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Sardini, Lacepede, 1880
Bonito is a saltwater fish and found across the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the United States. One can easily find them on Vancouver Island, which is located at 76 miles of Vancouver. The place can be easily reached by car or ferry in 4 hours from here. It is one and a half-hour drive from Victoria and 2 hours drive from Nanaimo. Bonitos can be found along the shores of Baja California also, which is located 170 miles from San Diego and can be reached within an hour. The fish is widely available in inshore coastal waters of the entire British Columbia.
Types of fish that can be found
Fishermen chum the waters and drag them easily to the boat while using boat fishing, and hence, it is easy for beginners to catch these. Sometimes anglers get a lot of small bait fishes from the mouth of the Bonitos they catch which are reused as baits.
Type of fishing that can be done at the location
Mostly offshore fishing in boats or drift fishing and bow fishing is used for the best catch as far as Bonito is concerned. A combination of trolling and live bait techniques of fishing are used to catch multiple fishes using single bait as these are found in schools.
A medium-sized catch can be somewhere between 4 to 8 pounds, and a huge catch can be around 20 pounds. These have silvery bellies and striped backs and can grow up to 30 inches. A small fish attains maximum growth within a span of 1 or two years. In places where the sea waters are cold, good growth is reported, and a world record stands at 18 pounds. A healthy fish of 75 cm can easily weigh 15 pounds, and that is why it is the most preferred catch of anglers.
In Southern California, one can see these in abundance and anglers catch them easily even from shores. It is easy to find them in and around the shores of New York City.They invade warm water in large numbers and are found between Magdalena Bay and point conception in California. These are found on both east as well as west coastal areas of the Gulf of Alaska in US.
These are typically saltwater species and live in the shallow waters of Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Black sea where depth is not more than 15 feet. These love cool, inshore, coastal waters with a shallow reef where they can easily feed on a large number of baitfishes. Headlands and coastal rock walls are the places where they reside in large numbers. These hatch in large numbers in brackish river waters where the river meets the sea.
These prey on mackerel, menhaden, alewives, silversides, sand lances, and squid. Small fishes are commonly used as bait to attract the large schools of Bonitos. Small lures of 10-20 cms which are hard-bodied can serve as an effective lure for catching this fish. Flashy lures easily attract this fish, and anglers use live yellowtail, blue and scaly mackerel, whiting and small herring as live baits.