Yellowmouth Corvina…Biscuit Jr.
Also known as orangemouth corvina, it is part of the croaker family. In fact, they look just like a smaller version of the “king croaker” aka the white seabass. Other than the size, the distinguishing characteristic from its larger cousin is the yellow coloring both inside and on the lips of the mouth. They put up a pretty nice fight. That bigger one in the middle actually stripped drag. These fish all taped out at over 20 inches long, but they can grow up to 4 feet long and 50 lbs!
I caught up with John today as he was coming in off the Daily Double at Point Loma Sportfishing. He told me to meet him there with my bass rod. Once all the passengers had unloaded, we filled a bucket with live anchovies from the bait tank before the crew dumped them (one of the perks of getting to know the crews). We took the chovies to John’s secret spot…skinny water over sandy bottom, next to structure.
To catch them, John recommended using 12 lb mono in a reverse dropper loop setup. I didn’t have any 12 lb, so I used 15 lb fluoro. In 2 hours, we caught 9 halibut and a bunch of these yellowmouths. I also picked up a yellowfin croaker in that mix. We took home 2 legal halibut and 3 of the larger yellowmouth corvinas we had caught (there isn’t a size minimum, but we threw back the smaller ones), and had them for dinner…good eats. All in all, it was pretty awesome for just a couple hours of free shorefishing. We plan to ride the Double this afternoon and then hit the spot afterwards again. Tomorrow I get on a 1.5 day trip targeting offshore yellowtail and bluefin tuna. Tight lines!
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