Oceanside shiner perch and cheekspot goby

This past weekend I made another attempt at white seaperch in Oceanside Harbor. I wasn't in the mood for kayking, so I fished from the harbor pier instead. I also didn't have mussels (their bait of choice), so I used small pieces of shrimp instead.

The first hour was slow, but after a bit of chumming I was able to get a school of shiner perch to show up. They weren't the perch species I was looking for, but I felt encouraged that other perch might be in the mix.

Shiner Perch (Cymatogaster aggregata)

After I caught a dozen shiners, the bite died off. Emerson had joined me, and we agree it was time to move on to something else. We headed south to a saltwater lagoon near Oceanside. It looked like a good place to find gobies and other micros.

Emerson spotted some small fish in the shade of the bridge, which turned out to be juvenile bay blennies. They were easy to catch on microfishing gear.

Bay Blenny (Hypsoblennius gentilis)

I brought a small plastic tub to take underwater photos of our catches, but I had difficulty getting the lighting and focus to work with my camera. Here's a shot of one of the blennies with a hand-caught shrimp in the background.

Out in the open we found some gobies sitting on the bottom near ghost shrimp burrows. They looked bigger than the ones I've pumped up from burrows in Mission Bay, and they happily chomped bits of shrimp on Tanago hooks. A new species for the list!

Cheekspot Goby (Ilypnus gilberti) - new hook & line species #657

These cheekspots are REALLY tiny fish. They flare out their operculums to make their heads look bigger, but even then they're incredibly small.

Here's an underwater shot of two of the gobies in the plastic tub. We released them back into the lagoon before we left.

Emerson wandered off while I was looking for more fish in the rocks, and when he came back he showed me this tiny juvenile flatfish. We didn't have any ideas what it could be, but my contact from Scripps identified it as a diamond turbot.

Diamond Turbot (Hypsopsetta guttulata)

The next day I wrote up a short report on sdfish's fishing forum, and one of the other users replied back that he also fished the harbor pier over the weekend, but he did catch a white seaperch!

White Seaperch (Phanerodon furcatus)

Photo courtesy of Bird334 from sdfish.com.

As I write this I already have the itch to do some more kayak fishing, so my next report will probably be from somewhere off the San Diego or La Jolla coast. Wish me luck!