Pacific creolefish in Los Cabos

How to recognize it

A slender, spindle-shaped fish with a small head, a short snout and a strongly forked tail. Adults are greenish brown on the back and reddish below, with reddish fins. Along the back there are about five small white or blue-white spots: two or three under the rear of the dorsal fin and two on the side of the tail base. The base of the pectoral fin is red with a bright blue spot in the armpit. Young fish are often bright yellow, sometimes gray, with a row of five small dark spots on the back.

Biology

The Pacific creolefish lives only in the tropical eastern Pacific, from southern Baja and the central Gulf of California to Peru, including the Revillagigedo, Clipperton, Cocos, Malpelo and Galápagos islands. It is a resident of rocky reefs from the surface down to about 120 m and is commonly seen at dive depths around Cabo San Lucas.

It feeds in midwater, often in large schools well above the reef, and dives back into the rocks when danger comes close. It eats mainly small plankton, picked one at a time; its short snout gives it good close-range binocular vision for that job. Unlike many relatives in the grouper family, it does not change sex: a study of 1,541 fish off Jalisco found separate males and females, two spawning periods a year (March to June and November to December) and maturity at about 27 cm.

Seeing them from the boat

The Pacific creolefish is mostly a fish for snorkelers and divers. Around Los Cabos it hangs in schools above rocky reefs and points, and it is easy to watch from the surface on a clear day. It is not a sport-fish target.

It feeds on plankton, so it is hooked only now and then by people fishing small baits near the reef. FishBase notes it is used mostly as bait and in subsistence fisheries, and off Jalisco it is landed in the commercial catch. If you keep one, the general daily limit applies. Sport fishing is not allowed inside Cabo Pulmo National Park.

On the table

Edible. It is landed in commercial and subsistence fisheries, though FishBase lists it mainly as bait. FishBase also lists reports of ciguatera poisoning for this species.

Rules & conservation

A reef and dive fish. Not protected, but not a sport-fish target.

Don't confuse it with

The scissortail chromis (Azurina atrilobata) also schools in midwater over Cabo's reefs, but it is much smaller (up to 13 cm), metallic gray, with a single white spot below the end of the dorsal fin and a black streak in each tail lobe. The Pacific red snapper (Lutjanus peru) is red too, but it is a bigger, deeper-bodied bottom fish with a larger mouth and no row of white spots on the back. The Pacific graysby (Cephalopholis panamensis), the only other Cephalopholis in the region, stays on the bottom, has a rounded tail and about nine dark bars across its body.

Questions

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

Sources

• Smithsonian Shorefishes of the Eastern Pacific: Cephalopholis colonus
• FishBase: Cephalopholis colonus
• Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes: Serranus colonus
• WoRMS: Cephalopholis colonus
• Reef Life Survey: Pacific creole-fish
• Florent's Guide to the Eastern Pacific Reefs: Pacific creolefish (Cabo San Lucas)
• The ETYFish Project: Cephalopholis
• Lucano-Ramírez et al. 2022, reproduction of P. colonus off Jalisco (Ciencias Marinas)
• Villarreal-Cavazos et al. 2000, fishes of Cabo Pulmo reef (Rev. Biol. Trop.)
• FishBase: barberfish (Johnrandallia nigrirostris)
• Smithsonian Shorefishes of the Eastern Pacific: scissortail chromis
• Smithsonian Shorefishes of the Eastern Pacific: Pacific graysby
• NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010, 2019 annex (DOF)
• NOM-017-PESC-1994, 2013 amendment (DOF)

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