Best site for Giant Black Sea Bass

[jddgfd]

Hello all!

I was wondering if there are any favorite or more popular sites to see the giant black sea bass? I have dove a few sites around catalina and have not encountered this fish yet and is one of the fish I am most interested in seeing. I have not dove Casino Point yet but have done other dives off boats in the area. Any help to find where I may see this fish would be great!

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Goat Harbor/Italian Gardens (Catalina)
La Jolla Cove
Star of Scotland (Santa Monica)
Landing Craft (Palos Verdes)
You'll have better luck in Late July to early September.

 

[Incident]

I am 7 for 7 at Goat Harbor.

Sort of sick of that site, but those big fishes are really cool.

 

[drbill]

Unfortunately, in my experience the more contact the giant sea bass have with some divers (the ones who touch them, chase after them, flash strobes at them, etc.) the less likely they are to hang around for extended periods (year-to-year). We used to have regular sightings in the Casino Point Dive Park, Lover's Cove and Italian Gardens but those sightings have diminished over the past 15 years due I suspect to frequent encounters with humans. The fish that normally congregated in those sites have moved on (the Italian Gardens group probably to Goat Harbor).

Another factor in sightings recently has been the warm water. When we did a one hour documentary on the fish for Japan's public TV network (NHK), it was a warm water year and we were finding them at depths of 80-100 fsw near where the thermocline sat. This past season I think the same thing happened. I had relatively few sightings of them, I think in part because I was staying at shallower depths to increase bottom time.