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That's one lonely sea gull.
Okay, okay. I didn't get around to posting a movie on Movie Monday--I figure I have about a 56 percent success ratio on that... but neverthless, here's what I got for Wednesday: sooty shearwaters.
Have at:
Haiku #2,249
So happy right now.
Skunkhood going, going... gone
Thank god for rockfish.
I know, I know! This is a problematic engraving. But it was so nice I had to include it. Could someone please tell me what the hell it is? The title on the art auction page site was: "Rock Fish."
Where was I... right... waxing haikuic once again.... Anyhoo... that this "going, going... gone" has occurred as rockfish season opens is no coincidence. Let me exclaim it again. Thank gawd for rockfish (TGFRF) that's all I can say!
A truly massive short raker rockfish--not, obviously, caught by me
Since my misspent day out at the Alameda Rock Wall chasing halibut ghosts, (the ghosts of 2008-2009) I have made two more spirted attempts at flatty fishing and caught absolutely nothing. Except for one totally misguded sand sole, which came up on a Sabiki rig off of Crissy Field the other day, I have nothing to show for these labors.
Between that and my fruitless attempts at striper fishing, I was, as previously indicated, nearing a state of total and abject mental breakdown.
"But then there was Mike, and the trusty ol' Wahoo..."
But then there was Mike, and the trusty ol' Wahoo, and a calm Pacific Ocean, and a lazy Tuesday morning with nothing better to do. And Mike's winning suggestion--a whole squid rigged to a halibut leader and deftly bounced off the rocks--was all I needed to break the chains of skunkhood.
Anyway. Nothing to write home about, but at least the fishwife is no longer justified in complaining. (the divorce proceedings have been abruptly abandoned). 6.5 pounds of rockfish/lingcod fillets, may not be a 57 pound white seabass, or a 20 pound hali, but it's a reasonable amount of fish for tacos. And a reasonable platform of success to build on. Feel me here, my people?
In short, I've never been so gull-durned happy to see a gopher rockfish in my life! My total for 51 minutes of fishing out of Pillar Point: 5 chunky Gophers, 1 lunker black and a 23.5 inch ling (22 inches is legal this year folks!). Not bad for an hour of noon time fishing.
"I've never been so gull-durned happy to see a gopher rockfish in my life!"
And it's true: I actually kept a kelp greenling. I am known to do this on occasion. Knowing fully well that I am responsible for the local adage: "friends don't let friends eat greenling." Really, when you throw a bunch of rockfish fillets into a baggie, you'd be surprised how good greenling ends up tasting. I always inspect them for worms anyway. And as long as you tweeze out or slice the bones, greenling is fine. There I said it. Now leave me alone.
Friends don't let friends...
A Worthy E-mail
I have decided that I will now post worthy e-mails from MFN fans. (My mother wants to know what MFN stands for. Monkeyface News mom). Okay. Here's some great stuff from a fisheries biologist named Drew, who wanted to share some awesome photos of extreme cold water species with me. This was around the time that I first started posting about bullheads (Pacific staghorn sculpins) and Drew wanted me to know that, although tough, a Pacific staghorn sculpin could never endure the cold waters of the Bering Sea--six degrees below freezing where these creatures were caught!
Drew, not unlike a former fisheries observer turned blogger, tour guide, and smelt assassin, evidently snaps photos of the more notable fish species that he encounters in the field. These photos were so exemplary and the fish so desperately strange that I simply have to include them here for your viewing pleasure. So, take a peek at these beauts! Thanks Drew.
Anyway... if I already posted these, sorry, they're sitting on my desktop and I find them so mind numbingly beautiful, I have to post them again...
A fine specimen of butterfly sculpin.
Drew: "Also a photo of a salmon snailfish... a real dandy of specimen for those of us who can appreciate strange colorful gelatinous tadpole looking fishes."
Drew: "Attached is a shot of a marbled eelpout next to a lost and very very cold pac halibut."
Anyway here is some more of Drew's text:
"I have always thought that sculpin are an awesome group of fishes. Check out the attached photo of a super cool butterfly sculpin I caught in a net off of Saint Mathew island at the top of the Bering Sea. The water it was caught in was 6 degrees below freezing. Up there the fresh water freezes out of the salty stuff and leaves behind super salty water with a much lower freezing temperature. Staghorn may be tough, stay alive on the hook a long time, but could never man up to the temps that the butterfly endure. Only arctic cod and marbled eelpout hang with the butterflies. Antifreeze proteins in the blood..."
"I wanted to share some photos of some other cool fish caught in the same area as the butterflies since you seem to be interested in the extreme cold water fish (or is it just the sculpin that caught your interest?). Attached is a shot of a marbled eelpout next to a lost and very, very cold Pacific halibut. Also a photo of a salmon snailfish... a real dandy of specimen for those of us who can appreciate strange colorful gelatinous tadpole looking fishes."
Well if anyone can "appreciate strange colorful gelatinous tadpole looking fishes,'t it's readers of The Monkeyface News.
Anyway, just thought I'd share this worthy e-mail. I think, I will start sharing other worthy emails and comments every Wednesday. We'll call it... let's see... how about... Worthy Wednesday?
Kirk-out.
PS: "Only arctic cod and marbled eelpout hang with the butterflies" is a wonderful sentence on many levels.
Here's my movie for Movie Monday (there's still 3.5 hours left in Monday, so you can't say I didn't meet the deadline! Ha!)
Well. I'm back. A-hem. Yikes. Seems like I haven't posted in a long time... Ugh. Okay. Here we go.
Sometime around three weeks ago I began to fret. This fretting, atypical as it may be in a fish-headed extrovert of my general type, was based on a fallacy. The fallacy of choice was that I was somehow undeserving to continue writing blog posts until I caught a fish larger than a smelt.
"... a fish headed extrovert of my general type."
I know, I know... people do not generally come here to read the quasi- Neanderthalic proclamations of fish killing skill found on most fish related blogs and message boards. I realize this. Right. I get it. I offer something slightly different (quasi Cro-Magnonism?) than the usual thing. But still, it seemed like a good idea to harvest something other than a fucking gaper clam, night smelt, pogey, sardine, herring or surf smelt. Y'all feel me? And so I set about shredding the surface waters of the greater bay area to a frothing pulp with hair raiser, rattle trap (first time I've really used these horrifying tools of fish destruction) and, yes, even one of those hand painted antique pencil popper type things that festoon my office walls.
And as my fishlessness continued, I grew despondent. Who am I to speak on the subject of fishing, who can't even raise a single halibut in 200 hours of ocean time? Who hasn't caught a striper in the surf in over a year? (I don't fish the bay for stripers). And as my despondency grew so did my lack of confidence. Until suddenly I found myself looking back over the last three weeks wondering where all my blog posts were.
This times 20
And then yesterday I decided to participate in one of those big fishing tournaments that I generally hate attending. This was at the behest of the great Niko Von Sharky, who was not only convinced that he would win the tournament but that I would finally end my losing streak. So I woke up at the crack of dawn and dragged my bleary carcass to the Alameda Rock Wall, filched a few top smelt out of Niko's jerry-rigged live tank, launched my 10 foot ocean kayak in the shadow of those big navy ships, paddled out with 70 some odd other lost souls and spent 4.5 hours trying to remember what a fish on the line is supposed to feel like.
In short....
Pepe, my personal mascot, in these my darkest times.
I skunked again.
But at least this time I had company. Niko tells me the total for the day was 3 fish for 70 entrants. So, despite my own inclination towards self deprication, it wasn't just me.
At least my earlier statement on the subject of bullheads vs. topsmelt was confirmed. Here is Von Sharky's comment from back in May:
"In my books mr Toppie {MFN Editorial Machine: "Toppie" = topsmelt} is the ultimate torture survivor. He would outlast KSM at the hands of the CIA. I waterboarded him for eight hours yesterday (having a day similar to yours). When I got back to shore and unhooked him he deftly swam off giving me a look of "is that all ya got?" realizing that torture was not producing results, I freed his six fellow inmates."
A noble sufferer: the topsmelt.
No doubt the top smelt is a rugged and versatile sufferer. I was astonished at how well mine held up. But the bullhead (L. armatus), yet retains his throne of misery. At the end of the day, I passed by Sharky's live bait tank sitting in the back of his truck. The two bullheads that had been left in the tank, (my fault) with the air pump off, and the sun beating down directly on them, were not only in fine health, they seemed to be prospering. Like two wintry Minnesotans dropped inexplicably into some luke warm cove in Molokai. All they lacked were the pale legs, Hawaiian shirts and tropical fruity cocktails.
And I will also state this for the record: Whereas top smelt seem to do very well when drifted. They don't hold up to trolling. And when you're working against the tide in a kayak all day you end up doing a lot of trolling. My trolled top smelt lasted about 30 minutes before they became sluggish and apathetic about enticing any large predatory fish to ingest them, whereas the one bullhead I used, (let's go ahead and call him Jake Lamotta), was drifted, snagged on the rocks a few times, smothered in sea lettuce, and trolled for 1.2 hours without showing the least indication of fatigue or apathy. When I set him free he swam off with quick vigorous undulations of his slimy tail.
Forget every other boxing analogy I've made on this blog. The only true one is this: a bullhead is the fish equivalent of Jake Lamotta.
What Else?
Thank Gawd O'mighty rockfish season is upon us. That's all I can say. If, in one week, I have failed to provide my lovely fish wife with a rockfish taco. Then, I state for the record, she can file the divorce papers immediately. You hear that babe? This is your big chance...
From deep in the skunk. This is Lombard of The Intertidal, signing out.
The SS Vallejo
Back in the saddle. Lots of stuff going on. The thing is... where to begin? There's been a lot of tours. let's just say that. But the happy thing is that I'm getting a few school groups thrown into the mix, which is ultimately what I want to do. Got a bunch of kids from Oakland the other day and had a really fun time. Found a few baby monkeyface eels. The usual assortment of inner city mollusks, crustaceans, algaes etc. A smart, well behaved bunch of 12 yr olds. Fancy that!
And then... the dream team of sustainable seafood has been raising quite a ruckus. Thanks to the irrepressible John Foss--Copper River salmon man, Keta progenitor, rawk star and all around fish-head extraordinaire. John invited us all out to the SS Vallejo, that landmark of the former bohemian nation that was Alan Watt's Sausalito.
And there, aboard this great relic of a houseboat, with the ghosts of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, Watts and Leary floating around, we ate fish straight from the smoker, fished through a hole in the kitchen floor, and carried on like lunatics to the wee wee hours. So many great discussions. Salmon, sardine, anchovy... even got into a discussion about pogies and jack smelt.
Anyway, here's a list of some of the folks at the dinner: Casson Trenor, sustainable sushi guru, Martin Reed, founder of I Love Blue Sea, Bill Foss and Kenny Belov of Fish Restaurant, John Foss of Coastal Rovers, Crystal Sanders, Conservation Director, Alfredo Sfeir, leader of the sustainability movement in Latin America (30 boats participating in his ship-to-dock accountability program) oh yeah... and this guy.
Anyway, although I'm experiencing a bit of writer's block of late. I went ahead and pumped out another movie that, I think, captures some of my recent adventures far better than I could hope to relate in prose (couldn't get it done by tonight's smelt deadline however).
Anyhoo... movie tomorrow.
--Kirk-out
Just back from Santa Barbara. And thus ends my longest blogless streak since I started this thing in Oct '09. Okay. Recommitting... tomorrow.
Had a great time. Caught a few perch. Croakers. And really put the hurt on the sand flea population. No, not sand crabs. Sand fleas. Sand hoppers.
Faced with an ineffective selection of grub worms I opted for sand hoppers. And to my delight discovered that 5 sand fleas on a hook is a bomb perch bait.
Kind of a labor intensive bait though... and not very durable. Sand hoppers are sort of the anti-bullhead in that regard. In fact I can't really recommend them other than as a bait of last resort... but they do work, I mean why wouldn't they?
5 of these guys skewered on a hook is shish-kabob no self respecting surf perch can resist.
Anyway, the fishwife and I made a silly little movie of our sojourn to Stearn's Wharf. More tomorrow.
