Brian....HELP!!

So, I'm looking at my Rockfsih cheat sheet and I have a question regarding some fish I caught at Carmel last year....

the 3 fish on the left side of the photo look like Olives to me....but looking at the cheat sheet, they look like yellowtails  Please advise.

Joel,

I would say those are olives, but I can't honestly tell you why I say that. 

The best way to tell the two apart would be to count the soft rays of the anal fin (olives have 9, yellow tails have 8 ) but I can't do that from this picture.

Other than that, every other diagnostic characteristic is fairly subjective.  These two species are really hard to tell apart, much, much harder than the black versus blue question.

I'll post a similar photo next time I catch a yellowtail up here so we can compare.  For some reason we get more yellowtails up here (Sonoma Coast) and  more olives down there (Monterey bay).

Brian

domo arigato amigo