You Can Call Me Ray

Cabrilla, rock bass, brown spotty fish that looks like a large mouth bass with a paint job, you can call it what you want but it's one of the unsung heroes down here when it comes to fish. It's actually a leopard grouper. There are fish down here referred to as true cabrilla, or flag cabrilla, but they tend to be smaller, and don't look very much at all like th leopard grouper, akd cabrilla. The actual cabrilla are protected by law, and we don't see very many over a couple of pounds anyway. LG are voracious feeders, and while they are not speedster, and they don't have a heck of a lot of stamina, they are very aggressive, and with that big grouper tail they can move a lot of water and hit like an offensive lineman. Unsung among the gringos only, because one of the few things that match the voracious feeding habits of LG on the munch is the equal vigor with which the local will consume any and all LG taken. As with all of the groupers with which I am familiar these fish have snowy white flesh, and just enough fat content, oil, to not dry out when you cook them. Like BubbaGump shrimp, you can fry 'em, bake 'em, broil 'em, bar-b-que 'em, ceviche them, use them in soups, stews, fricassie, steam 'em, make a sandwich, or use that tandoori oven that you got for a wedding gift and have yet to use. As versatile as they are in the kitchen, there are just about as many ways to catch 'em. You can yo-yo, troll bait, drift bait, troll rapalas, or cast plugs. My two favorite ways to catch 'em are very different. In the spring (NOW) they come into the shallow water around the island and the stretch of water from Castillo to Muertos, over rocks. We cruised the small rocky points between Muertos and Punta Perico, throwing a sardine now and then to attract their attention, while standing by with spinner baits, yep, the same ones the Jimmy Houston uses. You're not liable to get any big ones, but a 3 pound LG on a 10-12 pound casting outfit will fill your hands ably, and cause you to forget those fresh water perch that Jimmy is always osculating with . Pitch the sardines in close to the rocks, be ready to cast, and when you see a sardine that is skipping along the surface, trying to escape being a guest for dinner, drop the spinner bait on top of him and reel fast. Lotsa fun. The other method that I like is trolling deep diving plugs along the east side of Cerralvo, particularly along the shore in the NE quadrant. Lots of BIG rocks, some the size of small sizes are 20-40 feet deep and as you wind your way back and forth between these rocks, be prepared. You must use at least 50lb. trolling gear, and I use 80. While this caliber of tackle seems like overkill on the common 3-6 pound fish, when you get the 20 pounder on the other end, they pull just as hard as a dog snapper, and that train don't stop before it gets to the rocks. I believe that the current world record for leopard grouper is in the upper 20's (26 something I think) and every year we take a couple larger than this, and one of the things that's on my Cerralvo bucket list is settin' a world record on these fantastic, but little heralded staples of the local fishery. Maybe tomorrow......
David