Best habitat to fish for sole and flounder?
 

Now that we're in the rockfish closure I was thinking of targeting starry flounder, petrales and rock sole out of San Pedro. After all, they're freakin' delicious baked and covered with crab and bacon. Beyond looking for sand bottoms around 150 foot+, maybe nearby rocky structure, anyone have tips on strategy? Thanks and Happy New Year!

Bycatch
 

Delicious...but like eating Trout...it takes a little work and technique to get to the meat without lots of bones...
I always seem to get into them when I drift off the rockfish hard bottom spots...sooo...look for rockfish marks then drift off em...LOL :cool:
They don’t seem depth specific...if there’s lots of em and they’re suspended off the bottom I usually see them on the meter as sort of a blue haze or condensed speckles on the ‘softer/mud’ colored bottom...(not red)
They’ve been a pretty pesky bycatch lately...good news is that they swim right back down with no biotramma
��Be sure to bring a descending device to return any rockfish you might catch��

Whoa that is what I call a mess of fish. I like cooking them, lifting one side of meat off with a fork, then flipping and doing same. Minimal bone issues. And if the panko crust is hard enough, wow. Thanks for the tips, Jim! (And amen to the descender ... can't understand why it isn't embraced more in SoCal. Throwing away future lunkers never made sense to me. And with the new verm limits coming up, even more important.) Happy New Year!

If you want sand dabs, they're everywhere! Some get pretty big to where you can actually fillet them. I've had success on bigger dabs using artificials, like gulp jerk shads, over squid which catches any and all sizes of them.

As for other soles, sandy bottom at any depth really. Have gotten starry flounder in shallows and I see them, tonguefish, and fantails all the time diving at night along with the obvious halibut.

I nailed a 20" fantail last year drifting a piece of squid really deep on the way back in to a harbor. Could never replicate that catch again, but if you can, the payoff is worth it!

I'd love to see pics of any interesting flatfish people have caught from San Pedro south. Personally I've caught CA halibut, fantail sole, diamond turbot, Pacific sanddab, speckled sanddab, and longfin sanddab, but I'm very curious what else is common enough to go looking for. I know I've seen people post bigmouth sole pics. I've heard petrale sole mentioned a few times, but I'm not sure I've seen a pic from Socal. Lots of dive pics of turbots/soles like CO sole, spotted turbot, etc, but no one seems to catch them hook & line.

StrikerMC, how deep do you find those tonguefish? That's definitely a cool one!

Nice to see a good haul of a fish that still has a generous 10 fish limit.

Oh yeah ... love the dabs. Tasty. But man I'd like to find a shoal of larger-model flounder shingled up. That meat. If you ever get up to SF and have dough to blow, the Tadich Grill does one covered in crab and I think hollandaise. Blew my mind.

No limit on them... catch all you want.

🤙🏽
 

X2 🤙🏽

Saba, that is a beautiful shot of a load of flatfish!

I bet if they're small enough you could deep fry them whole and crunch the bones :D

Be sure to bring a descending device to return any rockfish you might catch

Very nice Jim and great point about the descending device. A must have!

That what I remembered from when I lived in SoCal, but when I googled it ,misread the regs. It's the rock sole, sand sole, butter sole, curlfin sole, rex sole, and flathead sole that have the 10fish limit. Thanks for the correction.

Get a free descender here:

https://oceaned.org/request-devices/

Yep. Not to hijack the thread, but free device. Donate if you can. Very simple and easy to use. Plus you can even run it in line with a rig, if needed.

Been using mine for a few years now and it works well.

oh glory days
 

Back in the old days (just 2-3 years ago) people here were talking 30-40-50 pound fish, battling tuna. Now - sand dabs... 🙄 Global warming, I guess?

Focusing on the flat bycatch, first question out of the water:
How do you make sure it's not a baby halibut ?
Below is some help, but I still don't see a definitive rule.

bloody
 

Put your finger in the mouth and bring it out quickly...if its bloody and cut, you've got a Halibut...LOL...:doh:
Look at the lateral line on the halibut pics and on the sand dabs/sole...the line is straight on the Dabs and has a hook in it on the Halibut
The tail shape is different on the Halibut also...

Turbot is my favorite flavor of pop tart.

how to I tell the difference between a baby ling and a trophy lizardfish?

Looks like lingcod has lips that you want to kiss, haha.

i havent been able to find a dedicated sole/turbot/flounder location, but the sand dabs are thick out there. people try to go really deep, but i've had some decent luck on good grade dabs in 250-300'. no size limit. no max hook quantity limit. reel slow so they don't spin off.

i know a petrole sole spot where we caught 8 fish from 12-18" in 2 drifts... but it's at catalina in 120-160'.