Kochi-Japan - 20220603-20220605

fish-ninja

Well-Known Member
#1
After three years of canning myself in, I made my first international travel to my mother land to take care of some family business. I managed to put a fishing business in it as per usual. I took a short one-hour domestic flight to Kochi, Japan, the southern prefecture of Shikoku island. It is a remote area that was used to be used for sending prisoners there as punishment in feudal time. Today, it is just a short airplane ride away. It is a farming land sandwiched by mountains and rich ocean fed by a major current that brings lots of nutrients. It is famed for the best Japanese fisheries for Skipjacks.

I visited my friend who explore salt fishing there seriously. There is a recent trend of lure fishing called Tai-Rubber, targeting red snappers. It is made of a heavy round sinker head and hooks attached with some silicon rubbers that mimic some worms etc. You can see it in these photos catching a type of red snapper called Renkodai (Hypselosomus bleeker, yellowback seabream) and a sea robin/Spiney red gurnard (Chelidonichthys spinosus, houbou).

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Because the strong current, folks fish with pretty light lines with light drag setting to catch sometimes a big snapper that goes above 2.5 feet long. Typically this technique is used to fish shallows. But recent trend is to use it to fish deep sometime beyond 300 feet. To do this you have to use pretty heavy head of 300g etc. Anyways, I had a chance to try this technique where it was not really used in past. The result? Mixed. We could not find the large specimen red snappers (Pagrus major, Madai/Red seabream) that people covets there. What I had is shy of 2 feet which was nice but not crazy big that were anticipated. But we have landed so many different species of fish. It was fantastic that way.

Here are some landed. This was a pretty good quality Buri / Japanese amberjack (Seriola quinqueradiata). You probably heard of or ate Hamachi. This is a grown up one of those. Closely related to yellowtail of ours.
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This is the red snapper called Madai/Red seabream (Pagrus major). We have it as whole when we celebrate for something.
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Both of those are very tasty. My mother enjoyed them.
Next one is called Amadai/Japanese red horsehead tilefish (Branchiostegus japonicus). I have never seen this one in the US water. Again this is very tasty fish. (Thanks Makairaa for IDing it)
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Here are a cinnamon flounder (Pseudorhombus cinnamoneus) and a goby called sabihaze (Sagamia geneioima).

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A huge lizardfish (Macrolepis Tanaka, Brushtooth lizardfish)
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fish-ninja

Well-Known Member
#2
These are a type of grouper called Aohata or yellow grouper (Epinephelus awoara). Very popular fish to eat in Taiwan and China as well. They are very tasty as I made this nice chinese style dish.
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Here are the boat that took me out.
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The area we explored is a bay out of Shimanto river. This river is famed as the cleanest watered river in Japan.
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These are other fish that I do not know of names.
Note (6/11/2022): Thanks to EgoNonBaptizo and Makairaa, we got all ID done! This below is Unarmed Dwarf Monocle Bream/Tamagashira (Parascolopsis inermis)

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From left: Yellowbarred Red Rockfish/Ayamekasago (Sebastiscus albofasciatus) and Manybar Goatfish/Ojisan (Parupeneus multifasciatus). Thanks again EgoNonBaptizo!
 
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fish-ninja

Well-Known Member
#3
We tried to fish very rare barramundi in Japan called Akame/Japanese Lates (Lates japonicus). This is the only place that we can fish it legally in Japan. My friend is a pro of finding it. Despite my effort of course, the fish went to his rod not mine.
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While I am missing SoCal fishery as I bet it is getting hot by now, I will not complain having a shot to play with these nice creatures!
 
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Fishman Fishman

Well-Known Member
#5
Very interesting! Variety of colorful fish is great! Wondering if Japan practicing fish conservation efforts? Thank you for sharing. Keep having a good time with your family..
 

Makairaa

Well-Known Member
#6
Looks like a great trip. The Amadai looks related to tilefish which they catch off the east coast and in mexico. Although I did see one out of dana point last year. Last of the 3 unknown fish is a goatfish. Not sure of the rest.
 

fish-ninja

Well-Known Member
#10
Very interesting! Variety of colorful fish is great! Wondering if Japan practicing fish conservation efforts? Thank you for sharing. Keep having a good time with your family..
Thank you Mr. FF. Having a good time still is! As for the conservation efforts, it is a mixed bag. There is strong tradition of catch & eat here and folks are used to keep as many as they can. There is no official limit as per the number of keeping in general. So in this sense, pretty bad in terms of conservation. At the same time, there are anglers who are concerned and do a great work. I just went to a catch and release only stream for trout fishing. They are doing great to revive the water there. Similar projects are there for oceans too.
 

fish-ninja

Well-Known Member
#13
Looks like a great trip. The Amadai looks related to tilefish which they catch off the east coast and in mexico. Although I did see one out of dana point last year. Last of the 3 unknown fish is a goatfish. Not sure of the rest.
Ohhh, thank you Makairaa for your IDing. Tilefish it is. Do you know if they are eaten in the East Coast US and mexico? They are considered delicacy but not too easy to cook it. Those unknown ones, I know their Japanese names but I have not had a chance to run my ID work to find English names. Will share it once I manage it.
 

Makairaa

Well-Known Member
#14
Ohhh, thank you Makairaa for your IDing. Tilefish it is. Do you know if they are eaten in the East Coast US and mexico? They are considered delicacy but not too easy to cook it. Those unknown ones, I know their Japanese names but I have not had a chance to run my ID work to find English names. Will share it once I manage it.
They definitely eat the ones on the east coast. Not really targeted in mexico. The mexico ones look like local whitefish with a slightly different head.
 

EgoNonBaptizo

Well-Known Member
#15
The tilefish's scientific name is (Branchiostegus japonicus), FishBase lists it as "Horsehead Tilefish", as for the unknowns, I'll give them a shot:
Red banded fish: "Unarmed dwarf monocle bream" (Parascolopsis inermis)
Rockfish-like fish: "Yellowbarred red rockfish" (Sebastiscus albofasciatus) *not too sure about this, definitely some Sebastiscus spp.
Goatfish: Parupeneus spp. *I can't provide a definitive species ID since goatfish change color when stressed, but I can narrow it down to genus level.
 

fish-ninja

Well-Known Member
#17
The tilefish's scientific name is (Branchiostegus japonicus), FishBase lists it as "Horsehead Tilefish", as for the unknowns, I'll give them a shot:
Red banded fish: "Unarmed dwarf monocle bream" (Parascolopsis inermis)
Rockfish-like fish: "Yellowbarred red rockfish" (Sebastiscus albofasciatus) *not too sure about this, definitely some Sebastiscus spp.
Goatfish: Parupeneus spp. *I can't provide a definitive species ID since goatfish change color when stressed, but I can narrow it down to genus level.
I was going to ping you if I could not ID them so you beat me to it. :) My research pointed me to the same ID. Red banded fish has such an intriguing name. Japanese name of it is "Tamagashira". Once again you were spot on for the rockfish. They were yellowbarred red rockfish. Japanese name: Ayamekasago. The goatfish is most likely Manybar Goatfish (Parupeneus multifasciatus). Japanese name "Ojisan" which means an uncle. (guess all uncle here dons stash?). What I called hailbut is a cinammon flounder (Pseudorhombus cinnamoneus) and the goby looks to be one japanese called Sabihaze (Sagamia geneioima). Got scientific names of all so I will edit the above post to reflect it now.
 

scaryfish

Active Member
#18
Congratulations on your trip, Ninja. I have been to Kochi a few times for my work at the Kochi Core Lab at the University. Kochi is a beautiful and peaceful Prefecture, and I visited many great tackle shops there on my visit. I was able to visit some of the great trout fishing available there, and I ate all kinds of great seafood on my visits. I was not able to fish the ocean, so I am very jealous of your fishing success and the beautiful variety of fish you caught. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Also, a quick shout out to Ego and Makairra for their outstanding knowledge of fish I.D. Only one other guy knew as much. He was running around the world racking up numbers of species he caught. His name is escaping me at the moment, but you would enjoy his posts on the old board..