The Monkeyface News

Shawangunk Reverie

 

 

My 8-year old nephew Julian communing with the dobson fly larvae. Yes he was named for the apostate. How cool is that?

 

 

Here's the latest cinematic masterpiece.  Jean Luc Godard look out!  Just wanted to get some footage of the Shawangunk (AKA: "Shongum") Kill up here.  I've actually spent more time fishing this kill than any other body of water--including the Pacific Ocean!  One might even say I learned to fish on the Shwangunk.

Unbelievably, there are still a lot of nice-sized smallies in it.  The water level was way low and unbelievably hot. Caught most of these fish at high noon, in 2-3 feet of water with hardly any shade.   Nice to see so much wildlife along the shores.  Herons, a mink, frogs, crawfish aplenty.  When I was a kid one seldom encountered this guy:

 

Nice to see the fresh water mussel population doing so well.  Seriously!  It bodes well for the ecosystem.  They were almost extinct in the river when I was a kid.  Counted at least 10 in one day.  Evidently there are quite a few species of freshwater mussels on the East Coast. Found a chart at the American Museum but could not identify this one.

 

Truth is, when you fish with hellgrammites, bass seem to materialze out of nowhere, so maybe I have a skewed understanding of bass abundance.  Julian caught 7 and I stopped counting at 20.  Kept one for my longtime family friend Chris, to do with as he saw fit (he pan fried it). 

And yes... I am not too cool for bobbers.  Try drifting a live hellgrammite over a submerged tree without one!   (I did, in fact, remove it after the first fish but for aesthetic reasons only.  The day's largest fish was actually landed on a fairly large Rapala).

 

                        Fishwife and camera woman: Camilladilla

 

Unfortunately most of the footage of nephew Julian did not come out, or was shot at a distance of like 200 feet by his mother (my sis) who was traumatized, I think, by her brother in the 70s with these same dobson fly larvae. Anyway... if nothing else the Jimmy Reed track, (Goin' To New York) and the Desmond Dekker classic (Mother Nature) ought to get you through the 4.5 minutes.  

 

 

That's it for today.  The movie sapped most of my energy.  

Unbelivable what I'm hearing on the local front.  Salmon are in, stripers everywhere, halies in the flats! What's my excuse?

Hopefully i will have some fish to talk about this week. 

Kirk-out

See below for movie: 

 

Back East

 

 
                                                            Never did get one.   

 

Sitting here in downtown Manhattan.  In the building where I grew up.  Just trudged up to the roof and stared at the new tower going up near ground zero.  Huh.  Lots of thoughts on that.  Especially lately. Anyway, I'll spare you all.

Back in SF Wednesday.  Tried to get some footage of eeling in the Hudson, but with the temperature at 104 degrees, I think the eels had better places to go.  And guess what?  So did I!  

Nevertheless, we found something better than eels.  Unbelievable as it may seem to a California resident, the NY Parks Department (or is it just Hudson River Park?) has a special fishing program set up for city kids. (See pix below). 20 fishing rods baited and rigged and ready to be used by anyone walking along the Hudson River. Awesome program.  They even give away cool posters of Hudson River fishes. And guess what?  The four teenagers who serve as hook baiters and knot untanglers are not just volunteers but paid employees of the state.  Not really sure how NY did this... but it's a great program. Inspirational even... now if they could only stock a few fish in the &%$# river!

 

 

Despite The Big City Fishing program's best attempts to put us on the American eels, schoolie stripers and baby blues, we skunked.  The Hudson can be a hard river to fish.  Especially at 12 noon of a 104 degree day in late July... at low tide.  But a bad fishing day is actually a good place for a kid to start. Builds character, hones patience, gets him dreaming of success... and in the end, makes him a whole lot more appreciative of (and less disgusted by) hellgrammites two days later, on the banks of the mighty Shongum.

 

Forget about the crayfish. Helgramites rule!  Actually the minnows worked just as well, caught the biggest bass of the day on a spotfin shiner.

 

Which is to say we seriously slammed the smallmouth bass in upstate NY.  Unfortunately I lack for a spare fly rod, so an ultralight spin caster and a wriggling aquatic dobson fly larvae (aka-hellgrammite) was the recipe for success.  I have to say, there is a direct correlation between monkeyface eels and hellgrammites.  For me I'm saying, in life, the one led to the other.  Once you come to appreciate (I almost said embrace) the hellgrammite, doors of opportunity are suddenly flung wide open.  This is because there is nothing as disgusting as a hellgrammite.  Not even a leach.  You learn to love the hellgrammite and you can learn to love all creatures.  Even monkeyface eel, hagfish... lamprey.

 

I dunno... these guys are really horrifying.  Once, long ago, in days of yore, I stuck a hellgrammite on a hook and set it adrift in the Shongum river.  A few moments later I felt a tiny tug.  Obviously a small bass had taken my offering.  I reeled it in.  To my surprise, the bass had not taken the bait at all.  The hellgrammite had seized the fish with its pincers and hung on.  I don't know about you but I personally feel there's something kinda cool about a bait that goes out and grabs your fish for you. Feel me?

 

                                         Nice rod placement.

 

Truth is there really is nothing to match this bait.  Every bronzeback fisherman knows this. But my Gawd, it really is something to see when you fly line a live helgrammite over a school of smallmouth bass.  Glad I was able to do this for my nephew.  And unbelievable that these fish were so willing to bite in the middle of the afternoon, with the water at a tepid 75 degrees, (that's my estimate) and no pool over 3 feet deep. In fact there wasn't really even any shade.  Plugged for like an hour before I had the good sense to switch over to my helgies... oh yeah, this guy produces big smallies too:

 

                                                                spotfin shiner

 

... harder to catch, tho.  

Anyhoo... just got off the plane and wanted to finish this post.  Got some nice footage of smallmouth fishing on the Shongum.  My first ever fresh water blog entry--hope I'm not getting in over my head!

Hopefully will have some time to work on the footage tomorrow night.

... More on Friday.  Sorry for the long absence (and the elipses).  That last lame post and comment really kind of bummed me out (you may notice how careful my language is right now).

Oh F--k that noise! (the u and c deleted to protect the easily offended).

Truth is, I've always written this thing like it's my own peeps reading it.  Like everybody knows I grew up in close proximity to the towers.  Surprise surprise self promotion turns out to be a double edged sword. It's funny, in Rube Waddell we always used to laugh at people who took gigs for purposes of getting "exposure."   "Exposure is a thing arctic explorers usually die of," we used to say.  Huh.  Look at me now.

Anyway, lots of halibut in the bay.  Hopefully there's one out there with my name on it.

Been gone 10 days.  Will someone please tell me where in the hell the day fish are?

Kirk-out

 

Any Tide Will Do

 

 

 

{Disclaimer:  this post, sort of a stream of consciousness affair, is going to involve references to German Expressionist Theater, poke-poling theory, long dead blues musicians, ancient Celtic clan organization and my own lyrics to songs about legendary fishermen... if any part of this is problematic for you, by all means go here: (For You). Bye!}

And for those who have decided to continue... you've been warned.

 

Anyway...

 

All these years... my zine, my monkeyface record, the name of my blog--all these--and it took becoming a tour guide to actually learn how to catch eels.

 

I mean seriously.  I'm not kidding.  Here's the thing.  The truth was staring me in the face the whole time.  Remember the poke poling video I did way back in 2005?  Dodging the waves and whatnot?  It always struck me as odd that I caught an eel  that day.  It was a + 3.4 low tide.  Feel me?  Everyone knows that poke poling is a minus tide activity, right?  Nobody poke poles + 3.4 low tides, and I mean nobody.  Don't write me and tell me you only poke pole these tides.  Not only will I call you a liar, I will challenge you to a duel.  Sabikis and Hair Raisers at 30 paces.  (Not sure about my Hair-raser skills but I can fling a Sabiki like the Lone Ranger).

Let me just tell you something.  Forget about minus tides.  Go poke pole tomorrow.  I'll tell you where.  E-mail me.

See, it's like this:  On these tours I talk about everything. 

 

(Don't worry I do not burn spots... other than listing the public piers, and likely areas to look for herring spawns.   It frustrates the hell out of my customers I'm sure.  But as yet no one knows where to go for night smelt or even surfies.  I do catch a lot of eels on the city tours but my spot is under a (defunct) sewer discharge tube and few people are running back out there to get their eels.  What I really do is I tell them the deal.  What conditions to look for, what the regs are, species i.d., history of the fisheries, sustainability, biology, migration patterns, how to throw a cast net, health risks/benefits.  It's up to them to figure out where to go). 

That was a long parenthesis... even for me!

 

But I Digress

 

 

I've been trying not to wander here of late.  But all my favorite posts are the ones that ramble on. There's a lot of folks who take my tours and then check in on my blog and have no idea that I was an underground punk rock tuba player street performer front man for a decade and a half.  They also don't  know about my literary pretentions (I am the Marcel Proust of fishing bloggers--and have three 400 page unpublished manuscripts poised, like Damoclese's sword, directly above my head as I write this, to prove it), the strange road my life taken: actor, tuba player, fisheries observer, art-teacher-for-juvenile-delinquints, tenor, eel champion, barroom raconteur, and as previously mentioned, Marcel Proust of fishing bloggers.  So, what I'm saying is, I've been holding back somewhat of late.  

But I think I'm due for a wandering one.

 

Where was I?
  

Oh right... poke-poling epiphanies.  Even the great Cambodian Stan ("He's the man he's so manly he's Cambodian Stanley" -- the last song on Rube Waddell's 2nd album, "Bound For The Gates Of Hell") the man who introduced me to the concept of poke-poling, did not typically poke pole +2.5 to +4.0 low tides.

Cambodian Stan... maybe I'll link to the song... Oh bummer, no way to upload the link to Rube Waddell's classic hit track. Why, because the actual song is tagged onto another song "The Cosmic Integral" (of equal merit) so the total track is like 16 minutes long or something... let's see... maybe I'll make one of those annoying slide shows and stick it on Youtube... can't think of any other way to do it... okay here we go... (see somewhere below).

 

Final resting place of the Teignmouth Electron.  If you do not know the story of this boat you should either read the link provided below, or download the song "The Cosmic Integral" from the link to Pandora also provided (see: Bound For The Gates Of Hell, above).  FYI:  the song "The Cosmic Integral," also includes "Cambodian Stan," tagged on to the end, so you get two tracks for the price of one.

 

OMG that took me 3 hours!  So much for smelt jumping today.  So much for striper fishing at Sharp Park. So much for really anything else.  See the sacrifices I make!  Anyway, if no one listens to this song I'm gonna be pissed.  It's only 5 minutes.  And I guarantee the lyrics and the weird strains of my homemade, electric slide guitar (aka: the Teignmouth Electron--named for the doomed vessel of Donald Crowhurst) will make it worth your while. 

 

                 Cambodian Stan, by Mark "Finesmell" Feinthel

 

Again, I only offer this slideshow to a classic Rube Waddell track because I think the viewership might get a kick out of the lyrics, not because I think you need to see all the pictures of me poke poling.  The line-drawing of Stanley (which resides in a frame over my desk) was penned by Mark "Finesmell" Feinthel, a very talented illustrator who used to write epic comments on this blog but seems to have disappeared sometime in the last 8 months--whereabouts unknown.

Anyway... here's the song:  Cambodian Stan.  The story of that rugged Cambodian gentleman who taught me how to poke pole... then, strangely, disappeared from my life forever.  

{MFN Parenthetic Aside #510:  My favorite lyric from the song... Yeah kinda weird quoting my self... Nevertheless, how's this for sheer brilliance:

 

"Watch as he expertly catches the sand crabs

In a basket of a steel that he welded himself

He could outfish Poseidon if they had them a contest

He could outfish the devil in the sewers of hell...

 

{Insert home made, two string, electric slide guitar break down here}

 

Sure his piss is bright blue and his liver is bleeding

at night time he glows and his children are blind

But he hunts and he gathers and he don't need no license

He's the the king of the bay, he's the king of his kind"}

 

 

 

Now where in the hell was I 3 hours ago.....?

Oh right... I'm doing these tours and I'm thinking... man it really is a shame there aren't more minus tides so i can actually do this, say, 3-4 days a week and make a living at it.   And then one day I noticed that there's about two feet of California mussels and gooseneck barnacles exposed at a + 2.7 low tide, and I'm thinking, hell, why not do a tour?  So I go ahead and book an intertidal tour on a + 2.8 low tide.  And everyone's standing around at the end, as I discuss poke poling theory (this is the advanced tour, heh heh) and just for Schlitz and giggles I go ahead and start poke poling under a rock at the top of the low tide line (and this is two hours after the bottom of a +2.8--everybody following me?).  Not because I'm thinking there's gonna be anything under it, but because i'm trying to show my customers how it's supposed to look.  And then...

Bam. 

Not one eel.  Not two.  Not three.  Six.  Six eels, all honkers, in, get this: 14 minutes. With 17 people watching.  Forget about my friggin state record! Six eels in 14 minutes... in front of a crowd of paying customers... now that's impressive.  (Yeah, I know what yer thinking.  No, it wasn't the same fish 6 times).

{MFN Parenthetic Aside #511--Mel Ott's number--It's like this, I may not really have a handle on striped bass.  My "high sticking" rockfish landing technique demonstrated in the recent video may point to a certain lack of... proper training.  My most well known video features me reeling an ancient baitcaster backwards... all this is true and may point to the fact that I have serious holes in my game.  I would never deny this. I've said it before. I'm better at writing about fishing than I am at fishing.  But if there is one thing I am at least reasonably confident of, it is my ability to capture the eel.  In this, I hope I may be so bold as to suggest, I may even excel.

 

 
The worst swing in the history of baseball somehow miraculously produced a .305 lifetime batting average and 511 homeruns.  The 220 foot right field fence at the Polo Grounds didn't hurt.  But still.  Not bad for a guy with a softball swing.

 

And yet... I didn't really know this about the higher-low tides.  Which only serves to remind me to check in with myself, whenever I start to think I'm so friggin smart.

It's funny I was on the beach the other night and I ran into this old striper guy.  He was dragging a 20 pound striper up the beach in front of 30 other guys who had nothing to show for five consecutive days of plugging.  And the funny thing was, this same old man had done the same thing the two previous evenings. Here we are day 3. Here he comes.  Dragging another striper up the beach. Now listen. After the third night in a row of this the other guys were just about ready to drop to their knees and make a pledge of fielty. Isn't that how clans used to be formed?  The guy steps out onto the field of battle and wipes out 16 enemy combatants with three strokes of his broad sword, turns around and what do you know?  He's got himself a posse, a harem, 17 dukedoms, and a little gold crown.

 

The title of this 19th century painting is: "Brennus And His Share Of The Spoils." Now just imagine what this guy coulda done with a Hair-raiser on Ocean Beach.  Everybody knows the story of Brennus right?  I've mentioned him before... anyway, if you're interested go here: Vae Victus.

 

It was like this with the old man on the beach the other night in the parking lot as he dropped another fish into the cooler.  Only thing is, this old man doesn't give a shit whether or not he's impressing anyone. I said to him, "Showing everybody how it's done, eh Joe?"  He turns, gives me the ol' who's-this-fool-talking-nonsense-at-me look, nods and says: "I ain't showin nobody nothin."  Slams the trunk and drives away.

 

George Jones - The Grand Tour by rappa1 

 

Just had one of those Frank Sinatra-George Jones ("... as you leave you'll see the nursery, oh she left me without mercy! Taking nothing but our baby and my heart" is a deeply deeply brilliant example of American folk poetry, BTW)--Louis Jordan--Steeler's Wheel--Haitian Meringue--Captain Beefheart--Little Walter--Ekhart Tolle-and now, drum roll please, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn-on-my-i-tunes moments.  

Can someone please tell me where I was?  

Oh right.  14 eels in 6 minutes... or rather... 6 in 14.  Right.  Unreals yo.  All these years I had this image of monkeyface eels hunkering down under rocks, lying low at the minus tide line... and what they're really doing is moving in and out with the tide, foraging sea lettuce, turkish towel and other algaes as high as they can get 'em and as low.  Yes, actually, lotsa turkish towel in post-fillet stomach content analyses of late.

 

 
                              Little Walter seen here before a life in the blues, and after.

 

{Back to the parenthetic ((and paripatetic)) moment....  Little Walter is to the blues what the butterfly (Papillion) is to the human spirit in confinement.  Little Walter on Back Track is Sir Gawain and the Green Friggin Knight, yo. Forget about Brennus.  I'll sign on to the Marion Walter Jacobs posse! I mean talk about telling stories with your instrument.  Little Walter on that song might as well be Homer.  Did they tap their feet to Homer? 

 

Kind of funny what happens when you do a google image search for "Homer."  I'll tell you what, the blind poet ain't the first guy who comes up.

 

Sure they did.

Here check this out for some truly unbelievable harmonicaship.  Not so much for fanciness, but tone and control and storytelling:

Download 2-15 Back Track

Little Walter on Back Track is only superceded by Little Walter on Everything' s Gonna Be Alright, which is only surpassed by Little Walter on Worried Life... Please, listen to the out takes at the beginning of this track (Worried Life).  Walter talking to Leonard Chess.  "I don't mean to kill nobody, shit!"

Download 2-13 Worried Life

So sad.  They found Little Walter's body in a crumpled heap.  Having been beaten to death the previous year, when the blood clot time-bomb first formed in the imprint left by some bad ass's knuckles, (or was it his boot heel?) cementing the deal in the hard darkness of a south chicago night.  How do we go on without our Little Walters?   

We fish I guess.  

Or go over to the worship of angry deities like Baal, Tlaloc and Yaweh (Oh my!)

                                Bertolt Brecht, writer of Baal, in a truly awesome jacket.

 

Baal is a word that's fun to write and fun to say. (Unless of course you're a Hebrew tribesman living in the Fertile Crescent in 2,000 BC). It was also a very interesting play as I remember. Bertolt Brecht's first I think. Kind of a spin off of Buchner's Woyczeck.

(Yikes, am I off track or what?)

Listen, while I'm on the subject, all you need to know about Baal is this: anytime anyone produces this play, you can rest assured, they are 19 years old.  Even if official identification cards and facial hair indcate they're 54. They're not, they're 19.  I did this play at the age of 18.  The director was a young 22.  The other actors were all young and sexy.  We did this at an underground acting class in the village in 1987.  6 people came to the performance.  I think they wandered in off the street for a warmer place to sit.  One of them, it was rumored, was a theatrical agent, scouring the riverbed for possible nuggets of pure ore.  The performance ended abruptly halfway through when a pipe burst and flooded the hallway outside our door with floating turds.   

 

                    Baal, looking rather harmless.

 

Where was I... right.  6 night smelt in 14 minutes is a terrible score.  But 6 eels in 14 minutes and you're golden.  Aye, there's the rub!

I mean, it was ridiculous... there were so many.  And the tide so friggin' high.  And the groundwork for this whole minus tide thing set by men who were supposedly so much more knowledgeable than I.  But no.  As it turns out... poke poling ain't a minus tide thing at all.  In fact... any tide will do.

I guess that's what I've been trying to say.  Kind of an epiphany when something so obvious makes itself so abundantly clear. Strange that it took this long for me to get to it.

All right, whoever made it this far gets a free beer on me next time we're together. 

Anyway... time to go do something with what's left of this particular Woden's day.

From deep in the fecund wonderland of my eel obsessed brain, this is Lombard of the Intertidal, rawking to Little Walter... digging the positive tide, and all the possibilities it now offers, and, at last, signing out!

Cool Fish

 

 

Okay guys.  Here's the deal.  I pitched a TV show concept to a major network and guess what?  They seem to have taken the bait... Or maybe I should say, they are nibbling on my pile worm right now.  

A producer has just contacted me and asked me to write up a list of the most fascinating fish species in North America, where they live, and how they are caught.  Fresh and salt water.

The criteria are as follows (doesn't have to be a fish, necessarily. Could be invert too):  

 

 

1. big (or not)

2. crazy looking/beautiful/hideous

3. exotic

4. exciting to catch

5. interesting habitat

6. off the radar of other fishing shows

7. employing an interesting type of gear (ie: harpoons for swordfish, poke poles for eels, horse heads for hagfish, etc)

 

 

The fish doesn't have to be big as long as it is notable by the above criteria, but of course lunkers are universally appreciated.

In other words if any of the above things is extreme enough the fish would be considered worthy of an episode. 

I'm interested in seeing if there's anything out there I haven't thought of... so go ahead guys... knock me out.

From deep in the fish, this is Lombard of the Intertidal, signing out.

 

 

Fresh Local Fish

 

                                         Gopher and brownie ready for the oven.

 

So we've been experimenting with whole rockfish here at the MFN HQ lately and I have to say, whole is the way to go.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I still loves me some rockfish tacos, but whole rockfish are so awesome.  And frankly it kind of sickens me to see all that wasted meat getting thrown into the dumpster at the Princeton Ramp.  Far more efficient, and I think ultimately sustainable, to utilize 60 percent of the carcass as opposed to 30 percent, right?  

 

        Vermillion rockfish stuffed and slathered with tomatoes (sticking with a reddish theme).

 

 

Not that I'm done filleting my fish.  I think only a truly twisted individual would eat an eel whole. Though I imagine this is exactly what the Miwok did (you watch, I'll get an angry e-mail from the last Miwok in California--hey man, we never ate our eels whole, haven't you read your Kroeber).  Prickleback otoliths have been found in indian shellmounds going back thousands of years.  So we know they were eaten here.  I wonder if the Miwok used their skins for anything? Arrowhead lashings, mocasin soles, bow strings, bullet proof vests.  By which I mean to say Monkeyface eel skin is some tough shite, man. And I should know.  I am the lone white man in history who has  actually succeeded in tanning it.  Okay maybe not "tanning" pe se.  But the spines on all my 'zines have held up over time--it can't be denied.

 

The spine of this book, Monkeyface News #1, is made of semi-tanned monkeyface skin.  And let me ask you something.  How cool is that?

 

I'll tell you how cool... so cool I have to post a few more pix here.

 

In addition to the home-tanned prickleback-skin-spine, of Ed. #1, I included a prickleback skin pouch that also housed a full length CD of Kirk Lombard and the Armchair Geographers, singing sea chanties, and Leighton Kelly's masterful monkeyface mermaid pinup girl...  

 

                                        More home-tanned eel-skin book spines.

 

It's funny, I got so used to skinning the eels I used to catch that instead of filleting them and then simply cutting the skin off the fillet, like one would do with rockfish fillets, to this day I still skin all my eels first.  In fact it's kind of like this:

 

 

 

 

Fresh Local Fish... (Not!)

 

     Mmmmm, can't wait to sink my teeth into some fresh, frozen, slabs of Alaskan pollack

 

Driving around HMB yesterday after my tour--could there be a worse place to go for a drive than HMB on July 4th?   The fish wife, and my colleague at Forage SF, "Feral" Kevin Feinstein, asked me if there was a place where we could get fresh local fish.  As we had already left Princeton Harbor, and Catch Joannes and Barbara's Fish Trap were a good 1.5 hours through bumper to bumper traffic away, I figured our only options were Duartes (in Pescadero) or the Flying Fish Grill on 92. As the day was winding down (we started early), and no one wanted to deal with the traffic at dusk, Pescadero was out.  So we sauntered up to the take out window at the Flying Fish and looked at the menus.

Low and behold, a seafood restaurant in HMB that does not list a single item of local fish on it's menu. Their fish and chips?  Alaskan pollack (the very nice, and hopelessly over-worked waitress actually said Pole-lock, so I guess there's a possibility they've gotten some local Poles to donate flesh).  Further inquiry produced this phrase: "We don't serve any local fish."  So if it turns out I'm wrong about this, I can't be blamed.  It's what they told me.

One wonders how much business they would do if this was posted under their sign.  Or at the top of their menu.  I'll never forget a few years ago when passing through Boston, I couldn't get a bowl of non-Campbells clam chowder anywhere.  Not unlike Fisherman's Wharf in that respect.

Flying Fish makes a superb fish sandwich, it can't be denied.  But I mean, come on people.  How hard would it be to get some local halibut.  Or rockfish?  For the love of Neptune, there's even a fish market next door.

 

Even here, most of the fish wasn't local... didn't feel like bugging the fishmongers.  When I asked one of them if he had any local rockfish for sale, he pointed down to the end of the counter.  So I sauntered over there and looked.  I saw nothing that indicated sebastes complex.  However, there was a small tray, loaded with fillets that said:  "Red Snapper, Product of USA."  Is it possible? Could it be that a fish market in HMB, CA., is selling it's "local rockfish" as red snapper?  Ugh.
                       

I will give it up for HMB Fish Market though.  They, evidently, do sell local fishies when they can get 'em. And I have to say, in my entire fish-centric existence, I have rarely seen this guy being sold in a fish market outside of Chinatown:

Not surf smelt, not night smelt... drum roll please: jacksmelt!  Straight outa Princeton Harbor!

 

You know, even I have to key-out jacksmelt and toppies to tell them apart, and I didn't do that, so I guess it's possible some of these are toppies.  It's just very ironic to me is all.  I mean, honestly, of all the species to choose as your representative local fish... these dirty little buggers with their black guts, annoying scales, and stomachs full of worms!  Why not surf smelt, one wonders? Or nighties?  Go figya.

Maybe the red snapper was local chilli-pepper? Maybe the salmon was local? (But isn't the season closed?) The dungies were obviously from Mars.  They had some truly epic dungies in this place--Frisbee sized. Maybe the petrale came off of The Malesa? The Mr. Morgan? (Is either or the two Cap'n Steves fishing petrale right now?). I saw some lingcod in a box near the salmon.  Maybe that was local?  I prefer to think it all was.  Hopefully I'm right.

 

Thing is, it's hard on a fish business trying to stick to local stuff.  There just aren't that many guys on the water anymore.  And what with restrictions, quotas, and the capricious qualities of our local seas, weeks must pass before a local fishmonger can get his hands on local product... but still.  Alaskan pollock in a HMB fish and chips joint?  A waitress saying: "We don't serve local fish." Something is wrong with the universe.  I mean pollock is  frozen anyway, right?  Why not buy some local rockfish and freeze it?  I don't know. I'm sure there's a good reason.

Anyway... time to go deliver sustainable fish to worthy restaurants.  

 

The Bust

 

         $50.00 per snail for every snail over the limit of 35.  And this ain't even half the bag.

 

 

While in the middle of my "Expedition" tour yesterday, just as I was launching into a discussion of rules and regs, I came upon a large black garbage bag sitting, suspiciously, near the low tide line, about 100 yards north of the jetty. Being of a curious nature I walked over to said garbage bag and peeked inside. Low and behold the bag was filled with black tegulas, or turban snails.  Of course the limit on black tegulas is 35 snails per person.  There were approximately 2,000 of them in this bag.  That's my estimate, anyway.  It could have been more.  We looked around.  There were two people about 50 yards off, squatting in the shallows, picking tegulas and putting them into a three gallon bucket.  The bucket was almost full.  One of my tour goers went over and snapped a few pictures.  The snail poachers quickly gathered their stuff and made for the parking lot--black garbage bag, bucket, and all.

 

 

 

It's a funny thing.  I'm not in anyway concerned about the turban snail population.  I don't think anyone is. If these guys were a few snails over limit I wouldn't have cared at all.  But they had about 75 pounds of snails. And the limit is 35 total snails (or about 8 ounces).  Egregious violators of fish and game rules suck.  And the fact that these guys kept looking over their shoulders and that they left the bag sitting 50 yards away from where they were gathering snails, indicates they knew they were doing something wrong.  

All I can say is this... there are several enforcement personnel who will show up very quickly if you call and tell them there are 2,000 black tegulas leaving the beach in a black garbage bag.  

'Nuff said.

Gotta go deliver sustainable fish to worthy restauranteurs.  More Wednesday, hopefully.

Kirk-out