Huli Cat ran offshore to look for Chilipepper rockfish as part of the Chilipepper stock assessment. It took a few drops, but we finally found them. Actually, we found them in a number of places, but there were tremendous numbers of market squid in with them, making it difficult to get the fish to bite our jigs. One of the Chilipeppers that came up regurgitated three very different size market squid. Of note, Chilipepper is classified as an 'underfished resource', but the normally occur in water outside the boundaries we are allowed to fish. Wind was a little bit of an issure, very fast drift, we finally had our best sucess when we went to 2 & 2 1/2 pound sinkers in 600+ feet of water, using Spectra type line. The trip began by the HMB Weather Buoy and ended roughly 10 miles below that onthe 100 fathom curve. After Chilipepper, we sampled some yellowtail rockfish and retained pregnant widows and blues.
Huli Cat chilipepper rockfish Sampling
Researchers with a few Chilipepper rockfish
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