as was always under the impression it had more to do with the type of bottoms they come off??? possibly different sex's im not sure mate but i do know they are breeding/spawning atm - we have a baldchin ban on up here (abrolhos islands only) for that reason. I do know one thing! both colours taste very very nice lol!

mmmm baldie burgers 

 i agree great on the tooth mate but i was pulling both coloured fish of the same ground and released all the darker baldies as they where smaller!all released well with a slow retrieve and release weight !

 haha well that stuffs my theory mate! lol you could be spot on with a sex change or something similar to the Blue Groper? I know they are totally different species different familys etc but i know the smaller ones are females and a browny colour and the larger ones males.

couple of quality baldies in ya pic too man! if your catching them on a consistent basis i think there will be a few jealous FW crew members looking for your launch site lol

Some nice baldies u got there German they would have to be my favourite eating fish by far just wondering if u could give me some advice on how flat coral looks on the sounder had the boat a year or two now but still only fish the hard reefy ground I've heard that there's some better fishing to be had on some of the flatter corraly ground but don't know what to look for on the sounder any advice would be much appreciated

Some good chewing there matey and great catching too I expect. Yep the smaller ones are definately females, Baldies along with pretty much the rest of the Wrasse (yep, Wrasse or Labrids) live in family groups mainly (not always but usually), consisting of one large male and a harem of females. If the Alpha male is removed the Alpha female then goes through process where she bulks up, changes colour and becomes the Alpha male. If this process occurs during the breeding season it can interrupt the breeding for the clan. Since I found this out when I fish Bluebone I release the big Blue boys and keep a couple of the green girls instead, I mainly fish shallow water for these so release is easy but I don't know if the Baldies embolise or not coming out of deeper water, something to think about when getting into them anyway.

 next time im out ill take some photos of the flat coral and post them up, to give you a idea on what to look for ,will be easyer than trying to explain!,i tend to only fish the flat coral these days !

 next time im out ill take some photos of the flat coral and post them up, to give you a idea on what to look for ,will be easyer than trying to explain!,i tend to only fish the flat coral these days !

cheers mate that would be great have u tried the soft plstics on the baldies we have found the chartruese mcarthy gets the baldies attention. We've caught a few on them

Then it would be very odd to get two males in close proximity - whilst they are called a groper I thought they belonged to tusk fish genus - whenever you see blue groper there is only ever a single large blue with a harem of green coloured females - catch the blue and the dominant female literally changes sex and colour almost overnight but only ever the one. 

And I have regularly caught both colours over the same ground but there again have caught deep red coloured snapper and really pink ones of similar ground on the same day - cant figure it ??

 My theory of the darker being smaller ,tim77 post has a cracker of a baldie and it dark in colour must be just the darkness of the ground there in, but that doesnt help me as i have gotten both colours off the same ground the last couple of trips ,maybe its breeding season and they group together for a few months and then move off to there regular haunts,that my explain why there together at the moment ?May be some of the regular divers on here can tell us what they see this time of the year!