Bonitos, Balloons and Big Rockfish (Redondo Beach King Harbor)

[JohnMckroidJr]

Originally Posted by AlwaysFishing

Thank you John! I just go by the darker colored spots and bands at the top by dorsal fins. It's not the definitive way of telling them apart but I've found that the Vermilions have lighter dark patterns versus the Sunsets. I was fishing a little over 300ft so it was more like to be Sunsets, even though Vermillion are caught as deep as 350ft (I think).

Interesting Quang, I did a quick google and came up with this:

Hyde et al. (2008) reported a common depth range for vermilion rockfish from 30 to 100 m and a deeper range for sunset rockfish, primarily from 100 to 200 m. They noted few sunset in water shallower than 100 m and emphasized a high degree of bathymetric segregation between vermilion and sunset rockfishes at 100 m.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...65783622000522

Back in the days of 15 fish limits, a favorite spot for vermillions was Cherry Banks(sw of San nick) most the fishing was done in 5-600ft of water. Nobody was calling them Sunsets back then, but based on the depth, they must have all been of the Sunset subspecies.