Totoaba or White Sea Bass - how to release fish taken from deep water

capt. k

Junior Member
I recently worked up the cajones to take all my "white sea bass" photos to CEDO for help identifying what species they really were. I sat down with a very nice young researcher named Efrain. We went through all the photos and he identified about one third as Totoaba and two thirds as Corvina Blanca (white sea bass). He explained to me the how to tell the difference by the tail shape, vague vertical stripes and a black dot near the pectoral fin. Also explained why they were endangered and why I should release all Totoaba. We discussed various techniques for releasing large fish brought up from deep water. He had some experience poking a small hole in the distended air bladder. I remembered that they use a weight to drop Goliath Grouper back to the depths in Florida. It turns out I had an unused 10lb downrigger cannonball at the house. So I mounted a hook , removed the barb and put fifty feet of rope on it. It works! We released two 30-40lb Totoaba yesterday with no problems. The fish are quite docile by the time you get them to the surface (we were fishing 230ft) and it is easy to get the lure out, lightly hook the cannonball to their mouth and down they go. The water was so clear and calm yesterday that we could see the fish "pep back up" at about twenty five feet down. They started jerking around, spit out the hook and happily swam back down. We will probably start doing this with large breeder Groupers too!
deep water fish releaser.jpg
 

imstillsouthtexasreds

Street Magician
Great to hear, and looks like you've made a good set up. It's my personal opinion that the mortality rate of fish punctured in the air bladder is way higher than most will admit to. This method of recompressing (not sure if I just made up that word??) seems to be a much better alternative.
 
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