelhead fishing with another SFR sponsor, Phil Desautels of Smiling Salmon Guide Service in Smith River, Gerritsen revealed his own steelhead plans.

"I'm headed up to Southeast Alaska in April," he said. "I have a friend in Ketchikan who commercial fishes and we're going to fish some of the steelhead streams there. I tie up my own flies - big and buggy and black. I don't care where you are, black always gets bit."

Meanwhile if it's the color red you're after, down south is the place to go. This weekend, besides the 1 1/2-day on the Apollo out of Fisherman's Landing, the Dominator and Black Pearl have similar trips out of Point Loma Sportfishing Friday night and the Legend offers a 1 1/2-day out of Seaforth Sportfishing. H&M Landing reported the Indian will run an overnight rockcod trip down the Baja coast Friday night.