80Lb Corvina "Argyrosomus regius"

[DanaPT]

now that the word is out the whole world will be poaching your spot!

nice photos... ugly mouths...pretty fish!

[Zfish03]

That thing is stupid huge! Congrats
Fish of a life time

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

From May to July is the season of Corvinas (european cousin of your White Sea Bass) here in Portugal, so me and my buddys, Ramos and Bruno were try them near the "Vasco da Gama" bridge in Lisbon. Leave you a photo report of our adventure, where I beat my personal record with a 79.36 Lb Corvina.

I don't know much about your fishery but you got me wondering if you may have got two different fish there. The larger one looks like a close relative of our Totoaba and the smaller ones look closer to our Corvina. Totoabas get much larger then Corvina but the way to tell them apart is their tails. Your big fish has the same tail as our giant totoaba.



While the smaller fish have the tails that look more like our Corvina.

[Fiskadoro]

So I did some reading. Looks like your Corvina has flatter tails when young, and a more pointed tail as it get's older, size wise it's right between our two fish. Our corvina max out at fifty pounds, your corvina get's to around a 50kg, while the Totoaba reaches 100kg.

Your larger fish looks more like a Totoaba to me, but then again it's big, and it has a more pointed tail. Looking around I found some info about fish farming your corvina in the Nile Delta which got me thinking it might spawn in fresh water. Totoaba spawn in the Colorado River Delta, and the young fish stay there for a while in brackish water before heading out to sea. Turns out your Corivina also spawns in estuaries like deltas and the young fish stay there for a while in the brackish water before heading out to sea. Our Corvina spawn in saltwater like our White Seabass, (another local relative of the Corivina) so I'd say your fish is probably has more similarities biologically to our larger fish the totoaba.

Great catch!!! Just a beautiful fish.

I wish we had those fish here. Like I said they are similar to the Totoaba but Totoaba are mainly south of us in the Gulf of California, and their numbers have severely declined since the Dams were built above their spawning grounds, and they started diverting the majority of the water out of the Colorado river.

I've a friend that caught one in the Gulf and supposedly there were even a few of them in the Salton sea a long time ago, but I've never seen one and probably never will since they are critically endangered and probably aren't going to be around much longer. They just didn't think much about fish conservation in the 1930s. Completed within a few years of each other Boulder dam destroyed the Totoaba fishery, and Grand Coulee Dam killed off a legendary run of Giant Chinook the largest Salmon in the Americas that routinely exceeded 100 pounds.



Great post, keep them coming!!!

Jim

[frugalfisher]

Great catch!!!

[Aaron&Julie]

Congratulations on your fabulous catch(es), beautiful fish, indeed.

Those are definitely in the same family (Croakers) as our Corvinas, White Sea Bass, and Totuava or Totoaba (same fish, called differently), along with many other family members.

When I was a kid in the mid 60s, I first learned to fish for trout on camping trips to Idaho at a place called Smith Creek, at age five, with a 6' willow pole, 6' feet of 8lb line, a small split-shot, single eagle claw #8 hook, and earth worms I dug myself. Right away I was outfishing my grandpa, with his Zebco, Panther Martins, flies, etc. But, I was fascinated when grandpa would tell me stories of going to San Felipe (Baja California) and talk about catching Totuava as big as your fish and bigger (over 100lbs). It impressed me, as those fish weighed more than I did.

Mexico has for years, banned the catch of Totuava because their numbers decreased so drastically from overfishing. Apparently they were much easier to find by fishermen than even our White Sea Bass.

I remember a few years back a 'yakker caught what he called a White Sea Bass near the San Felipe area, coming in near 85lbs. To me it looked like a Totuava making it an illegal catch. They do look very much alike, but the Totuava has more of a slight hump on his back right towards the front of his dorsel fin than WSB do. Anyways I don't recall his name, nor that it matters. Just a heads up for any Kayakers in that area, make sure you know the exact difference. You don't want to end up in a Mexican prison for catching something illegal that looked like a huge White. There's got to be some Totuavas still around, so it could happen.
Aaron

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by Aaron&Julie

Mexico has for years, banned the catch of Totuava because their numbers decreased so drastically from overfishing. Apparently

Overfishing played a part in their demise no doubt.

They only spawned in the Colorado River Delta and they were easy to target in the shallows as they came in to spawn. Imagine 200 pound+ white seabass stacked up outside the Colorado estuary swimming over sand bars like salmon so thick you could harpoon them.



It was carnage, but that overfishing only went on for a short period of time mostly before the first dam went in and didn't do the long term damage.

Currently over 90% of the Colorado's water is diverted out of the river, and the water that remains is heavily contaminated with agricultural run off. The fish historically spawned there in the Delta after the spring floods when there was the right mix of fresh and salt water, and new clean sand to spawn on. Big Dams equaled no floods. The spawn was actually triggered by certain water conditions that just no longer exist any more. No spring floods mean no new clean bottom to spawn on and the wrong salinity for spawning and the young fish.

When the United States diverted the Colorado River the ecological balance of the Delta and the Gulf was disturbed to the point the fish just couldn't reproduce, and since those fish were in Mexico not the US pretty much no-one cared at the time.

This isn't some kind of isolated incident. Derby Dam on the Truckee River cut off the Pyramid Lake Lahontan cutthroat, the largest inland trout in North America, from it's spawning grounds up a lake Tahoe they died off in a few decades and for a while they thought they were extinct.

The only reason they now still exist is some scientists found some that were stocked in Utah over a hundred years ago and now are raising them in a hatchery. They still are cut off from their spawning grounds so they do not spawn in the wild and would disappear without the hatchery but at least they still exist.

Grand Coulee Dam Blocked the largest North American Salmon from their spawning grounds up the Columbia and killed them off to extinction.

A similar run of 100 pound fish in the Elwa river disappeared after they blocked them off from their spawning run as well.

There's now a debate about whether those fish might possibly come back now that they finally removed the Elwa dams, but no-one really knows and since those dams were there for a hundred years it's unlikely much of the original genetics from that run survives.

I mean what are you going to do? You can't just take this stuff back. Back when they built those dams they were not concerned about the fish, and if not for the hydroelectric dams like Grand Coulee and Hoover with their cheap abundant electricity we'd of probably never been able to make the aluminum to build the planes that helped us win World War II.

In the US at least we are now making some real efforts to save our fish. The deal is no US politician is going to be willing to take away the water from our farmers and leave it in the Colorado for the Totoaba. The Mexicans do not have the millions of dollars it would take to set up a big enough hatchery system to really make a difference.

While looking at the Mediterranean Corvina the huge fish this guy caught I found a lot of info on raising them and Hatchery programs. I did once read about a small experimental restocking program for totoaba at some school at Ensanada years ago but it was tiny and it's hard to believe it's going to make a big difference. We have a Hatchery program for White Seabass it's just a shame that the Totoaba doesn't range further north so we'd have a reason to protect and save them.

I'm just pissed I'm probably never going to be able to fish for them. I have a thing for big fish, and a 200 pound seabass in the shallow water in the Northern Gulf would be a hell of a fun thing to target from a kayak.

Jim

[JarrodMc]

Hey Sparrow! Sweet haul. Thanks for the post. Look forward to seeing more!