Colorado snapper in Los Cabos

How to recognize it

Dark red body and fins with a pink belly. The rows of scales above the lateral line run parallel to it, the soft dorsal and anal fins are pointed, and the tail edge is nearly straight. Young fish can show faint dusky bars.

Biology

Adults live alone on rocky reefs over hard bottom, from 1 to about 90 m deep, from southern California (rare north of Baja) through the Gulf of California to Panama, and around the Galápagos, Cocos and Malpelo islands. Juveniles grow up in shallow coastal water and estuaries, close to mangrove roots.

Adults feed mostly at night, and about 85% of their food is crustaceans: shrimp, crabs and sometimes only mantis shrimp. In captivity in Mazatlán, broodstock spawned on their own from June to October; the floating eggs, 0.77 mm across, hatch in about 17 hours. FishBase rates the species' resilience as low: a population needs 4.5 to 14 years to double.

How it's caught in Los Cabos

Around Los Cabos, local reports describe pargo colorado on the rock piles off the bottom, often mixed with other snappers, and closer to shore in early summer. Most of Cabo's snappers live in the first 60 m (200 ft) of water.

They're caught on live or cut bait near the rocks and on yo-yo jigs. Like any snapper, the first run goes for cover, so it takes firm drag and a strong leader.

On the table

A prized food fish with firm white fillets and a high market price, sold fresh or frozen.

Rules, records & conservation

Don't confuse it with

Pargo prieto is grey-brown to copper with eight or nine dusky bars, rounded fins and grows much larger. Pargo amarillo turns bright yellow-orange. Huachinango (Lutjanus peru) is silvery pink with a concave tail. To add to the confusion, "huachinango" is also used for the pargo colorado in parts of Mexico.

Questions

By Max VargasTop Anglers, Cabo San Lucas · international judge at big game fishing world championships · reviewed October 2026

Sources

• FishBase: Lutjanus colorado
• Smithsonian Shorefishes of the Eastern Pacific
• Rojas 1997, biology in the Gulf of Nicoya
• Santamaría-Miranda et al. 2005, diet in Sinaloa
• Abdo-de la Parra et al. 2014, spawning in captivity
• Domínguez-Contreras et al. 2023, larval description (J. Fish Biol.)
• IGFA: world records, March 2023
• NOM-017-PESC-1994, 2013 amendment (DOF)
• Gordo Banks Pangas fishing reports

Top illustration: Top Anglers. Photos: iNaturalist contributors, credited on each photo.