Parrotfish on dropshot

[okkiebutler]

  I caught this Parrotfish on soft plastic at Nascer do Sol, Mozambique. I was standing on a reef and  almost finished retrieving my line when it came up from the rocks and grabbed the lure in the shallow water right in front of me. That was quite exciting! I had lots of difficulty identifying the species from books, but in the end my son - in - law got it from google. It is an Australian Parrot Fish. I released it after taking some pics. I was wondering if these are often caught on dropshot?

[Kumz]

 

[John F]

Nice pic... don't think it's a parrotfish... looks more like a wrasse... I would say it's the surge wrasse (aka rainbow wrasse) Thalassoma purpureum

http://www.fishbase.org/summary/speciessummary.php?id=5647

Nice catch!

[SAfish]

  Great catch, that is one of the most beautiful fish I have ever seen!

[REEFMAN]

Ya the prettiest fish in the sea... JohnF is right, it's a Surge Wrasse... commonly caught on reefs in the North Coast KZN.

[Fritz]

Nice fish you got bud.

The easiest way to know the dif is looking at its mouth. Teeth- Wras and it has a beack like a parrot it is a parrot fish.
None the less still a good catch.

[fedu]

The Parrotfish are shy feeders but Franz BluFlu got this ideia of targeting them on Berkley Crabs with small hooks it worked he and Nepps got several this last trip.

But that one looking at the mouth does not look like a parrot.

Beatifull fish you got there

[okkiebutler]

Yes, I agree, this looks like the Wrasse! Thanks for the info.

[WalkersKiller]

Superb catch Okkie well done, def a Rainbow Wrasse they are not a common catch on DS but it is not unusual to get them on DS! Well done buddy 

[E.T.]

Here is a pic of a Parrotfish note the Parrot-Like Mouth. This beak-like mouth will bite straight through hooks and are only landed successfully when hooked in the corner of the mouth. 
These are regularly caught on fly using crab imitations fished static. Won't be long when someone do catch one of these on dropshot. They feed static with the tails normally sticking out the water and once hooked they shoot off like a rocket. First few runs are very powerful...

[deezynking]

yoh! thats 1 hige parrot fish. i alwas seem to see the smaller species or catch them..
@OB... thats a beautiful coloured fish.... mesmerising. well done mate 

[fedu]

... Won't be long when someone do catch one of these on dropshot. ...

Beautifull fish.

Franz got 5 and Andre 1 on dropshot this last trip

The fly guys had a ball, caught many.

But a slighty diferent species, took this pic while snorkeling

[okkiebutler]

  Wow! Great fish. Very interesting. What kind of fly can one use for them? Show me a picture if you can, because I don't know the names. Those teeth look quite human!

[E.T.]

These should work






These were tied by MC

[fedu]

Actually MC changed those to a smaller version that he says work even better, he landed several in this trip

[okkiebutler]

  Thanks for the pics of the "flies". I'm gonna try it out as soon as I can find some. By the way, there seems to be a confusion over the identification of Parrotfish vs Wrasse. If you look under "wrasse" in Wikipedia there is a pc that looks a lot like the big one above. They call it the Humphead wrasse.  Do you think parrotfish could be related to Wrasses.

[J-Rock]

Surge Wrasse for sure.... Nice catch