Posted by: 1000fish | March 3, 2025

The Redondo Beach Boys

DATELINE: APRIL 28, 2024 – REDONDO BEACH, CALIFORNIA

I had been home from Australia for nearly a week, so, as you can understand, I was itchy to go fishing. Species opportunities near my house are limited, but Southern California still has quite a few opportunities, especially in deep water. This is not something that most charter boats will do, so this is where the species hunting social network comes into play.

I am not an especially internet-savvy person – this blog represents my entire social media presence. Facebook is just an open invitation for that old girlfriend from Columbus to stalk me, and no one wants to see me on TikTok. But Marty Arostegui, who I met at an IGFA event in 2011, introduced me to Martini, who introduced me to Ben Cantrell, who introduced me to Chris Moore, who introduced me to Vince in Santa Cruz, who happened to know a guy named Zach, a species hunter in Redondo Beach who specializes in the deep water canyon-type stuff. We had chatted a bit – ON THE PHONE, like people used to do in the good old days – and we set a weekend for late April when we could try one day on kayaks and one day on a boat. To my great delight, Chris Moore, who had no family responsibilities for part of the weekend, would be able to join us for the kayak portion of the adventure.

The drive down is always broken up with lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in the universe, The Willow Ranch BBQ in Buttonwillow.

The best pulled pork west of the Mississippi.

At the time, Zach was 16 years old, but unusually wise for his age. He really has the species hunting bug and had acquired an amazing amount of knowledge about his local fish. I got into town in the evening, and it hit me that I had never actually seen a picture of this young man, but I figured he would be the only person waiting at the Redondo Beach Yacht Club gate when I texted him as I was pulling up.

Heading down to the water. I’d seen this sign a hundred times on TV, but never in person.

As it turns out, Zach is not only an unusually experienced fisherman for his age, he is also unusually hairy. I was waiting for some teenager, and up walks a dude with a Grizzly Adams beard who I would have guessed at 32 years old. But it was Zach. What do they feed these kids?

That’s a 16 year-old on the right. Jeez.

That’s Zach just a couple of years ago, shortly after his last known haircut.

We should get it out of the way that I had never fished from a kayak previously. (Collective gasp.) Fishing is hard enough without having to add an athletic event to it, especially when that athletic event involves paddling 230 pounds of me around on shoulders that might have one rotator cuff between them – giving up home runs is harder work than you would think. Chris was equally thrilled, but he had a bunch of targets and figured Advil could take care of the rest.

We set out early in the morning, and it was relatively flat, but even a small swell gives you a strong reminder of exactly how close to the water you are. We messed around inshore for maybe an hour, and Chris added a couple of species. I got a nice sarcastic fringehead, one of my favorite fish names and one of my least favorite fish to de-hook.

Do NOT put this in your pants.

We then set out for the deep water, three miles out. I know this doesn’t sound far, but after a mile, I knew I would not be able to brush my teeth in the morning. I tried to keep up with Zach, which made it worse – Chris set a more leisurely pace and stuck to it, so he got there in less pain.

After what seemed like an eternity but was really more like 5280 yards, Zach told us we were at the spot and to bait up. Nothing complex, just squid on a two-hook bottom rig, with a pound of weight to get us down around 800 feet. The targets were varied – assorted cusk-eels, and various rockfish, especially the surprisingly elusive Mexican rockfish. Fishing and controlling drift was quite a chore, although Zach made it look effortless. (I think he turned his beard into the wind to keep him in place.)

On my very first drop, I got a solid bite and started the lengthy process of dragging something up 800 feet. I had plenty of time to think hopeful thoughts about what it could be, but I was also keenly aware that if it had been much bigger, I would have had trouble keeping my balance on the kayak. Somewhere during the reeling process, Chris caught up to us and started fishing as well. Just as my AC joint was about to give out completely, I saw the flash of a fish beneath me. I carefully lifted it up onto the kayak, and it was – finally – a no-doubt-about-it Mexican rockfish, species 2281.

A new species I had expected to catch last year. You can tell that Zach was in shape for paddling, as he could lift his arm without screaming.

The slightest of breezes had started to pick up, and this was our signal to return to port. This was three more miles of shoulder-killing paddling, especially because I tried to go fast, although I did turn around now and then to pretend to look for Chris. He got there, at a much more thoughtful, measured pace, but I’ll bet you he still had an evening full of Advil.

We spent the rest of the afternoon hunting the harbor for assorted whatsits, and somewhere in there, I failed to catch a reef finspot yet again. When I finally catch one, I am going to put it in a tank, fly to Hawaii immediately, and use it for spearfish bait. After we finished for the day, Chris and I ate a prodigious amount of Chick-fil-a, and then he had to head back to Arizona.

By the time I got up the next day, it felt like months had passed. I grabbed my deepwater gear, and secure in the knowledge I would not have to paddle myself, I met Zach at the harbor and we walked over to meet John, a local fisherman Zach has known since before the beard.

That’s John. Yes, he is really that tall.

John, a pleasant, affable guy, loves to fish but is not burdened by our OCD species obsession. We went out maybe 10 miles, which was really fast not in a kayak, and started looking for particular reefs that Zach had marked for various exotic rockfish. It was a bit sloppy out there, but this was the day I was there, and John was very patient and skilled driving the boat to hold over a particular reef. If things went well, we wouldn’t be there very long.

There was one main target – the blackgill rockfish, and a secondary shot at a pink. We set up in some insanely deep water – around 1400′, and let the rigs fly. It’s a long, long way down, and this gives you time to think about how long it’s going to take to reel back up, especially if you don’t have a fish.

The blackgills were cooperative – I got one on my second drop. They weren’t huge – these can get close to 10 pounds, but I was thrilled with a deepwater Sebastes.

Note the Ferguson hat. I think of Dom with almost every new species.

I wouldn’t say I’m any more technically proficient than the average species angler, but I do have a weird gift for catching stuff that my hosts have never caught. It’s not like I can do it on purpose, and I know I would be annoyed if someone did it to me, but the Fish Gods taketh away, and occasionally, they giveth.

We were fishing for pink rockfish, which are frustratingly difficult to differentiate from greenblotched rockfish. Indeed, the most reliable way to tell them apart is by gill raker shape, which requires disassembling the fish. I got to the bottom in around 1000 feet, and boom, I was hooked into something big. I use 30# line for most deep dropping. and whatever it was took a few runs before I budged it out of the rocks and started the long reel up.

Zach fully expected a pink, and I had my fingers crossed. As we finally got to the leader, Zach leaned over the rail, looked down in the water, and said something that would have gotten him thrown out of a baseball game. All I heard was “bronze.”

The fish was a bronzespotted rockfish, a deepwater rarity that he had never seen in person and that I only faintly recalled from books. John was certainly surprised, but Zach kept asking “How did you do that?”

I felt awful, but not too awful. The species is protected, so we immediately descended it with our best wishes.

About half an hour later, after Zach caught a definite pink, I got a fish that looked to be one, but in working with some very reputable scientists, namely Dr. Milton Love of UC Santa Barbara, who is THE source on these things, it could not be confirmed. I had photographed the wrong part of the gill rakers, and would have to wait for another trip.

I was sure this was a pink. Science is sometimes disappointing.

We also got a few small sablefish – you typically have to be very deep for these, although my first one was caught in bizarrely shallow water.

These sorts of things keep me up at night. Still, I was up three very important species, and I still had a day to go, albeit further north. Zach and I got into the car for what I’m sure was a very long 90 minutes for him, although many people do appreciate my college sports stories. We were heading to Ventura, to meet Jacob, which would give me a pier day to try for some assorted odds and ends I hadn’t caught there. The pier had been mixed luck for me – I got my first queenfish there, but that cost me a shopping spree for Marta.

Jacob had been busy. This is his first thresher, and yes, he got it from a wharf.

Conditions were not optimal for some of the smaller stuff I wanted. It was breezy and the surf was high, so looking for finspots, for example, was out of the question. There was also the possibility of a California pompano, which is more of a bumper or butterfish-looking thing, which I somehow missed over the years. Jacob thought they were fairly common, so I spent the morning tossing baited sabikis and catching squillions of shiner surfperch.

I decided to take a break for an irresponsible lunch at Wienerschnitzel, consuming two chili cheese dogs that made me not want to be in the car with myself. Then, after a shower and brief old person nap at the hard-to-recommend Ventura Holiday Inn, I was back at the pier. The resident gang there were a lot of fun – on the pier from dawn to dark, throwing big live baits waiting for that home run white seabass, halibut, or thresher shark. They had all caught pompano – and used them for bait – so they didn’t quite understand why I was fishing for them.

It was late in the day when I got a bite that seemed somehow different from all the shiner perch bites. As soon as the rig cleared the water, I could see I had a pompano on the line, but Ventura pier is some 30 feet above the water, which meant that I could not unclench my buttocks until after the four seconds, which seemed like an hour, it took to get the fish over the rail.

The fourth species of a very productive trip.

I spent the evening in the harbor with the guys, drinking Pepsis and just fishing for fun.

I gave up around 11 and they were still going strong.

I did get my personal best queenfish, but mostly, it was great to just be one of the guys and reel in a fish now and then. Both of them are far more knowledgeable than I was at twice their age, so the future of the sport is in good hands.

Steve

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Posted in More than 2000, North America

Posted by: 1000fish | February 23, 2025

Aloha ‘Oe

DATELINE: JANUARY 18, 2025 – OAHU NORTH SHORE, HAWAII

It was a small gathering of close family and friends, in a beautiful corner of Oahu, but we were there for a very sad occasion. Although my sight was a bit dimmed, I could look just a few hundred yards down the beach and see Goat Island, the first place I ever fished with Wade Hamamoto. Just a few hundred yards south, and 25 years distant, we were both still young, fearless, and catching chub after chub, not worrying about whatever was lurking in the chest-high slog back to the mainland and worrying even less about what that triple-bacon pizza was going to do to our intestines. It was only a few hundred yards, but half a lifetime away – so close but just out of reach.

Steve and Wade, a lifetime ago. That’s Goat Island behind us.

The same spot, January 18, 2025.

I never wanted to write this post, but here we are. I deliberately didn’t say anything during the holidays, because I wanted everyone to have a great Christmas, but now it’s January and I have to grapple with Wade Hamamoto being gone.

We knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. When he passed away last November 30th, it was the end of a difficult journey that was intensely private. Wade didn’t want anyone to know he was ill, and he’d be annoyed at me for telling you now, but it’s the only way to put some context around losing one of the best fishing buddies I’ve ever been blessed with.

2024, if I may say, was a shit year for this sort of thing. Dom Porcelli, a kindred spirit and one of the few people who would fish later than me, passed away suddenly in February. Pastor Mike Channing, the limitlessly decent man of faith and expert on rough fish, passed away in September. And then this news came. I wanted to just throw in the towel on Christmas and sit and watch “Brian’s Song” over and over, but that would be completely dishonoring a man who found joy in every day. He just didn’t have enough of them.

From the time he was a kid, Wade didn’t get dealt a good hand health-wise, and stuff started to go seriously wrong about five years ago. When I visited in 2021, I actually thought it was to say goodbye, but he hung in there a few more years, because any moment he could get out onto the beach, any moment he could spend with Jamie, any moment he could spend just watching the wind and the waves, he was content. We are both completely emotionally retarded, and even when Jamie tried to give us some alone time to talk through the fact we knew he wasn’t going to live long, all we managed was some mumbling and then a discussion about the best baits for threadfin.

We did manage to eat five pounds of prime rib.

I met Wade in 1997, when he was a limo driver in Honolulu. I had fewer than 80 species and had barely fished outside the US. Shockingly, the trip wasn’t for fishing, but we got talking and he promised to take me out the next time I visited. We had a few missed connections, and my ex-wife was never thrilled at the idea of me taking a day out on the water, one of the many reasons that the “ex” crept into her title. Wade and I finally got out on May 3, 2000, wading out to that small island on the north shore and catching the heck out of chubs, none of which, of course, were the highfin.

From that stage, it was a constant race to get to Oahu and to find new stuff I hadn’t caught. We found ourselves trudging across miles of beach after bonefish, crawling around suspicious outflow pipes in the middle of the night after morays, up at 4am to get parking at the prized “preserve” spot (because it’s NEAR a preserve, so calm down,) and in some desolate harbor after midnight because a trumpetfish kept showing up. We targeted anything from huge GT to minute gobies, and took pride in every catch large and small. Wade became family very quickly, and we stayed close the rest of his life.

Fairly quickly, a new face showed up in the car. A small, cute face, (nearly) impossible to hate, even as she grew into Jamie and started catching things I still can’t dream of getting. Even as a toddler, she was smarter and had more common sense than Wade and I combined. Jamie was the center of Wade’s universe. He wrote his own eulogy, because he probably didn’t want me to get too gushy, but part of it spoke of the day Jamie was born – “Now let me go on and tell you about my best day … the best was when my daughter Jamie was born. I don’t know if it was love at first sight or I don’t know but everything changed when she was born. I never loved or cared about anything more. My goal as she was growing up was to prove it. It’s easy to say I love her and care for her but someone from the outside looking in, could they prove it from what I was saying and doing. I wanted it to be real and it is. To this day, that is the love of my life.”

Father and daughter, back when she was little and cute.

Apart from pushing her to be the best student she could be, which made her valedictorian of everything from kindergarten onward, their thing was fishing together. Day or night, rain or shine, fish or no fish. I’m not close to my father, but he did introduce me to fishing, so bless him for that. Still, Wade and Jamie fished together more in an average week than I did with my dad lifetime. It gives me joy to see a great father in action, and Wade gave everything a dad could.

Jamie became as much a part of the fishing excursions as the malasadas, and I got the chance to watch her grow up.

Malasadas. Like a donut, but better.

Some of my most difficult Hawaiian species were caught under her tutelage, and I like to kid myself that I helped her a little bit as well. But as much as I’d like to think I helped her with world records, it was always suspicious that the moment I caught a Hawaiian fish record, she would break it quickly, almost like she was courteously waiting for me to set it first.

Our first boat trip together, July 2006. I caught my first picasso triggerfish that day. Wade got brutally seasick, but never said a word. Well, he did say one word; “Bleeeeeargh.”

Marta and Jamie became fast friends, because they both enjoy giving me a hard time.

In 2008, we explored the eastern part of the island, and I got to fight my first bonefish. Jamie handed it off to me, and I promptly broke the line like an idiot.

Moments before the disaster.

Moments after the disaster.

Steve and Jamie with matching humuhumunukunukuapaas, 2008. I call this place “The Aquarium Spot” because I can’t pronounce the Hawaiian name.

Wade with a custom-made stealth handline, useful for bonefish in places where swimmers might complain about a rod.

One of our favorite spots was Heeia, a pier north of Honolulu that always seemed to have something new to catch.

Wade at Heeia, 2010, moments before my first undulate moray.

It wasn’t long before Jamie was setting world records on her own and winning IGFA honors, like top female saltwater angler in 2014.

One of the group photos at the 2014 IGFA annual awards. You might recognize a few other faces in there.

Wade introduced her, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man more proud.

Marta and Jamie discussing that I had never caught an angelfish.

Jamie and her trophy.

Not that I’m pointlessly competitive, but I did win two that year.

The whole gang out for dinner in Miami. Marty Arostegui generously took us fishing the next day, and Jamie caught a Caesar grunt just to be mean to me.

On the way out to the reefs in Florida. Jamie is smiling because Wade is about to be profoundly seasick.

Jamie picked on him ruthlessly.

There were some other great trips in Honolulu after that. In 2016, they organized an awesome long weekend that saw me get a few of the more difficult targets, especially – FINALLY – my lagoon triggerfish.

I caught it on Wade’s rod. He knew where they were and the exact rig to use.

Father and daughter, at some restaurant that served mostly Spam, 2017.

A nice porcupinefish, Heeia, 2017. Wade guided me to the record on this species in 2010, up in Haleiwa, shortly before we ate all the bacon at Pizza Bob’s. All of it.

I had planned to visit in 2020, but Covid put a cramp in that, and then, in 2021, there were some hints that Wade’s health was slipping. Wade would let on that he had a cold, but Jamie quietly let me know things were a lot more serious. I got on a plane, knowing it was pretty much to say goodbye.

Family portrait, 2021.

At Heeia, 2021, trying to talk Jamie into going back for more malasadas.

Our last photo together, near Goat Island. According to Jamie, we look like a couple of idiots dressed up as ketchup and mustard for Halloween.

We kept in close touch via text and phone for the next few years. There were fish pictures back and forth, especially when Jamie caught something rare and wonderful. There were discussions of trips, and perhaps the occasional mention of not feeling well. But there was certainly never anything about what we meant to each other, because that would involve discussing feelings, and both of us would rather eat glass than discuss feelings.

Christmas 2023. Jamie is still looking for an orange filefish ornament to put on the tree.

Jamie kept me up to date on how things were really going. It got bad in late 2023, and 2024 was up and down. He still got out to the water a few times, and Jamie treasured every one of them. His last fishing trip was November 1, 2024. But just after Thanksgiving, things went south in a hurry. I woke up to a call from Jamie on November 30. He was gone. I thought back to Goat Island in 2000, and every trip since then, and I went into the back yard and cried my eyes out.

On January 18, we gathered on the North Shore to say goodbye. A small group of family and friends drove up to a beach, a place Jamie picked more or less at random, because there are hundreds of spots throughout the island that would be sacred to them. It just happened she chose Goat Island.

The group. Mostly family, one friend from high school, and some white guy from the mainland.

Jamie had his ashes, packaged in a water-soluble container. (With a malasada tucked in the wrapper.) She just needed to walk him out into the surf and let him go. She was, by far, the most composed person there, and she eased into the water, waded out chest-high, and committed her father back to the ocean. We watched the package sink, then slowly disappear.

Wade would forever be in the ocean he loved.

Wade lived life with joy every day, and a profound acceptance of his own mortality. “Anyone who cries at my funeral didn’t really know me that well.” I screwed that one up. I hope he’ll forgive me.

It goes without saying that Jamie, and one of her uncles, brought along some light surf gear. I am not a big believer in the supernatural, but exactly six minutes after the scattering, Jamie’s rod slammed down hard. She raced over and set the hook, and whatever it was put up a determined fight. It was a bonefish, one of Wade’s favorite fish, and she quietly landed and released it.

If Wade was going to send us a message, that would have been it.

We spent the rest of the day wandering the island, fishing occasionally, and visiting some of the required spots like Matsumoto’s Shave Ice in Haleiwa.

Jamie actually knows Stan Matsumoto, who owns the place.

Marta had to go home that very night, but I decided to go over to Kona and not catch a spearfish. I brought Jamie along, so I could fish with a great friend and she could get away from home for a few days.

As always, my go-to guy in Kona is Captain Dale Leverone on the Sea Strike. Conditions weren’t perfect, as there had been a bad west wind that made the water murky, but it was still great to see Dale and crew.

Steve, Jamie, Dale, and deckhand Dean.

We trolled. And we trolled. And we trolled. There was a spearfish caught somewhere not too far away, which gave me brief hope, but it was not to be. Bottom fishing was also a bit slow that first day, but fish were caught, and we still had a day ahead of us.

We enjoyed excellent local cuisine and an afternoon on the town pier, but the roiled-up conditions made it slower than normal. We still got plenty of reef creatures, but nothing unusual.

One restaurant I have to recommend is Jackie Rey’s, my hands-down favorite on the island. This is the owner, Chad, and if you only get one meal in Kona, make it here.

Perhaps, someday, I will come to understand the law of diminishing returns, but let’s face it, I was still fishing on a pier in Hawaii. That made me happy briefly, until I got broken off multiple times by big surgeonfish.

Sunset at Kona pier.

I will never use AI to write anything, but if I had, it would have spit out “Steve didn’t catch a spearfish on day two either.” There were three caught on Kona that day, and brutally, two of them were on a boat that Jack was working.

We did get some interesting creatures bottom fishing, including some nice surgeonfish.

Jamie and a solid yellowfin surgeon. While I’m sure her sun hat is practical, it kind of reminds me of the “cone of shame” you put on a cat after surgery.

I got a nice Hawaiian hogfish, although it wasn’t even close to Jamie’s world record.

Well into overtime, I had a big hit and battled what I presumed was a small amberjack to the surface, where it turned out to be a positively enormous bridled triggerfish. It looked bigger than the stupidly big one I caught in South Africa, so I put it on the Boga. It was 3.25 pounds – a new world record, and some redemption for my angling dignity.

Record 242.

Jamie and I spent the rest of the afternoon hammering the pier. The morning was beautiful – the water had cleared, and I got the assortment of tropicals that had made so many great memories here. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been blogging when I caught most of these for the first time, so someday, when we’re both really bored, I’ll do some retrospectives.

Tobies are always fun to catch.

The smallest scrawled filefish we have ever seen.

A saber squirrelfish – a rarity that usually comes out of deep water.

We had a few hours to fish in the morning, and, mostly because there is a fine line between optimism and stupidity that I have never grasped, I went out with high hopes. The saddle wrasses were out in force, but alas, nothing new would bite. Jamie kept herself busy on butterflyfish, and I kept reminding myself that I had over a dozen species and several world records from this very spot.

In order to make my flight, I knew I would need to be back up to my room at 11, so as it got later in the morning, I began to accept that this was not going to be my day. Then Jamie did that thing that she does best, always preceded by those dreaded words “What’s this one?” She had caught a shy filefish, another creature I had never seen in person. I remained calm.

I reminded myself she couldn’t have done it on purpose. Or could she?

Before I was fully finished hiding my rage from the filefish, she pulled up a wrasse that wasn’t quite anything I’d ever seen. It was a five-line wrasse, so-called because I wrote five lines of obscenities when I texted an unsympathetic Marta about the situation.

Oh, #$@*&($%@ing $#%@. Seriously?

So there we were, in an hour, where Jamie, using the same rigs and the same bait as me, caught two more things I don’t have. As I struggled for something clever yet spiteful to say, it occurred to me that somewhere, Wade was laughing his ass off. And that made me smile.

She also got an octopus, which was safely released.

A few hours later, we were both in the air heading to our respective homes. I knew Jamie would be ok – she always is. She had some good family around her, some good friends, and just gotten her dream job – as a liaison between the NOAA and the Hawaiian fishing industry – and would be starting in a few weeks.

I thought back to 2021 and that meal Wade and I had. We could have sat at that table for a month and never gotten around to a real discussion about feelings and mortality, and I’m not about to start now. But one thing I did say to him before I left, and one thing I will say now, is thank you.

Thank you for over twenty-five years of friendship, for dozens of days on the water, for my first fish in Hawaii, for nearly a hundred species and an assortment of records, for introducing me to malasadas at 5am and triple-bacon pizza at midnight, for showing me every corner of the beautiful island that was his home, for being the brother I didn’t have and letting me borrow the daughter I never had. There will never be another Wade, but there is a Jamie, and she will always be a part of our family.

Aloha ‘Oe, Wade. Until we meet again.

Steve

Wade Hamamoto 1963-2024.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by: 1000fish | February 1, 2025

A Very Lost, Very Terrible Towel

DATELINE: APRIL 8, 2024 – EXMOUTH, AUSTRALIA

We were halfway through our Exmouth adventure, and the scoreboard looked good. I had eight species and four world records thus far (20 and five for the overall trip,) and we still had two full days to go.

We changed boats for those last two days, and headed out with Captain Corry and deckhand Mitch of Exmouth Fishing Adventures. These guys had been highly recommended, and they did not disappoint.

That’s Corry next to David, and Mitch with the blue baseball cap. Spoiler alert – these guys were awesome. If you’re going to travel this far to go fishing, fish with them.

The first picture I saw of Mitch, from the website. I’m not sure which croaker it is, but it’s a beast.

We launched from an isolated pier about 10 miles north of town.

A gorgeous location, but not recommended for swimming. Indeed, I do not recommend swimming anywhere in Australia except the pool at the Park Hyatt Sydney, and even then, be careful.

The water had gone almost completely flat, and we headed out for what would become the most statistically unlikely fishing day I have ever logged. In short, I caught only four total fish on the boat that day, but each of them was either a new species or world record. (And in one case, both.) 

We started by looking for the dreaded longtail tuna. These pelagics have been a thorn in my side (and other body parts) for years – I have been in the middle of huge schools of them several times without so much as a bite. But the crew seemed confident. Just as we were settling in for what I presumed would be a long ride offshore, Corry yelled out – “Tuna!” We circled the boat around and started throwing metal jigs. I hooked up first – a solid fish that peeled a bunch of line – but I managed to let it get in the motor and cut me off. David lost his first fish to sharks, but he got his second – a small longtail. I got hit again instantly, and soon had my fish – an even smaller longtail – at the boat. At the time, it didn’t even occur to me to keep casting – I finally, finally had landed a very old adversary. There were loads of them out there, and in hindsight, I probably should have stuck it out for a more dignified one, but there were other species to get.

David’s longtail. It was bigger than mine. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but David’s hat is quite the fashion statement, which I am certain is the epitome of cool in some isolated culture.

Aaaaaaaand … my longtail. I officially have no shame.

My longtail, photographed in a way that doesn’t show how darn small it was.

A decent longtail, pulled off of Corry’s website.                       

I immediately sent the photo to Shaun Furtiere, the fabled Melbourne guide. He responded “That is the smallest longtail tuna I have ever seen.” I was still ok with it.

Our next stop was for a super-deep drop, in excess of 1000 feet. The target – deepwater snappers and some very big grouper that frequent these depths. David got on the scoreboard first, pulling up a brace of big ruby snapper.

The crew was amazed that we got these through the sharks – nice work David.

On my next drop, I got absolutely crushed by something that had no interest in coming off the bottom, and in 1200′, that’s an intimidating prospect. I eventually budged it, and then started making some progress. A foot at a time. Both guys guessed grouper, and I had to agree with them, because as it got midwater, it stopped fighting and just got heavy, as they do when the pressure changes. The whole process was about 30 minutes, but as I got to the leader, I could see an enormous glimmer of color in the clear water under the boat. I let slip a few unintentional expletives, as many fishermen do when a catch is unexpectedly large. As we got good sight of it, it was a positively huge grouper, one of the deepwater Hydrolycus, and was ecstatic. Not only did I have my largest fish of the trip, but also a new and rare species.

Dr. Johnson identified this as a greybar grouper, which is endemic to the area.

David got a greybar on his next drop, and we were finished with the deep water. Mine was bigger, but to be fair, David picked his up by himself, so we’ll call it a draw.

We moved to some more moderate depths, in the 500′ range. I used one of my trusted Accurate/Sportex travel combos, with some big pieces of squid on 3/0 circle hooks. The crew let us know it was a small piece of structure and we would have to hit it just right, and, even with no wind, it took us quite a while to get the drift positioned correctly in the current. But when we got across it, I had a solid thump that held me tight to the bottom, and then some smaller shakes and rattles. I started reeling up, in low gear, which always makes me say something like “Hey fish. This is an Accurate 870, the most powerful mid-size two speed in the world. Do you feel lucky today, fish? Well, do you?” 

In truth, I was the lucky one. I had some sense there were two fish on the line, but you don’t know until you get them up, and there were always sharks to worry about. It took about 10 minutes until I saw color, which was silver and big. “Northern Pearl Perch” said Corry, to my great delight, and as he swung it on board, we noticed that the bottom hook held a bright red, spiny creature known as a Japanese Soldierfish. 

I was flabbergasted. The Pearl Perch – Samurai. New species and clear world record. I had already caught the soldierfish, in Brunei, but this one was much bigger and would also be a record. Two records and a species on a single drop. That was new even for me. Talk about an efficient day.

A northern pearl perch. It looks like a giant pirate perch to me, and yes, I was sulking about pirate perch even 9,926 miles from home.

The soldierfish, which is a beast by soldierfish standards.

The boat landing looked like an interesting place to spend a few minutes before we headed back to town and dinner. I started wading and casting small jigs, and was rewarded with a hard strike and a spirited, side-to-side fight. It was a striped scat, another new species, and before I finished, I had also gotten a Western yellowfin bream, which meant that I had five species for the day. (And had caught more fish from the dock than I had on the boat.) I may have had a beer and three quarters that night.

The scat. Highly venomous. Do not put this in your pants.

The bream. This is the seventh Acanthopagrus on my list, caught everywhere from South Africa to Qatar to Australia to Taiwan.

Months later, David sent me an Instagram clip of a crocodile swimming near where I had been wading. But it was probably eaten by a shark, which was in turn eaten by a spider.

Our final day broke calm and flat, unlike my underwear when David placed that cutout spider replica in the car visor. My screams are still echoing around the rental car. 

We spent the day bouncing between shallower reefs, and we easily caught 50 fish each, including some nice gamesters like Queensland mackerel on spoons.

One of David’s mackerel. These pull hard.

One of mine. I first caught this species in Weipa in 2009.

These things have savage teeth. They are a frequent cause of breakoffs. And needless to say, do not put this in your pants.

There are other mackerel species in the area that get positively huge. This one, also off Corry’s website, looks to be a narrow-barred Spanish. Look at the teeth.

I was laser-focused on trying to get a Rankin cod or a redthroat emperor, both rather uncommon, so while there was not a big batch of new species, the fishing was ridiculously good.

Somewhere in there, we had a coincidence for the ages. I pulled out my last clean towel, which was an extra “terrible towel” from a Pittsburgh Steelers game. Mitch instantly recognized it – “That’s a terrible towel.” he said. When I sat there looking astonished, he explained that his wife is an American from Pittsburgh. Small world.

I left it for them as a wedding present.

In the afternoon, David somehow managed to land a double whiptail, which, although larger than my earlier record, would go in the books as a tie. (My scale goes in four-ounce increments, so my one pound fish would tie his 1.24 pound fish.)

David and his first world record. Now Rachael will take him seriously.

The Fish Gods even gave a slight nod to my perseverance, rewarding me with the redthroat at the end of the day.

Species 14 of the Exmouth portion of the journey and 26 overall so far in Australia.

Even the sharks finally gave me a break. One of the few I actually landed turned out to be a new species for me – the hardnose shark.

They owed me one for all the lost fish and broken gear.

Originally thinking it was a milk shark, I didn’t pursue it further at the time. The ID came more than a year after the trip, courtesy of Marine Scientist and shark expert Clinton Duffy, based out of New Zealand. This guy is absolutely amazing and has been very generous with his time on some thorny identifications.

My final fish in Exmouth was a beastly longnose emperor.

It was a triumphant four days, except for the amount of time I spent checking for spiders, and we celebrated with a seafood meal that evening during which I might have ordered two full beers.

Much like Cousin Chuck’s honeymoon, the flight back to Perth was quick and uneventful. David ran me by a bait store to get supplies for an evening effort, and then dropped me off at a hotel in Fremantle Harbour. (They had guests at their condo, and you also have to figure that 10 straight days of me could strain any marriage.) I couldn’t thank David enough for his generosity and his local knowledge, and for renewing a friendship that’s been going on for something like 10 years. 

Wiping my tears and casting emotion aside, I got my gear ready and walked onto the jetty in front of my hotel. There just had to be a tommyrough waiting for me – I saw kids catch them just a few feet away. I did not get one. They must be related to spearfish. But I did get two very unexpected catches – a sand trevally and a brown chub, both new species. I had a magnificent steak dinner, and got a few hours of sleep before I would make a final dawn effort at a tommyrough before I got on the plane to Sydney.

A sand trevally, close relative to the east coast silver trevally. I briefly held the record on the silver, before Scott and Sue Tindale, a highly-regarded angling couple from New Zealand, broke it repeatedly. My original fish was one pound even – the record is now over 15.

The brown chub, a mercifully easy ID in the whole Kyphosus mess.

Morning came quickly. I had about two hours to fish, and the trumpeters were savage. But I kept with the strategy the bait shop guys had given me – burley, burley, burley, and a lightly-weighted #8 hook with shrimp. The three other anglers I could see were all catching tommyrough, and I kept catching the trevally, which they all wanted. Moments before I had to go pack and shower, I finally got my target. Kids catch these by the dozens all year, and I had to put in several days to get just one – this is how the Fish Gods operate.

The 30th and final species of an amazing 10 days.

A last view from my room in Fremantle.

On the way back to San Francisco, I stopped in Sydney for a couple of days. Alas, it was too windy to do any serious fishing, although I did play around a bit in front of the Hyatt and get some nice photo upgrades on the usual harbor suspects.

That’s the Park Hyatt Sydney, one of my favorite hotels anywhere. My first stay there was 26 years ago, when I had fewer than 100 species. Time flies.

Taken from the hotel restaurant.

Fishing in front of the hotel – this is a fanbelly filefish, a species I first caught in Singapore.

A sign at the aquarium. I couldn’t help myself – I have the record on both species.

I got to catch up with some dear old friends, have a few outstanding meals, and even see a couple of tourist attractions.

Steve Baty, who is both a good friend and a tourist attraction.

The entrance to Botany Bay – I have caught at least 20 species and five records in spots you can see in this particular photo. The first time I ever fished in there was May of 2000, with Scotty Lyons. When we tied up to a navigational marker, Scotty told me it was the same marker Captain Cook had tied up to in 1770. I didn’t figure it out until much later that evening.

Sydney is a special city, a place I had seen in encyclopedias as a kid and never thought I would actually see in person, and it still amazes me to be there, even 30 years after my first visit. As we lifted off and flew out over Botany Bay, where I could point to dozens of places I had been fortunate enough to fish, I could think of nothing but coming back again. Five hours west, there was a samsonfish waiting for me.

Steve

 

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Posted in Australia, More than 2000, World Records

Posted by: 1000fish | January 19, 2025

Vegemite, Dingo Lager, and Phantom Spiders

DATELINE: APRIL 5, 2024 – EXMOUTH, AUSTRALIA

Note to the readership – I am not scared of most wildlife. I have faced brown snakes and wild elephants without permanently ruining my underwear. But put a small spider in front of me and I scream like one of those goats. David, who is a better and kinder person than I am but won’t pass up some honest fun, picked up on this in Perth when I started asking about huntsman spiders. Hunstman spiders are actually not deadly, but they are so big you will never convince me otherwise. Therefore, as is expected in the man code, David spent the rest of the trip trying to convince me that there was a spider in every corner I hadn’t checked. I would have done the same to him.

This is a Hunstman spider. Normal people don’t touch these.

So this was it. Exmouth – one of the most legendary and remote fishing destinations I would ever visit. It had been on my wish list for years, and on the morning of April 3, I was flying there. David sat a few rows away, which was probably a good thing, because I had an airport chili dog for breakfast. He would be spending the next five days in close proximity to me – it’s an exhausting proposition, but one for which Marta was extremely grateful. I think she sent him flowers.

We landed in the early afternoon, picked up a car, and, after I checked under the seat for spiders, we headed into town. These are tiny outposts set into the otherwise trackless scrub of Northwestern Australia. David had spent time up here camping as a kid – it’s something like a 20 hour drive from Perth. We found the bait store, picked up some assorted squid and shrimp, and, before checking in or eating, we drove to the harbor. The very moment I looked at the breakwall, a giant yellowmargin moray eased out of the rocks and swam along the jetty. It would have easily broken Luke Ovgard’s record, but I had no equipment ready. By the time I had rigged, he was gone, but there appeared to be plenty of other stuff swimming around, so we set to it.

I have to admit that I expected a new species on every cast, being that I had never fished the area before, but this is where the Fish Gods remind you who is in charge. The first fish I got was a Bengal sergeant, an old friend from Thailand. So was the second. And fourteenth. I could see a few other species, but the damsel was the dominant pest, and I needed to cast elsewhere. After about half an hour, I got a nice bite in the deeper water and pulled up some sort of unfamiliar seabreamy thing.

Dr. Jeff Johnson promptly identified it as a green-striped coral bream, and I was on the scoreboard.

The rest of the afternoon was pleasant – we fished both sides of the breakwater and got lots of blue tuskfish, but nothing else new to report.

The ubiquitous blue tuskfish. They get a LOT bigger than this.

David was very patient, but normal people need to eat and shower, so I reluctantly agreed to act civilized. We made a quick supermarket stop for beer and Red Bull.

It will not eat your baby, but it might eat your liver. (Speaking of dingos and babies, was there ever a worse dialect coach in Hollywood history?)

No one yet has been able to explain the purpose of this substance to me. And yet Men at Work made it famous.

The accommodations were pleasant – an Air B&B a few miles away, and David found, of all the places, a wonderful tapas place. (Exhale Restaurant.) Considering that there are maybe six eateries in the whole town, we were thrilled to get seated and even more thrilled to get excellent food. The next day would be a biggie – the first of four straight boat days.

Morning came early, especially as I was up half the night checking my bedroom for spiders. We drove to the harbor, and met Captain Peter of Aquatic Adventures Exmouth. The water looked decent – not flat, but very fishable, and the forecast looked to improve every day. We cruised out perhaps 40 minutes, and we finally set to the big event. Rigs that had flown 9000 miles were tied and ready.

Early in the morning, before anything has had a chance to go wrong.

A taciturn man with a long history fishing the local waters, Peter was still a bit perplexed by my species requests. Generally, the anglers who come all the way here want gamefish, and here I was talking about monocle breams and jobfish. We went to some deeper reefs – a couple of hundred feet – where Peter thought I could find a goldband jobfish. (An open world record.) It was here I discovered that there were a lot of sharks in Exmouth. 

My very first fish landed was an old friend – the brown-striped red snapper. I had the record on this species at one stage, caught during an especially awkward weekend in Thailand.

On both bait and jigs, I repeatedly hooked up what felt like jobfish, and then, a few cranks later, I would get destroyed by a shark. I brought up several jobfish heads, but these don’t count as a species. I finally had to resort to the desperation of dropping a hookless jig to get the jobfish chasing it into the midwater, and then dropping my heaviest setup – an 80 pound class monster of a meat stick – and simply horsing the fish out of the water at high speed. Even then, I barely got it onboard ahead of a big shark.

The goldband jobfish – a new species, and my first world record of the Exmouth trip, but it had taken much of the day.

We did get some other assorted critters and there was certainly constant action, but I had pictured the place as a slam-dunk species every few casts, and I was a bit downtrodden. This is how the Fish Gods reward hubris.

David scored a nice cobia. Just to be confusing, the Australians call these “Lemonfish.”

The tiger shark that chased my jobfish decided to hang around the boat, which, although preferable to a Huntsman spider, was still fairly intimidating.

This picture does it no justice, but the thing was at least 12 feet long. If you look carefully behind the first dorsal, there’s still a whole of fish behind it. I’ll never put on a life jacket again.

Luckily, David knew the solution – food and drink, mostly drink. We found the other great restaurant in town, oddly enough, a Pizza/Mexican place with live music, Frothcraft Brewery. Among the songs played was The Angels’ “Am I Ever Going to See Your Face Again,” another of the unofficial Australian national anthems. For some reason, when this song is performed live, the audience feels compelled to add a series of completely obscene extra lyrics. Americans do the same thing with a particular Jimmy Buffet song, so I wasn’t completely shocked. 

Then David claimed to see a spider in the bathroom and ruined everything. I checked under the lid of every commode I visited for the whole week.

The next day, we boarded with Peter and hit some shallower reefs. There were fewer sharks, and they had less time to grab the fish, so we got into all kinds of species very quickly. (By the way, in case I had not noted this previously – David in no way cares about the species stuff. He wanted to catch real fish, and frequently mocked me for using sabikis.) 

The first new species was a Northwest Australian whiptail, adding to my extensive whiptail collection. 

Species three for Exmouth.

Shortly after the whiptail, I brought up what I assumed was an oddly-colored spangled emperor, but, according to Dr. Johnson, it was actually a Northwestern Australian emperor, a recently-described species that has yet to be formally named. So it goes on the mystery list, but will be counted as soon as the papers are published.

A species in waiting.

After a few more assorted emperors, I decided to try a small metal jig, and caught a chunky longfin grouper. (A species I previously had from the Great Barrier Reef.) This one was two pounds, easily beating the existing world record. How, you may ask, did I know this? Because I looked at all the Western Australian fish from the Fishes of Australia website, determined if I had the species, then looked at the existing world record or minimums for any open records, then set up a reference notebook. You might also ask if I have anything better to do, and the answer is – no I do not.

Record two for Exmouth. David just can’t stop himself.

Next up was a gorgeous species – the double whiptail, which is what I like to call a “Samurai Fish” – a new species and record at the same time.

Species two of the day, and record 235. Note the incredibly long tail filaments.

A smaller but even more colorful example.

A little while later, on a smaller rig, I pulled up a double-lined fusilier.

Species three of the day and 2266 lifetime.

The hits kept on coming, and in the meantime, David, who was not bothering with the small hook silliness, was catching some nice fish on his own. One of the best was a coral trout, which is actually a grouper, and is sort of a rite of passage for Australian saltwater anglers. Coral trout fight incredibly hard, are gorgeous, and are one of the best fish to eat anywhere on earth.

Well done, David.

The triumphant anglers. This is a milestone fish for any fisherman, and that’s the most genuine look of joy on his face I would see until I got on the flight home.

I then pulled up a very strange-looking monocle bream. It took some research with Dr. Jeff Johnson, but it turned out to be a rainbow monocle bream, a newer species endemic to the area, and another Samurai fish.

Species four and record three of the day. Now things were shaping up.

This had to be the coolest-looking fish of the trip so far.

Somewhere in there, I pulled up a random bluespotted tuskfish, which made five species on the day, and then, on a metal jig, I got number six – a frostback grouper.

Adding to my tuskfish collection.

I didn’t saw it was a big grouper.

That’s us with Captain Peter and Jay, the owner of Aquatic Adventures Exmouth. David is still smiling from the coral trout.

Now that felt like what I expected. I was thrilled, and celebrated with at least a beer and a half. Note to the uninitiated – NEVER try to outdrink an Australian. It can only end in three places – jail, the ER, or a gutter on George Street. Every town in Australia has a George Street, and every George Street has a gutter containing a barely-conscious American who tried to keep up with the Australians.

The scoreboard was starting to look very solid, and we had two more days to go. I still had very high hopes for some of my main long-term obsessive fish for this area, especially the longtail tuna, which is like a spearfish except it’s a tuna.

That evening, David made a spider-shaped cutout from one of the beer boxes and put it in the sun visor in the car. I opened the visor, and the thing fell into my lap. I would like to claim that I reacted calmly, but unfortunately, David was there to witness my screams, which went on for quite some time. Despite a liberal dose of Benadryl and Dingo lager, I still didn’t sleep well.

Steve

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Australia, More than 2000, World Records

Posted by: 1000fish | December 31, 2024

Easter Down Under

DATELINE: APRIL 2, 2024 – PERTH, AUSTRALIA

As many times as I’ve been to Australia – and that’s at least 40 visits over the past 25 years – I had explored a curiously small amount of a very big country. I’ve hit the east coast a reasonable amount, going north to the Barrier Reef and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and south down to Melbourne, but I had never fished west of either location. That’s a lot of unexplored territory, and, according to the fish guides I read constantly, home to hundreds of fish I haven’t caught.

West Australia is a long, long way from home. We’re talking 15 hours from San Francisco to Sydney, a layover, and then five more hours to Perth. And then, if I wanted to go to any of the legendary fishing destinations up north, Exmouth in particular, that’s two more hours. Australia looks small on a wall map, but we have Mercator to blame for that.

There were three particular fish that inspired me to sit on a plane this long. The samsonfish, a jack that reputedly fights harder than a giant trevally, is off Perth in numbers, as is the dhufish, which looks like a giant silver perch. Steve Baty had regaled me with stories of the samson years ago, and the idea of one crushing a vertical jig kept me up at night. And then there was the longtail tuna, which lives further north. This bluefin variant has tormented me for years – I have been in the middle of schools of them in Australia, Oman, and the Maldives, and never had so much as a bite.

I started looking at this adventure seriously in the fall of 2023, and discussed it in depth with Dom Porcelli. We chatted for hours, mostly drooling at fish books, but we had trouble getting the schedule together – remember that he and I had a Tahiti trip planned for August of 2024, and unlike Marta, Tracy actually wanted him around the house. Then, the universe interceded. David, an old friend from my job with that big, sinister German company, randomly checked in and suggested that we put a fishing trip together. In Perth. (He lives in Singapore but is from Perth and keeps a home there.) He would get to Perth right at Easter, to visit his newborn grandson. (I razzed him for this, but David pointed out he is younger than I am.) David is not as crazed a fisherman as I am, but he said “You can go fishing, I’ll come along, drink beers, and offer criticism.” As far as peanut galleries go, he’s a savage one.

David is fluent in Australian Sign Language.

Because that week is a school holiday in Australia, we needed to move quickly. David found accommodations and liquor stores, and I set up the guides. We decided to hang around Perth for a few days, then fly up to Exmouth for four days of world-class gamefishing. It was set, and even before Christmas, I was packing and repacking my samsonfish jigs.

The flight was longer than I remember it, and there’s something discouraging about finishing 15 hours only to realize you have to find your luggage and go fly five more. But Qantas was awesome – not only friendly and efficient, but they also snuck me onto an earlier connection. I spent the flight re-reading my Field Guild to Marine Fishes of Australia and Southeast Asia by Gerald Allen – a must-read for all connoisseurs of serious literature. 

Some of the in-flight view. I’m guessing Adelaide.

I finally, finally get there, after 23 hours of travel. It was time to change underwear.              

An Uber ride later, I was set up at David’s condo, where he had generously agreed to put me up, apparently unaware of my personal hygiene. He had even arranged for bait to be left in the fridge. They wouldn’t arrive for another day or so, so he’ll never know exactly what happened to his pillows.

52 minutes later, I had three rods set up and was walking over to the harbor, which looked positively crammed with fish. I was in Western Australia, where almost everything should have been a new species. I walked over to the maze of rockwalls and breakwaters that run for miles through the harbor. I was only 200 feet onto a mole when I started spotting fish – small puffers and baitfish. I stopped. I baited. I cast.

Seconds later, I hooked something. After a brief fight, I hoisted up a whiptail-looking thing that I knew couldn’t be whiptail because whiptails don’t live in Perth. That left me with one choice – a western butterfish, which meant that I had travelled 9,155 miles and caught a new species on my first cast.

It’s great when a plan works out. You will note the Dom Porcelli signature ballcap, which goes on every trip, in his memory. I’m still putting together a Ferguson hat album of anyone who has fished with Dom, so please buy a Ferguson hat, get a fish photo in it, and send them over. (To be clear, you wear the hat. The fish doesn’t.)

After photographing the butterfish, I cast again, and caught something with brown stripes. This would be a striped trumpeter, and I was two for two.

Species 2251. I would end up pretty tired of this one shortly.

A new species on every cast was obviously not going to be sustainable, and for the next couple of hours, I regressed toward the norm. The trumpeters established themselves as the dominant pest. I also added in loads of small puffers (a previous catch from Melbourne,) and tarwhine, a previous catch from almost everywhere from Africa to Sydney.

The tarwhine. Fun to catch but amazingly widespread. My first one was in Sydney, 2440 miles east, and I have also caught them in Mozambique, another 4920 miles west.

I was getting quite a variety and some decent-sized fish, but the new ones seemed to be avoiding me. I was especially surprised that I hadn’t gotten a tommyrough, a relative of the Australian salmon (which isn’t a salmon) that is supposed to be here in droves.

Late in the afternoon, I got a whiting that looked different than the King George whiting I had been getting all day. Courtesy of Dr. Jeff Johnson, it was identified as a western trumpeter whiting, and I had three for the day.

These are not easy IDs.

A King George whiting. I caught dozens of these – a blast on light tackle. Interestingly, at least to me, it is named after Britain’s King George III, one of the more mentally ill monarchs in European history.

As the sun started going down, I got repeated small bites right at my feet in the rocks. These turned out to be Gobbleguts, a cleverly-named local cardinalfish.

Four and counting.

I had left a large bait soaking on the bottom most of the day, and had gotten a couple of tentative bites, but nothing stayed hooked. That changed shortly after dark, when my Baitrunner 4000 started screaming out line. I grabbed the rig, set the hook (not a great idea because it was a circle) and the fight was on. The reel holds about 300 yards of 30 pound braid, and I needed every inch of it as whatever I had hooked headed for the harbor mouth. It was half an hour before I started reliably gaining line, and another half an hour before the fish was back inside all the assorted obstacles I thought were going to break me off. It was a full 90 minutes before I started seeing a shape on the surface in my headlamp beam. There were loads of sharks and rays I needed in the area – I didn’t have anything except an eagle ray. 

So, of course, it was an eagle ray. But what a fight. It was a great way to close out the day, and I dropped my gear off back at the condo and headed out to a fantastic dinner. It had been an excellent start.

Sunset over Fremantle.

Passing the iconic ferrous wheel on the way to dinner. It’s made of iron.

The dinner spot. Outstanding food.

The next three days were booked with Captain Allan Bevan, one of the most highly-regarded skippers in the area and a samsonfish expert.

This is the first picture I ever saw of Allan, off his website. He is holding a positively huge Western Australian Salmon. It’s not actually a salmon, but I’ve never caught one.

I anticipated that we could spend a day jigging for the big stuff and then have plenty of time left over to catch the loads of smaller species that awaited me in local waters. This is where the weather started interfering – and remember, the Fish Gods don’t care if you flew 9,155 miles. The wind will go when the wind goes, and for the next day, Easter, it was a mess. I would be shorebound for the day.

I planned to fish the jetties again. There just had to be something new – at the very least, I could pick up one of the ubiquitous tommyroughs that I had somehow missed the day before. I gamely walked down to the southernmost rockwall early in the morning and got to work.

It was a pretty place at least.

The trumpeters rose again. I tried inside the harbor. I tried outside. I tried different lures and rigs. I caught squillions of trumpeters, quite a few butterfish, and some other assorted stuff – but nothing new. This was humbling, but Allan thought we would be able to get out the next day, so I had hope.

I did catch a very pretty juvenile butterfish.

And I randomly passed by the Halco headquarters. These guys make excellent lures – far sturdier than most of the ones we get off the shelf in the USA.

Walking around the Fremantle area, I managed to run into a few other culturally important items.

The swans here are black.

I had no idea Bon Scott was from Perth. AC/DC, played loudly, was the soundtrack for much of my high school career.

David and his surprisingly lovely wife, Rachael, flew in that day and met me for dinner.

She’s awesome. We have no idea what she’s doing with him, but she’s awesome. She and Marta should form a support group.

I kept an eye on the weather forecast all night, and it didn’t look promising – still very windy. When Allan and I spoke early on April 1, he was surprisingly optimistic, but realistic at the same time. He explained we could get out into the lee of Garden Island and catch all kinds of cool stuff, but that we wouldn’t be able to get out to the samsonfish water. I was itching to go and I’ll clearly take whatever cards are dealt. I got over to the dock at 6:30 and when I finally met Allan, it felt like meeting an old friend. 

The Boat pulls up. Note that he is sponsored by Halco.

A large, bearded man with a ready smile and a deep knowledge of local waters, he steered us out into the 10 or so miles of slop we would need to navigate.

The boys get ready to do battle. (With the fish.) Spoiler alert – the guy is awesome. If you find yourself in Perth, you can book him at https://www.shikari.com.au/.

The ride went quickly, and once we were set up, we had plenty of calm water available to us. I dropped baits on a mix of hook sizes and the occasional lure, and the catches started stacking up immediately. 

The very first fish was a flathead, and I know from experience that these can be all sorts of different species, so I made sure to photograph the head spines and the tail pattern.

It turned out to be a western bluespotted flathead, the first new species of the day.

It was still early, so I mixed in some lure fishing, and as I bounced along a small leadhead in around 80 feet of water, I got absolutely crushed. Whatever it was stripped line off so quickly that Allan had to idle the boat toward it, and it was 15 minutes before it was even off the bottom. I had high hopes for a dhufish, but low hopes of landing whatever it was – I was only on 15# braid, and I was getting fishhandled. The total fight was a little over 30 minutes, and as I got it up in the water column, I could start seeing broad silver flashes well below us. (The water was amazingly clear.) I kept saying dhufish prayers, but as the beast surfaced, I was disappointed that it wasn’t a dhufish but absolutely delighted that it was the biggest pink snapper I have ever seen – at just shy of 14 pounds, it was three times bigger than my previous largest. 

Oh hell yes.

I thought back to hundreds of hours with Scotty Lyons and never getting one over two pounds, and a few days with Shaun Furtiere, where I got a solid one, but nothing like this. I was thrilled – I’d love to get the photo to Scotty, but he seems to have dropped off social media – anyone know where to find him?

Next up was a gorgeous little fish – locally called a footballer sweep. 

This is the kind of thing I gladly fly 20+ hours to catch.

My very next bite was a little more substantial on my light rod, and I found myself battling with something that didn’t respect my light line very much. After a spirited tussle, I lifted a brownspotted wrasse on board. This is a species I had gotten in Melbourne previously, but this example was a beast. We had enough internet signal for me to determine it was a world record, and I was on the IGFA scoreboard for the trip.

World record number 233. That’s about half of Marty Arostegui’s total.

The next couple of hours were a wrasse bonanza, and I got three more new species: the western king wrasse, the blackspotted wrasse, and the redbanded. Wrasses are a fascinating and widespread family – I have caught almost 90 different types in 23 different countries, ranging from the tropics to central Norway.

The western king.

The blackspotted.

And the redbanded.

In between more quality snapper and assorted other fish, we tacked on one more species, the rough bullseye.

As I’m sure you noticed, it’s a close relative of the bullseye I got with Scotty in Port Hacking in 2017.

We made the return trip with the wind at our backs, so it was quick and easy. I knew I had a fishing contact for life here, and I just needed to get to Perth on the right week. As it was, I had a big bag of snapper fillets to take to David’s place, and we and some of their friends had a fantastic barbecue that evening. 

David and I hoped to go out with Allan on the 2nd, but the wind shifted and got stronger. We actually boarded the boat, but Allan had to call it off. He was as bummed as I was, but it really was a mess out there. Despite all that, Allan’s species mojo is so strong that I caught a new fish just casting off the boat – a black bream.

That is the first time a captain has ever gotten me a new species without untying the boat. And yes, a seagull got me.

David and I, still determined to catch something, headed up the river system in Perth and tried quite a few spots.

It was truly lovely, but we didn’t find much. I waded out in this spot to cast for flathead, only to find out later the whole river is jammed with bull sharks.

To David’s bewilderment, I spent 30 solid minutes on a school of tiny baitfish – even though he had seen me fish for small stuff previously, he hadn’t realized the full extent of the micro-obsession, and yes, he was judgmental. I finally caught one – which turned out to be a western hardyhead.

Species 12 from Perth and 2261 lifetime.

Steve and a bewildered David at the scene of the crime.

We had a wonderful meal with some of David and Rachael’s friends that evening – it’s comforting to know they trust me in public. I also can’t thank them enough for inviting me and putting up with me for several days, but in my defense, I didn’t break anything that an average forensic plumber couldn’t fix.

What exactly is an “unusual item?” I need examples.

The next day, we would be off for another adventure of a lifetime – Exmouth – a tropical fishing destination that’s about the farthest place from Sydney that’s still Australia. There were dozens of species and quite a few records available up there, so I didn’t sleep much that night, even though I stopped drinking Red Bull by 10pm.

Steve

 

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Posted in Indo-Paciifc, More than 2000, World Records

Posted by: 1000fish | December 12, 2024

The Valentine’s Triggerfish

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 15, 2024 – KONA, HAWAII

It’s unsettling to be gently urged to leave the house for Valentine’s Day, unless you’re in the middle of a divorce, which we aren’t. And yet, this past February, I found myself in the delicate position of being encouraged to not be home on February 14. Marta had a massive work event that would take up her whole week, and so I might see her for just a few minutes on the actual holiday. However unromantic of her this might be, it is possible she might actually want to get some sleep instead of picking through the annual Whitman’s sampler and stealing all the almond crunch.

There was a precedent, from many years ago, in the pre-Marta era she likes to call “The dark ages, when literacy was almost lost.” Due to bad planning and an unethical distributor in China, I spent Valentine’s Day on a work mission in Beijing with old friend Nic Ware. We ate at Outback Steakhouse, and despite the suspicions of the staff, we did not exchange gifts, so there was no Whitman’s sampler to guard.

Steve and Nic wander Beijing, circa 2001.

There being no Outback in Kona, I felt reluctant to leave home, but Marta has been at this for 20 years and knows how to make me do things I don’t want to. With characteristic brilliance, she pointed out that February was spearfish season, and she offered to pay for the trip. Being a kind and giving partner, I reluctantly agreed. And so, with what I had to pretend was moderate sadness, I was off for Kona.

Kona has been a gift that has kept on giving for almost 20 years. Mostly in cahoots with Captains Dale and Jack Leverone on the Sea Strike, I have added over 100 species and dozens of world records in this beautiful location. As the years have gone by, I have been forced to ignore the law of diminishing returns, but there always seems to be something new to catch.

Foremost among these is the spearfish, also known by its scientific name, the #$%^ing spearfish. This is a trolling game, and by my math, every day I spend trolling for them is another day closer to catching one. I got on the phone with Jack, and he set me up for two days on the boat, mostly trolling but with some bottom fishing mixed in.

I stayed at the Marriott, which is just a few minutes walk from the Kona pier, which is always productive. It’s a great location – a comfortable pier on an island where most shore fishing is accessed over slippery rocks. It has a variety of habitats available – sand, rubble, coral reef, and undercut pier. Without Marta there to insist on nice dinners and cultural stuff, which of course made me sad, I would be forced to spend all of my non-boat time on the pier. Darn.

This is where my judgement went a bit sideways. Normally, one of the best things about Kona is that Honolulu, and hence Jamie Hamamoto, are still 100 miles away. But I really wanted to see Wade.

Wade on Heeia pier, working his way through a box of Malasadas.

Wade ended up not being able to make it because of some family obligations, so he sent Jamie instead. This is his idea of a prank.

Still, Jamie had matured and become slightly less vicious to me, so I sort of welcomed the company. She would show up for two days of the trip, the 14th and 15th, so I had two days to fish before she got there.

I have struggled with the following paragraphs for weeks, and I have still found no way to make them sound less whiny. For God’s sake, I was fishing in KONA, one of the great destinations on earth, catching loads of fish, eating great food, and enjoying the tropics. But the fact remains that I didn’t catch any new species or any world records. I can just hear all of you saying “Cry me a river,” or “Do you understand the law of diminishing returns?” but it is what it is.

The 12th was a full session on the pier. The variety is simply amazing – it’s like fishing in an aquarium (not that I ever have as far as you’re concerned,) but … I have been here a lot.

Kona Town in afternoon sunlight. The dark spot in the water is a giant school of baitfish.

I met a bunch of religious kids. They prayed for me. It didn’t help.

A raccoon butterflyfish, not new, but I never get tired of photographing them.

A prettier bluespine unicorn than I got last year.

On the 13th, I caught up with Jack, or Captain Jack as he should be properly addressed, and we headed out after spears.

Running offshore early in the morning, when nothing has gone wrong yet.

We all know how this story ends. There were a few heart-stopping mahi-mahi, and we spent some hours catching loads of small yellowfin on light tackle and poppers, hoping that one of the fish would turn out to be a bigeye. None of them were a bigeye.

But the mahi are certainly beautiful.

I spent the evening eating macadamia-nut crusted stuff, and fishing the pier. I got loads of reef fish and the occasional eel, but alas, nothing new. I am still not sensing any sympathy from the audience here.

I awoke on the 14th and immediately thought romantic thoughts about Marta. I want to make this very clear. I had left gifts around the house for her, none of them a vacuum, and I of course called her and expressed my love. I got voicemail.

Speaking of rejection, I then headed off for another day on the Sea Strike.

Passing the harbor entrance early in the morning, before anything had gone wrong yet.

We trolled and we trolled, and while we got some beautiful mahi-mahi, the billfish that shall not be named did not make an appearance. There were a couple of radio reports of spears being caught, but they were few and far between.

The mahi got bigger.

I knew Jamie was flying into Kona right around then, and her evil presence had clearly put the bite off. It was time to go bottom fishing.

A nice amberjack on light tackle. I had no idea Jack was in the picture until later that evening.

Another of the bottom catches – a Pleuger’s goatfish. This species was my 100th world record, back in 2014.

This was another paragraph I struggled to keep out of the whiny zone. Here I was, in Kona, with perfect weather, catching fish after fish on light tackle. Any normal human would be thrilled. But, as Marta and a series of therapists often remind me, I am not normal. I wanted something new, or something unusually big. Even Jack commented it was a pretty good day on the reef fish, which I probably grudgingly admitted while I kept praying for some oddball rarity to bite.

Plleuger’s come in striped and non-striped varieties.

It was late in the session, just as I got a text from Jamie that she had landed and was heading to her hotel, that I got an unexpectedly hard bite in about 400′. It was too small to be an amberjack, but too big for a snapper. It fought all the way to the top, and I had Chris grab the net just in case it was something sexy. I saw the shape first, and said “Ah, crap. Triggerfish.” But when I swung it onboard, I realized it was a very big blueline triggerfish. I had owned the record on this species from 2011 until 2023, when a Japanese angler named Noriko Asano broke my 1/12 mark with a 1/14. This fish weighed out over two pounds, but nothing would be official until we could get the fish to shore and officially weighed.

The beast in question.

The fifteen minute boat ride seemed to take forever, especially with Jack and Chris uttering such witticisms as “Do you think your Boga will be big enough? and “Do you want them to get the marlin scale ready?” Ha ha.

Chris gives a Hawaiian blessing to my triggerfish.

We pulled into the dock, and before we were even tied up, I jumped up on the pier with Boga and fish in hand. It was over two pounds, and I had world record #232.

Chris and Steve celebrate.

The trip suddenly seemed curiously worth it, despite having to miss a Valentine’s Day with Marta. (We did a makeup night out a few days later, with a nice dinner and a Whitman’s sampler, for all you ladies who still think I’m a monster.)

To the well-meaning but derisive hoots of Jack and Chris, I headed back to town and an uncertain evening with Jamie. Would she show up with an orange-tail filefish in her luggage? A world-record clown triggerfish? She is clearly capable of anything.

It was great to see her. Despite my occasional vitriol about the orange-tail filefish, she is family, and it’s usually good to see family, especially when they aren’t the idiot kind. Somewhere in there, without any real warning, she had gone from a little girl to a woman. No less irritating because she catches stuff I can’t, but an adult, with a degree and a job and all that stuff. When the heck did that happen?

She showed up with malasadas.

We had macadamia-nut something for dinner, and then headed out to the pier. We absolutely crushed the reef stuff, catching wrasse after wrasse and a bunch of other assorted fish. This is a light-tackle bonanza, and we would be happy at it all night. But sometime before sunset, there was an event. An event that would have implications three thousand miles away.

I caught a chub, which didn’t seem earth-shattering until I got a closer look and realized that, for once, it was not the dreaded global yellow chub. It had decidedly high soft dorsal and anal fins. It was a highfin chub, not just a new species but also eight inches of steaming revenge on Marta, who had caught this creature years before and lorded it over me. She was down to only five species I don’t have, and this makes it one of the best Valentine’s Days EVER.

Someone is going to fill in the punchline that I got a chub for Valentine’s Day, so I’ll just get out ahead of you.

One of the occasional morays – a whitemouth in this case. Do not put this in your pants.

A crown squirrelfish, one of the many species that come out after dark.

Late that night, we celebrate a porcupinefish.

The next day, our last on Kona, was a whirlwind of different spots looking for whatever might bite. We ranged as far south as City of Refuge, and as far north as above the airport, and while there were, again, lots and lots of fish, there was nothing new to report.

Hunting the tidepools at City of Refuge.

It’s a gorgeous place and the fishing was exceptional, which I was ok with until exactly 4:16pm, when Jamie did that thing that I hate so much. Just as I caught the rather rare blue boxfish, which I had only gotten one of in my lifetime, Jamie, in the same spot, with the same rig and the same bait, caught a Whitley’s boxfish, which I have caught exactly zero of in my lifetime.

My boxfish. These are awesome, but not a new one.

WTF, Universe?

I tried to handle the situation with maturity and tact, but that didn’t hold out very long. So after I finished expressing how unfair the entire universe is to me, and glaring at her with substantial malice, we did exactly what you wouldn’t have expected us to. We both broke out laughing.

There’s always going to be something she catches that I don’t – she lives here, and yes, she is THAT good at fishing. I can only hope that I’ll be the first one of us to get a spearfish.

Steve

 

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Posted in Indo-Paciifc, More than 2000, World Records

Posted by: 1000fish | November 22, 2024

Pastor Mike’s Midnight Sermon

DATELINE: SEPTEMBER 19, 2024 – NEW RICHMOND, WISCONSIN

It all started with a new species – a goldeye, which (spoiler alert) I finally caught in Kansas City on September 15. I first learned about goldeye in 2014, while catching mooneye in Wisconsin with Martini and Pastor Mike Channing.

Mike and Martini on that very day.

Mooneye and Goldeye look very similar, and once I caught a mooneye, I must have asked Mike if every other fish we caught that day was a goldeye. They weren’t. They were all mooneyes. In the 12 years since, I have tried constantly for goldeye throughout the midwest, and I failed constantly until that Sunday a couple of months ago.

The moment I had the fish on the boat, I couldn’t help but think of Mike. While we hadn’t fished in person since those memorable Wisconsin trips, we had kept in constant touch over the years, trading calls and photos on new species and just to shoot the breeze.

So I texted Mike a picture, and said “Look what I caught!” 

It took longer than normal for a response – he would usually send something right away, like “FINALLY.” The next day, I got an ominous note – “Sorry, Mike is not doing well and can’t see this.” It took me another day to sort out that the responses were coming from Mike’s wife, Crystal, when she sent a simple note “Yes, he is in the process of dying right now from cancer.”

What a gut punch. Mike and I had been in touch all year on fishing topics, he never once mentioned the awful diagnosis he got in January. That pretty much sums up Mike – it was never about him, preferring not to bother others with what must a have been a terrible battle with a terrible disease.

Two days later, on September 19, he was gone. 

I hate writing these. I’d much rather write about a wedding, or a baby, or heck, even food poisoning, but when the fishing community loses someone important, especially someone who gave so many days of their life to others, I want to share what they meant to all of us. Mike Channing – who really was a Pastor, of the Cornerstone Church of New Richmond, Wisconsin, was a passionate species hunter, but was even more dedicated to his family and the church.

So how is it, you ask, that I didn’t burst into flames when we shook hands? That was the beauty of Mike – he was a regular guy, strong and firm in his faith, but respectful of others, even when my only apparent religious belief is that Ohio State is evil. I met him in 2014, through Martini Arostegui, who discovered Mike looking for an expert in upper midwest redhorse species. 

Mike is third from the left, here at a Roughfish gathering. You might also notice some other species superstars in the photo, like Josh Liesen, Ben Cantrell, and Pat Kerwin.

It’s an hour or so from Minneapolis to where we were going to meet Mike, and perhaps 40 minutes into the drive, Martini chose to mention that Mike was a clergyman. I told Martini that I would have appreciated a lot more notice, to do speech therapy, because 40% of my normal vocabulary was going to have to be redacted. That trip, over Memorial Day, was marked by rotten weather but some great fishing – four species for me, and two world records for Martini, including the one that put him into second place behind his father.

The first photo I ever took of Mike. You will note the water was so high we were fishing in a parking lot, yet he was all smiles – and we caught fish.

My first white sucker. Note the flooded conditions behind us.

Martini and his 183rd world record – the one that put him alone in second place behind his Dad.

Mike never stopped talking about his family. His kids, all pretty young back then, looked like their photo came with the frame. When we met Crystal, we could not help but be reminded of “Parks and Recreation,” in which the burly, unassuming Jerry is actually married to Christie Brinkley. 

For clarity, this is from Parks and Recreation. Mike was much better-looking than Jerry.

An actual family photo. See what I mean? That’s Caleb, Crystal, Mike, Claire, and Caitlin.

Martini and I returned to Wisconsin that August, and were blessed with three amazing days of fishing and 2.9 days of perfect weather. It was on this trip that Mike introduced me to Culver’s, one of the finest restaurants in the universe. It was also on this trip that Mike put us on the redhorse slam of all redhorse slams – silver, gold, shorthead, greater, and river in the same day. (I got eight new species on the trip in total.)

The next day was when I caught that first mooneye and began my goldeye obsession.

I also got the biggest channel cat I’ve ever landed.

On the last night, we set up at the dam in Eau Claire to fish through a perfect summer evening. It was a memorable night for me – among other things, I landed a 40 pound sturgeon on a steelhead rod. (With a huge assist from Martini.) It didn’t go as well for Mike and Martini – they fished big baits for flathead, and Mike missed a huge bite, which he took much more calmly than I would have. 

A big thunderstorm was moving in, but the fishing was so good that we stuck it out about 10 minutes longer than we should have. The skies opened up on us as the temperature dropped 25 degrees. We got soaked to the spleen, I slipped and fell getting up the trail to the cars, the gear was all drenched, and then we had trouble opening the car. My underwear was holding at least a gallon of water, and I got a little crabby about it as I wrestled with the unnecessarily complex key fob. Mike put his hand on my shoulder and said “Next week, are you going to remember how wet you are right now or that you caught a 40 pound sturgeon on that light rod?” To this day, I can’t remember feeling wet, but I sure can remember holding that sturgeon, and I’ve never forgotten what he said. Nothing worth anything comes without a little sacrifice, but we remember the accomplishments, not the obstacles. 

Those 2014 trips were the last time we fished together in person, but we kept in close touch over the years, with him updating me on his new catches and me sending him fish of interest. In 2015, when Martini inadvertently gave me the first shot at the rare and difficult spotted sucker, Mike texted him “NEVER give Steve any advantages.” The man knew me better than I thought he did.

With all of his responsibilities, Mike of course didn’t get to travel and fish as much as some of the others in the community. But he did missionary work in both Laos and Thailand – so apart from making a difference in small towns throughout Southeast Asia, he actually had quite a few exotic fish to his credit. Back in the US, he made every trip count, and as his son Caleb got older, he became a big part of the trips. 

Father and son with a redhorse. I always admire watching a great Dad.

Mike always did a lot of winter pike and muskie.

Which means Caleb did too.

One of my favorite photos of Mike, with a lookdown from a Florida pier in driving rain. Mike texted me that they caught all kinds of stuff, but never once did he mention it was in a storm.

Do you think he remembers the scrawled filefish or the rain?

The girls got into the act too – here is Mike and Claire on a hunting trip. Or it’s Halloween and they dressed as Tigger.

That smile alone would be worth a 20 hour drive and sleeping in the car.

Two years ago, when I was in Minnesota for a baseball/football road trip, I ducked into Wisconsin for 30 hours of fishing, but I didn’t end up seeing Mike because, of course, I fished too late.

The central mudminnow – the last species Mike helped me get.

I regret that now. And even over the phone, Mike put me on a couple of really difficult species and left me with spots for a few more in better weather. One that sticks out is a culvert for Iowa darter. Ben Cantrell and I have made a promise to go there next spring, catch the thing, and take Mike’s family out to dinner. 

Until then, Crystal, Caleb, Claire, and Caitlin, we all pass on our love and wish that you, like Mike, will someday be able to only remember the best parts of the best days and put everything else aside.

Steve

You can learn more about Mike from the lovely tribute HERE.

 

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Posted in North America, The Race to 2000, World Records

Posted by: 1000fish | November 9, 2024

A Winter Well Spent

DATELINE: JANUARY 11, 2024 – PACIFIC GROVE, CALIFORNIA

In general, November through January is the quiet time for my fishing exploits. Once we’ve finished the Halloween candy, (generally by 10:15pm on October 31,) we are busy getting ready for Christmas, enjoying the changing of the seasons, and, this year, actually loving the NFL playoffs. The Lions had won one playoff game in my lifetime until 2024. And needless to say, it was a great college football year, although Marta points out I may have become somewhat emotional during the Rose Bowl.

This photo was taken shortly after I wrung out my underpants.

December and January are winter here, so things do slow down. Of the 366 possible dates of the year, I have caught a new species on all except 31 of them – but 26 of these “open dates” are in November, December, and January. There are some tidepool opportunities and a few other day trip possibilities in the winter, but mostly, we’re watching “The Muppet Christmas Carol” and eating cookies.

My first adversary in November would be an old one turned into a new one. The reliable riffle sculpin, an American River catch with Ed Trujillo, had been split into a couple of species, and the new one was located a scant hour from my home. With excellent data from Santa-Cruz-based species genius Vince (@prickly_sculpin), I was off to a small coastal range stream.

But not before a 10-mile detour around some road work.

Once I finally got there, the place was loaded with sculpins, and after a few false starts, I got one on the hook.

Many thanks to Dr. Peter Moyle and the crew at UC Davis for splitting the species in the first place.

Another opportunity came up very quickly in November, but there was a terrible decision to make. Chris Moore had found a couple of species down in the general LA area, but this would also mean I would need to fish with The Mucus yet again before they shipped him off on his mission. I had gone through the emotions (in other words, joy) of being rid of him for two years, and it was tough to think about reliving that journey. But there were fish to be caught, and I have a long history of putting up with almost anything to catch fish. I decided to go, in spite of the smell.

The first stop would be Ventura, just north of Los Angeles. There aren’t a lot of new things for me there, but the shadow goby had eluded me. This is where Jacob enters the picture. Another one of the teenage species whizzes that speaks so well of the next generation of life listers, Jacob is based in Ventura and seems to know where everything lives. I got down there around 4pm, and by 4:30, he had joined me and we were inspecting a rockwall for likely hiding places. (For the fish. We had no need to hide.) Truthfully, we both expected to catch it at night, but what the heck.

It took five minutes. I saw something swim away out of the corner of my eye, and Jacob jumped ahead to get a better angle. He pointed to the back of the rock I was fishing, and whispered “That’s the one. Right behind the crevice.” I slid my tenago hook and shot gently into the gap, and a split-second later, had a bite. I reflexively swung my rod back, and I was hit in the chest with a very surprised shadow goby. I jokingly said “We’re done here – it’s Miller time,” and luckily, he knew I was kidding. He’s too young for beer, and my bladder is too old for Miller.

Steve, Jacob, and the fish.

The shadow goby gets its closeup.

The Moores showed up a little later, and my joy at seeing Chris nearly evened out seeing The Mucus. We wandered down to the harbor, and while there wasn’t much for me, the guys got a few new ones, like queenfish and horse mackerel. A big thank you to Jacob for lending us his time and expertise.

The sun sets over Santa Rosa Island.

We don’t eat responsibly on these trips.

The next morning, we were off to chase pearlscale cichlids, which were alleged to be in some urban LA lake. It was 40 miles away, so it took about two hours of driving, but it was nice to find a little piece of nature in the world’s most crowded city. We had been warned that the cichlids would be mixed in with panfish, and to expect quite a few green sunfish. We dutifully went at it, and yes, we caught a whole bunch of green sunfish. At least a hundred of them, without so much as sniffing a cichlid. I had to leave by 1pm to get home in time for something Marta wanted me to attend, so I was running very short on time. Still, I doggedly persisted in a small corner where I figured there had to be one damn cichlid.

Chris, the more thoughtful of the two of us, realized that the sunfish weren’t going away, and he moved a few hundred yards down the lake, to a concrete retaining wall. Moments later, he shouted “I GOT ONE!” I gave him a quizzical look. “PEARLSCALE!” he yelled, waving us down there. I may not be as fast as I was in college, but I am certainly faster than The Mucus, and I eased a small redworm down into an underwater fracture in the concrete. Bam, Instant hit, instant pearlscale cichlid.

No, Mucus, it’s not a Rio Grande. The spots are too close together.

I was three for three in November. And now it really would be two years until I saw The Mucus again. He would be going to Ecuador, so I told him to learn German.

You can guess what was on my finger.

My God, the man has perfect teeth. Which means he either didn’t play hockey or was good at ducking.

The next time I fished was just 8 days later, but much happened in those eight days. Our house went from its regular mess to a Christmas mess, with two live trees, several more artificial ones, dozens of ceramic pieces, several hundred feet of lights, thousands of ornaments, and the beginning of Hallmark Christmas movie season. (Marta highly recommends “A Crown for Christmas.”)

We are the Griswolds of the neighborhood.

The photobombing mouse is a beloved family keepsake, gifted from one of my more unbalanced relatives. It is a cherished reminder of a simpler time, when I didn’t understand she was batshit.

More importantly, Michigan defeated Ohio State – yet again – and was squarely in the national championship picture.

This had to be the year. It had to be.

But then came the news that the NCAA, which is Latin for “Servant of the SEC,” somehow squeezed an undeserving but hard to beat Alabama into the Rose Bowl. I won’t even mention the Big 10 championship game, because no one mentioned it to Iowa’s offense.

To pass the time before the Rose Bowl, I fished in the Santa Cruz area with local species genius Vince (@prickly_sculpin.) These trips are always a crapshoot – the fishing requires a low tide in the dark, so it’s all waders and headlamps, and while it’s slippery and rocky all year, the winter can bring rain and wind, which can kill a session. Luckily, while it was memorably cold, it was not raining, so we met at the tidepools he had chosen, geared up, and started the careful walk out to the fishable water.

Vince hunts the water as the sun goes down.

As you get out to the first few pools, there are loads of fluffy sculpin, but I’ve caught these, so they are nothing but a distraction. But I have a hard time passing them up.

Yeah, I finally got one of the bright green ones. (And, to my shame, I had initially said this was a wooly. The correction came from, of all places, Ron Anderson in Bloomington, Indiana – a freshwater expert who has never seen one of these in person. I know what he’s reading late at night.)

Vince reminded me that we had limited time and urged me onward. Our targets would be the elusive snailfish and some elusiver gunnels. 

We started poking bait under rocks, hoping something interesting would lunge out. A few of the common sculpins attacked, but we stayed disciplined and kept moving. We searched some of the deeper pools for snailfish, and it was intimidating to hear waves crashing on the rocks only a few feet behind us – when the tide rises here, it does fairly quickly, so paying attention is very important.

Beginning tidepoolers – I’m not kidding here. There are two kinds of anglers on this coast at night – the keenly aware, and the dead. It happens every year. Don’t let it be you.

We started flipping rocks – a much safer activity here than in, say, Australia, where anything you find might kill you. Just as it got really dark, I lifted a doormat-sized slab and a streak of red shot out. It was a penpoint gunnel – an unusual and beautiful creature that rarely eats. Vince advised me to set the rock down and let the fish settle back in, which is what happened. I then set to trying to get him to come out and bite, which Vince warned me could be difficult. It was. The thing showed a couple of times, generally its hind end, but after about 45 minutes, it poked its head out, albeit with complete indifference toward my bait. 

Half an hour later, just as Vince warned me could happen, it suddenly decided to eat. Cramped and cold though I was, I flipped it onto the dry rocks and pounced on it. I had added a species and a day.

And this is apparently quite a big one – but still 13 ounces shy of a world record. The head is on the right.

This is the face. They’re actually kind of cute.

The tide started coming up, so we slowly started retreating toward the beach, keeping our eyes open for fish. About halfway back, Vince suddenly stopped and said “I’ll be damned. There’s a mosshead sculpin under that rock. I’ve never seen one here before.” I didn’t need to be told twice, and neither did the sculpin – it instantly jumped out and grabbed my piece of pileworm.

That was two species in a night, which took me to 2244 lifetime.

December saw several more tries in the central coast tidepools, but no new species to report. The was one noteworthy fishing event, and it involves me being a jerk, but in a way that I find completely justified.

It was December 2, and Marta and I were down in Pacific Grove, mostly for the members holiday party at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which we give money to despite their tiresome anti-fishing stances. I managed to weasel a couple of hours of fishing time, at tremendous cost. (One pair of shoes, and the price wasn’t so much an issue as the space in the house – Marta is often referred to as “The Imelda Marcos of Alamo.” It should be noted that Marta believes this to be completely fictional and that I have more shoes than she does.) But I digress.

Local buddy and fishing whiz Daniel Gross invited me down to the Coast Guard pier for whatever might be biting in the kelp. He had helpfully obtained bait and was already set up by the time I showed.

Of course, Nori the Tuna Dog was in attendance.

I started to bait my hook, and Daniel mentioned that there was a big opaleye he was working on and if I wouldn’t mind holding off for just a … which is right around when I cast. 

Daniel is the man who broke my black surfperch record, so you know where this is going. The moment my bait hit the water, a positively enormous opaleye raced to the surface and crushed it. Daniel probably gave me an annoyed but knowing look, but then he was all business and helped me land the beast. It weighed out at five pounds even, and easily broke the world record on opaleye. 

This was record number 230 for me. Sorry again, Daniel.

Daniel and Alyssa moved to Florida a few months later – I can only hope this wasn’t what caused it.

I tried the tidepools a few more times in December, and even saw a rosy sculpin, but there were no new species to report for 2023. There were some raucous holiday parties, friends we don’t see nearly enough, and dozens of quiet nights watching such sacred fare as “Scrooged” and “It Happened on Fifth Avenue.” There is nothing quite as wondrous as donning holiday pajamas, setting a roaring fire, and watching Chevy Chase’s Persian cat get blown up. (Marta insists this isn’t funny and protests on behalf of cats everywhere.)

Part of the group at a Christmas party. That’s Ziad, who looks like he’s spitting out a nacho he doesn’t like, his wife Danielle, Hoang, myself, Kellen, and Kellen’s wife Camille. Danielle, Hoang, Kellen and I all worked together at a large, sinister German software company.

It’s tough to find that much stuff that doesn’t match. Read the sweatshirt carefully.

Marta sets the perfect Christmas Eve dinner table, except for the disturbing painting upper left. I’ve always been scared of that thing.

Then the college football playoffs happened. The Rose Bowl was an emotional journey for me and more so for my bladder, but by comparison, the National Championship game felt like a walk in the park. I remained seated for the entire game, just like Michael Penix.

The happiest moment of my life. To be clear, even if I had children, this would still be the happiest moment of my life.

Just after Orthopedic Christmas, I was back at fishing, this time in the tidepools of Pacific Grove, again in spots provided by Vince. The main target was a saddleback sculpin, which were supposed to be present in some numbers, but the trick was to find one particular recessed pool among many, and this pool, like Brigadoon, was only visible and fishable at extreme minus tides. My first visit there was merely a low tide, and I both failed to find the spot and got dunked a couple of times. That’s four hours of driving (two in wet sweatpants) for no fish.

But it is a beautiful place.

On the ninth of January, I returned on a better tide and found the spot. I saw a couple of saddlebacks, but they were spookier than I thought. I at least knew I would get one eventually, and as the tide started rising, I spotted an odd-looking sculpin under a rock a few feet down. I dropped a bait to it, it bit, and while I didn’t know what it was immediately, I knew it wasn’t anything I had caught before.

One call with Vince later, the fish was confirmed as a Rosy Sculpin, species number 2245.

Two days later, I was back down to Pacific Grove for the lowest of the low tides, well after dark. Again, please be very careful when you do this kind of fishing. Get good waders, use a ski pole, wear a floatation device. This is the ocean, and it’s dark out.

I went right to the saddled sculpin spot, and focused in on finding one shallow and presenting right on its nose. It took maybe three tries, but they were biting that night, and I got one.

Species 2246. Thanks Vince.

There was Carl’s Jr. in my immediate future, but I always hate to leave biting fish, and my instincts served me well that night. I played around and got a few huge wooly sculpins, and then nothing short of a miracle happened. I was drifting a bait down through some kelp leaves, and I happened to notice that one of the kelp leaves looked a bit more like a kelp leaf than the other kelp leaves did. Just one tiny segment of a frond that was swaying back and forth in the tide was a slightly brighter yellow-green than the rest of the plant. I looked more closely, and my eyes popped out of my head. It was a kelp clingfish, insanely rare, insanely hard to spot, insanely tiny, and reputedly impossible to catch. (Vince, and only Vince, had accomplished this.)

My bait was tiny but felt like a shark rig next to the inch and change fish. The current was blowing the plants around so I kept losing sight of it, and then … I had my one perfect moment. The current stopped. The wind stopped. The kelp stopped moving and left the fish facing me just inches under water. I eased the bait across the leaf and in front of it, and it attacked with all the ruthless abandon a fish that size can muster. I lifted up and dropped it into the phone pocket on my waders, threw my arms over it like a fullback protecting the ball on a fourth and one, and scrambled to shore for pictures. This was a rarity. This was pure luck. This was an awesome species I might never see again, but I had one.

The fearsome kelp clingfish, species 2247.

It had been an awesome winter – eight species added, and six dates filled. I had some big trips coming up later in the year, but these local, off-season species are hard work, and I was glad and grateful to have put them on the board. Thank you to Chris and Jacob for your time in LA, thank you to The Mucus for washing, and especially thank you to Vince for making this one of the best holiday seasons I could ever have. Santa Claus has brought me many wondrous things, including my GI Joe collection and my Grumpy Cat Christmas t-shirt, but only Vince could bring me a kelp clingfish.

Steve

 

 

1 Comment

Posted in More than 2000, North America, World Records

Posted by: 1000fish | October 1, 2024

The Florida Fail

DATELINE: NOVEMBER 6, 2023 – VERO BEACH, FLORIDA

Over the years, I have had some wonderful fishing trips to Florida. This will not be one of them. This will be more a sad tale of my dim-witted persistence, where the hope for 10 or more species was crushed into a desperate struggle for at least one. For that, and several other more important reasons, this blog is going to be a downer.

It started innocently and with the highest of hopes. Chris Moore and I had been looking for a pre-holiday trip, and thought we would skip Puerto Penasco this time. He found some budget tickets to Orlando, and, in talking between us and Dom Porcelli, we found a good number of targets we could chase in a few days. These ranged from very doable, like lesser amberjack or remora, to completely foolhardy, like mountain mullet. Still, it seemed like there was a shot at a few good ones and a chance to see Dom, so we set it up.

In the middle of all this, real life intruded in an awful way. Marta’s Mother, she of the endless hospitality, passed away. She was 92 and we can’t call it unexpected, but it was shattering. Anka lived an incredible life, hailing from a small village in Montenegro, spending her childhood under Nazi rule, suffering worse as the communists took over, then marrying, moving to the US without knowing a word of English, and raising five children. She was a force of nature, a woman who changed thousands of lives for the better, a woman who always had time for an injured animal, and still somehow always found a little humor in every situation. 

Anka Bulaich – 1931-2023. Read the obituary here – it’s one of the most moving tributes I’ve ever read.

The service was on November 1. It was attended to standing-room-only levels, and it was the most beautiful sendoff I have ever witnessed. (Until Marta asked me to say a few words with no warning.)

   

Anka and some close friends.

One of the photoboards Marta and her brothers put together. These always feel so incomplete, because for every photo you put up, you remember 20 others that were just as good.

Marta was in problem-solving mode, so she had something to keep her mind off of the loss, but I knew she was in pain – I lost my own Mom 12 years ago, and it’s rough. I tried to just cancel the Florida trip, but Marta would have none of that, and insisted I go so she could have some alone time to decompress – and a few days to catch up on work. 

I flew out on a redeye to Fort Lauderdale, checked into the hotel, and took an Uber up to join the guys at Phil Foster Park. We had planned to do the next two days on Dom’s boat, but, to put it lightly, the weather had turned against us. And not just in a “Brayden’s gonna puke” way – more like a “No boats on the water” way. Ten foot swells. 40mph wind. We were unexpectedly shorebound, and in conditions that were not going to make it easy.

Not that Phil Foster wasn’t fun. There’s a lot to catch, and Chris and The Mucus each scratched out a few.

I caught a cowfish. Cowfish are cool. (Ryan Crutchfield and I are tied for the world record on this, but confidentially, his was bigger.)

One of the more attractive grunts – and a porkfish.

Chris even got himself a bonefish, which I hopped a fence to land.

At dinner that night, we had to scramble to make plans B-Z because the boat was out of the question. The Mucus slowed things down by going through the five stages of boat cancellation grief:

  • “It looks like it’s laying down.” (No, it’s not. Math isn’t negotiable.)
  • “I’m sure we can find someplace sheltered.” (No, we can’t. Straight north wind.)
  • “The swells are getting smaller up by Daytona beach.” (No they aren’t.)
  • “Can’t we just try it for an hour and see how we do?” (This is why smacking kids upside the head shouldn’t have gone out of style.)
  • “It really does look like it’s laying down.” (See #1 above. Rinse, lather, and repeat.)

Dom took us out shore fishing the next morning, first to a lagoon reputed to have fat snook. (They really are called that, so no, it isn’t snook-shaming, and if this even crossed your mind, you’re reading the wrong blog.) The guys added the species, but even that small, protected water was a mess with the wind.

A fat snook. I got my first one in Brazil in 1999.

We then moved to some neighborhood creeks to the east, and Chris and The Mucus both added an Eastern Happy Cichlid. (A fish Pat Kerwin had introduced me to several years ago.) 

I made friends with a horse.

Which animal would you rather have breathing on you? $10 Bass Pro gift certificate for the most creative answer.

We parted ways with Dom in the early afternoon and headed for South Beach in Miami. We caught plenty of fish down there, but nothing exciting – the water was as churned up as I’ve ever seen it. 

I don’t mean to make this post such a bummer, and we haven’t even covered all the bad news yet, but this would be the last time any of us would fish with Dom Porcelli, who passed away a few months later.

I wonder now, if we had somehow known, whether we would have done anything differently. The fishing was bad, but I still wish that day could have lasted forever, just for the conversation. I was so far behind in the blog when Dom died that there were eight more episodes involving him posthumously. This is the last, and it feels for me like having to say goodbye for the final time. We all miss you, Dom. 

We spent the next day hopping from shore spot to shore spot, but the wind was relentless and any sight fishing, which might have gotten me something new, was out of the question. We tried everywhere from Fort Worth Pier down to Boca Raton, and while I caught 82 fish, they were all repeat customers. The guys managed to tack on a few new ones, so I could take some solace in knowing that I was supposed to be glad for them.

Sunset over South Beach. We got to enjoy it pretty much undisturbed by fish.

There are probably good pictures of all of us, but not together.

The next day was similarly disappointing, and I was beginning to get desperate. I have had some awful trips, but never one that was a complete strikeout. The stars were aligning for me to catch absolutely nothing new. I was certainly grouchy, and I may have approached insufferable. But we soldiered on, and I kept fishing hard for just one random critter.

After dark on Boca Inlet. The rich and famous got to watch us catch nothing.

I stayed up very late that night chasing some pond creatures, and I thought I had scored with a golden silverside. Sadly, it turns out that the silverside I caught with Martini in 2015 and had counted as a brook silverside had been split into this species, so I was even, except for the mosquito bites. And now I needed a brook silverside, a fish I had passed up in the midwest dozens of times.

Our last day took us north, hunting some of Ben Cantrell’s old Florida spots. The wind, if anything, was worse, and everything we tried, from creeks to rock jetties, did not pan out. There were plenty of standard fish, especially catfish in Sebastian, but nothing new to report. I was as miserable and desperate as Cousin Chuck at a high school dance. (Especially considering he’s around 70 years old.)

We had some kind of awful sub sandwiches for dinner, and then, more out of duty than hope, we headed to a small creek where, according to some vague online rumors, there was a population of spinycheek sleepers. The guys both had a dozen or more new species on the trip, but this was going to be my last chance to avoid unspeakable shame.

This photo is the only redeeming thing that came out of the sub place. As The Mucus slowly, dutifully chewed his sandwich, I asked him what was in it. He said “I literally have no idea.”

We examined the water carefully, and one by one, we started spotting the target fish. Getting them to bite was another story, but after a couple of hours, we all had one, and yes, The Mucus pointed mine out to me. Triumph at last.

There is no explaining this to a non-species hunter, but this single catch, especially as late in the game as we were, makes me remember the entire trip as a success, even though it was a 2017 Cleveland Browns-level disaster.

And I caught another fat sleeper, one of the cutest fish in existence.

We kept at it for a little while longer. There was one other fish there, a goby, which seemed terrified of light, sound, movement, and bait. But we had nothing better to do, and we kept playing goby-spooking pong where we scared them back and forth across the creek to each other. Sometime after midnight, I actually had one hold still long enough to present to it. It stayed put, albeit with apparent disinterest in my bait. I always view this as a good sign, as I believe fish that hold like this will eventually bite out of boredom or annoyance. It took quite a while of gently touching him on the nose (not a sentence I ever thought I would write,) but in the wee hours, he finally eased forward over the bait. I struck, and landed the fish hooked cleanly in the mouth. It was a lyre goby, so-called because The Mucus says anyone who says they have caught one is a lyre. Yet there we were, and I have two words for you, Mucus – River Redhorse.

I somehow had two species at the last second, taking me to 2239 lifetime. I felt inexplicably triumphant.

The only redeeming feature to this entire mess is that I thought it would be the last time I would have to fish with The Mucus for two years. He would be heading off on a church mission shortly after Christmas, the best present I could ask for, except maybe the Stella 500 Marta refuses to get me. I have very limited influence in the Mormon community, so the letters I wrote trying to get him assigned to Yemen or Cleveland fell on deaf ears, but he would still end up on another continent, so that was a plus.

Ah, who am I kidding. I’ll kind of miss him. 

Steve

POSTSCRIPT – LOSING A HERO

I returned from Florida on November 7, which gave me three days to plan something for my Great Uncle Ted’s 99th birthday. The youngest brother of my grandfather Steve, (who was killed in WWII,) Ted was a decorated veteran who was in combat from Normandy to Mortain, on to Aachen and the Battle of the Bulge. He was the humblest man I have ever known, and while I am sure many of his worst experiences were never shared, he knew that merely surviving the war had been luck – beating the odds by a wide margin in many cases. He knew and lived by the fact that every day is a gift. I had met Ted a few times as a kid, but I was only reacquainted with him in 2007. Marta met Ted that same year. He had to go in for unplanned heart surgery when I was on a trip to Singapore, and Marta went to visit him in the hospital. She got to the right floor, but before she could find a nurse to direct her to the room, she saw a patient and knew it was him, from the eyes alone. She said “It was like seeing an 82 year-old version of Steve, except better looking.”

Steve and Ted, circa 2008.

Ted and I became very close over the next 16 years – the nearest thing to a father figure I have had in my adult life. We got out to lunch or dinner weekly for many years, often joined by Marta, and Ted’s wife Donna. They made fun of us ruthlessly. He was just as stubborn and just as competitive as I am – indeed, only a week after he went home from that heart surgery, he had to be rushed back to the hospital because he burst a staple. While lifting a washing machine. I shamelessly admire him for that, and while he did have to go to the ER, the washing machine got where it needed to be, and that’s the important thing.

It was my privilege to learn so much about the Polish side of my family, about his experiences in the war, and especially about my grandfather. We spent many late nights talking about the war, and over time, he trusted me with many of the brutal details of those awful 11 months and two days of his life, from June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach, to May 8, 1945, on the banks of the Elbe River. One story I will never forget was about Raymond, a private in Ted’s platoon. Raymond was from rural Tennessee, a good soldier, and a deeply religious man. As their unit fought through the hedgerows and the casualties began to mount, Raymond would sing a hymn every night for the dead. Ted said he had a beautiful voice. Just before Christmas of 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge, Raymond was killed, just yards away from Ted. Ted told me this story 74 years after it happened, but he still choked up. “That night,” he said, “There was no one left to sing for him.”

Ted came home to Detroit later in 1945, suffered from what we would call PTSD today, but then somehow put it all behind him, married, had four kids, ran a successful business, and ended up out in the San Francisco Bay Area from the early 1960s onward.

Ted was in his eighties when we met up again, and I always regretted that I never went fishing with him. But he looked at every fish picture I ever thought was worth showing, he read every blog, and he gave me a few pieces of gear I will treasure forever. He also gave me plenty of advice that I will carry with me for life. I’ll never forget when I told him I was having a bad time at work. He heard me out, and then said “Well, is anyone shooting at you?” I smiled and told him no, that no one was shooting at me. He smiled and said “Then it really wasn’t really that bad of a day.”

I had to take his word for that. I’ve never been shot at, and this was a man who, on August 7, 1944, was awakened from his foxhole in Mortain, France by the entire Second SS Panzer Division coming down the road in a surprise attack. As he recalled, they all seemed to be headed directly toward him, but in a week of pitched fighting, the Germans were driven back, setting the stage for the Falaise Gap and the collapse of the German Army in France. 

Ted had not been in great health for a couple of years – he was in his late 90s after all – but his mind remained incredibly sharp. He could recall the addresses of his childhood homes, give the stories of so many relatives I had never met or only faintly recalled, and he could name every man who died next to him in combat. He passed away quietly, on his 99th birthday, about two hours before I was going to head over to see him. He was one of the few men left alive who had fought in WWII – “The Greatest Generation” – and he had lived a good life, leaving behind two surviving children and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In “Saving Private Ryan,” Captain John Miller’s last words were “Earn this.” That was the only thing all the men who didn’t make it home asked for – that those who survived made the best of the opportunity that came at such a high price. My Uncle Ted never forgot those men, honored and thanked them every day of his long and generous life, and now he rejoins them. I hope that Raymond and my Grandfather are waiting to welcome him home.

 

2 Comments

Posted in More than 2000, North America

Posted by: 1000fish | September 12, 2024

The Least But Not The Last

DATELINE: OCTOBER 28, 2023 – WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA

One of the great challenges to this blog is finding ways to make very small species somehow sound exciting. If any of you have ideas on how I can do this, please let me know, but in the meantime, we’re going to have to suffer through three fish that would not outweigh my pinkie finger, even after a manicure. (A manicure on my pinkie finger, obviously. It would be stupid for a fish to get a manicure, because it would never dry.)

Things started innocently enough. In mid-September, we planned a “Deja Brew” tour, this time to Pittsburgh to watch Pirates and Steelers games. The Pirates were first, on Saturday night.

The Roberto Clemente statue outside the stadium, honoring one of the greatest men who ever played the game. I remember seeing his 3000th (and final) hit on TV, against the Mets. Willie Mays was one of the first to congratulate him. I also remember the networks breaking in to programming to announce his plane had gone down at the end of that same year – 1972.

The gang at the game.

A great view of downtown.

The Pirates were playing the Yankees, and there were a lot of New Yorkers in attendance. I enjoyed pointing this out to them.

The Steelers game was a Monday night affair, so were free Sunday. Steve and I got talking, which rarely leads to good. The Bills were playing in Buffalo on Sunday, and Buffalo is only three hours away from Pittsburgh, and … yeah, it didn’t sound that stupid at the time, but looking back at it, that’s a lot of driving.          

But in the middle of this drive, courtesy of Cody Cromer, there was a spot that was supposed to have a slam dunk Allegheny Pearl Dace. I am always wary of “slam dunks,” as many of mine come flying off the rim and end up in the stands, but it was worth a try. Because Marta values the time of others, including homeless strangers, more than mine, she gave me a 20 minute time limit to catch the fish. I view this as unfair, but Carol unreasonably supported her and so I was left with a very tight window.

I thought it was actually very kind of me to break up a three hour car ride with a bit of excitement.

Yes, I caught the fish. If you look carefully, you can see Carol giving me an evil look from the back seat.

The Buffalo game was awesome. The fans are very intense – they do not sit down the entire game. Luckily, the Bills destroyed the Raiders, so the town was safe for the evening and we got excellent wings and ice cream.

Interestingly, Buffalo wings are actually made out of chicken.

Back in Pittsburgh, we did a bit of tourism Monday.

In Oakland’s sports museum, they have the same statue, but the ball is touching the ground.

Marta also managed to bash Tom Brady, which is unfair, because he is awesome. Steve Ramsey does not share my opinion.

Heading up the incline.

A view of the football stadium, I don’t care what they call it, it will always be Three Rivers to me.

Later that night, we got to be a part of the raucous Steelers crowd that saw Pittsburgh defeat Cleveland.

The stadium put on quite a show – and so did the Steeler’s defensive line.

The group celebrates the win.

I’m not exactly pro-Cleveland in sports, so I was pleased, but the Steelers fans were an intense bunch. They booed the Cleveland sideline staff. They booed anyone wearing orange. They booed the ambulance crew that took Nick Chubb off the field, and they even booed Chubb’s ACL. 

Oh yes I did.

This blog could have ended right here, but later that evening, I did something that has gotten me in a lot of trouble over the years. I opened my mouth. As we were all sitting around the hotel lobby making fun of DeShaun Watson, Steve Ramsey made a startling observation. He mentioned, quite correctly, that he and I had attended around 16 Indiana University football games, and that Indiana was a perfect 0-16 in those contests. He went as far as to suggest that I might even be bad luck. Considering that the bulk of the IU games we’ve seen were against Michigan, I tried to explain that this was just math, and when he pointed out that we had also seen them play Ohio State, Purdue, and Cincinnati, I was forced to suggest that they might just be bad. Foolishly, I asked when the next “creampuff” game would be for Indiana, even though Terre Haute High might give them a run for their money. Steve thought next week’s game against Akron would fit the bill nicely – Indiana was a 17 point favorite. I was on the spot, and without even considering that this would mean I would be home for two days before I had to fly back to the Midwest, I was in. At least we could wear the same jersey, agree on when to cheer, and see an IU victory. That was a given.

You certainly see where this is going. 

Of course, I was not going to Indiana without trying to sneak in a little fishing with Ron and Jarrett. Ron was available to try for the elusive goldeye, which remained elusive.

But you have to love his t-shirt. I only have one of those species.

Not a goldeye.

We did this on the way to the IU game, which was an evening contest, but we were so confident that they would be comfortably ahead by halftime that we made 9pm dinner reservations at a nearby BBQ. 

Steve and Steve before the game, brimming with confidence.

Again, you see where this is going. The game did not develop into an immediate blowout. Akron kept hanging in there. But we were certain the Hoosiers would run away with it. They didn’t. We missed dinner. And sometime around 11pm, in the waning seconds of regulation, Akron missed a field goal that would have won the game for them. Steve made it clear that I personally had brought bad luck to Bloomington and that if Indiana did not win that it would be best if I never attended another game at Memorial stadium. 

It was after midnight when the Hoosiers finally stopped a two-point try by Akron, using my time-honored DB trick of leaving a guy wide open and having him drop the ball. We had defeated the Zips. That’s right, Indiana took four overtimes to beat someone called the Zips, but we had our victory and a very late dinner at White Castle. (Where the onion chips, a food meant to be shared, are the best thing ever.)

More relieved than triumphant, we were among the faithful who stuck it out until an ending that was less bitter than a loss.

The final score. We didn’t exactly cover the spread.

As relentless sports fans, we were up the next day to catch an Indianapolis Indians game, tickets courtesy of my friend Pam.

That’s her. I’ve known her since 1989.

She is incredibly well-connected. That’s her chatting with Bruce Schumacher, who owns the ballclub.

Pam’s cat, Baby, keeps an eye on us from inside her apartment later that day. He does not trust strangers. He doesn’t even trust the Roomba.

A few weeks later, I was back in Indianapolis, as part of a complex east coast swing that would also involve a business trip and a family visit.

Another frequent-flyer travel tip – there are a number of options to avoid crowded bathrooms.

In Indiana, we had a Pacers preseason game, another IU football game, and a Colts/Browns contest on the agenda. I got some decent aerial shots of Indianapolis on the flight in.

Downtown from the south. You can see the Bank One tower, Lucas Oil Field, and, if you look carefully, Tyler Goodson dropping a football.

The Indianapolis Speedway. I inadvertently drove a lap on it once. Note that the infield is big enough to hold a nine hole golf course.

On the court after a Pacers preseason win.

We celebrated with dinner at St. Elmo’s Steakhouse, a local institution that has been around for more than a century.

My favorite steakhouse anywhere.

Coincidentally, it is also Ron Swanson’s favorite steakhouse. For those of you who haven’t seen “Parks and Recreation,” you are missing a magnificent piece of American culture.

We then headed back down to Bloomington for the inevitable. Indiana losing to Rutgers was painful, but the Hoosiers kept it close until well into the first quarter.

We still had Akron to be proud about.

But it still sickens me to discuss the Colts result. They had the game won – twice – and both times, officials came up with phantom calls that allowed Cleveland to skulk away with an unearned victory.

You have to wonder what the woman directly behind me was looking at.

The second call was bad enough where even ESPN noticed. In order for pass interference to stick, the ball has to be catchable, and this ball went four rows deep in the stands.

The approximate location the ball landed. I had a better chance of catching it than the Cleveland receiver, and I don’t have the best hands.

Of course, there was also going to be fishing. Ron, the Bloomington-based darter expert, drove up to Northern Indiana with me, where we met Gerry Hansell to pursue a few exotic micros, including the elusive pirate perch. It was an evening of chilly, iffy weather, and we started the program by having a look for least darters, a species Ron considered the lowest odds of that evening’s targets. So of course Gerry and I both got one.

This is a full-on adult least darter – one of the smallest fish I’ve caught on a hook and line.

The rest of the evening was an abject failure. The stuff we were looking for is apparently seasonal, and we were in the wrong season. Ron and I headed home around 11; it’s always great to talk shop with him for a couple of hours and benefit from the insane amount of local knowledge he and Jarrett have. I was back at Ramsey’s house around 1am, when he is just eating his dinner and getting ready for Frasier reruns. I’ve got to call that a successful evening.

The gang. I’m not sure what we were looking at.

A few days later, after a business stop in Philadelphia, I found myself in Northern Virginia, visiting my sister and her family.

Laura’s husband, Dan.

The kids are dispersed – one working in Richmond and the other in grad school at Brown, so getting everyone together was going to be impossible. Luckily, my occasional nephew Charlie was able to come up for a dinner. Among all of my sister’s children, he is one of my favorites.

We also got to tour Alexandria for an evening – with history going back before the American Revolution, it’s a favorite for me.

The Revolutionary War’s unknown soldier, Alexandria, Virginia.

The family on a walking tour of local Halloween decorations. 

Laura with some friends from grad school.

The American Revolution stuff always fascinates me. We spent three years of our childhoods living in West Trenton, NJ, right by Washington’s Crossing. I was always impressed that our troops rowed across a frozen river to kill the enemy on Christmas day.

The next night, Charlie came up for dinner, although he blew us off later in the evening to go to a Halloween party. What sane 24 year-old would pass up watching “Parks and Recreation” with his parents and uncle for a party featuring beer and women?

He only spell he knows is “Instanto diarrheum,” – it works on my sister.

My sister also made cube steak for one of the dinners – this is a beloved old family recipe and brings back a lot of memories.

But of course, there was going to be some fishing. I had solid information from east coast species whiz Tim Aldridge that Potomac sculpins could be easily found less than an hour from my sister’s house. And so we set out for what I promised would be local fall color sightseeing with a brief fishing interlude. This is how I present most fishing trips when non-fishing companions are providing transportation. I am generally never telling the truth, but in this case, I got lucky and the stream was jammed with hungry sculpins.

Some perfect autumn scenery, although fishermen can sometimes get tired of the floating leaves. 

Sculpins, even small ones, will generally bite as long as you present them with a reasonable-size bait. The flecks used for darters are often ignored. I got the fish and was out of the creek by the time Laura and Dan got back from getting a cup of coffee. So we actually did have time to view some of the fall foliage and visiting a few quaint little towns. 

The Potomac sculpin, species 2237.

For those of you who count along at home, and you know who you are, there are a few missing here, accounted for by the recent splits in cutthroat trout, which got me two armchair lifers. One of these, the Rocky Mountain cutthroat, was added with the Moores during the blog era. The other, the Westslope cutthroat, was a 2004 catch in Idaho with buddy Mike Rapoport – photos of that are in that same blog for your convenience.

It had been an idyllic fall – family, great friends, great food, sports, and a few fish. A day later, I was heading home to celebrate Halloween with Marta, looking forward to our traditional pizza and viewing of Ghostbusters and Vincent Price’s classic Theatre of Blood. I even had an early November Florida trip coming up. But reality often intrudes at unexpected times, and life back in California was about to take a very sad turn.

Steve

 

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