The Monkeyface News

Thanks

 

 

 

Wow.  Thanks to all the guys who commented below.  And to Loren Wilson for blanketing Pillar Point and Oyster Point with signs.  In truth what I really need is a photograph of the thieves.  It's a week later and I'm still fuming.  It's the principle of the thing.  Just assuming it's okay to pull in someone else's gear!  Mikey of course is taking a more Buddhist approach.  

Let it go, Kirk. Life is transient. All these things must pass.

Sure but not before I kick some ass!

Oh yeah.  The CF number appears to be somewhat truncated.  It's missing two letters at the end. Mikey points out that his own boat similarly lacks these "alphas" (really Mikey?  WTF?) and swears those were the only numbers on the side of the offending boat.  But who knows maybe they purposefully obscured their CF number?

{Anyway.  Please don't go after anyone who has a similar number or boat.  I will be pursuing this thing for a while.  And rest assured, as soon as they tear the signs down, I will put them back up}.

In the mean time we'd appreciate it if you guys could keep that (partial) CF number in mind: 8921, and the make: 18-20 ft Arima.  And remember to snap a photo or better yet get footage!

 

On To Happier Subjects

 

      Found this chart on a site called "corporate document repository."  Lots of info on kippering.

I'm fielding about 6 e-mails per week about herring, which proves my theory that the time for a local market for these guys has come.  Of course the new Herring For Fresh Fish Market License is now up and running, which only means that someone else out there has the same idea.  Unfortunately, I am still waiting to hear from DFG whether or not I can use the license I bought in Sacramento. Why, one wonders, would the license be listed as "open access" if it requires a gill net permit? Go figya!

Beyond all this, I am wondering about the fat content of our local herring.  

(Yes, it's true, in my down time I sit around wondering about the fat content of herring).

They sure seem like "spents" to me. ("Spents" is the kipper industry term for fatless, post-spawn herring) Nevertheless, Mr. Niko Von Sharky, former don of the now defunct Boer Kayak Mafia, raves on and on about the high quality of his home-smoked kippers, and having sampled them myself last year, I have to say I am in agreement--they were awesome, yo.  Not sure if they would pass the test of official kipperdom.  Evidently this is a very deep science, akin to wine making.  Check out this site, for more info than you could possibly want on the subject of kippered herring:  Kippers

 

                                                 Von sharky's kippers from 2010

 

Eel Monger

As it turns out my plan to commercial fish only for unusual local species is starting to work out--if beer and gas money = working out.  Got the rock crab thing going pretty well and have found a market for monkeyface eels.  Yesterday I caught a total of 14 eels in two hours of fishing.  Kind of amazing to see the response from a few Bay Area chefs on this.  They kind of go crazy over monkeyface.  And what is more, they've been serving it skin-on! Something few if any fishermen have ever done.  One sushi chef actually prepared monkeyface sashimi for me.  Yikes.  That was a little intense.  Kind of a weird consistency, and it sort of slithered down my throat.  But the other chefs loved it that way, so who am I to argue? 

And one other thing. After I dropped off my gutted eels at the receiver, one of them evidently came alive on the fillet table!  Smacked on the head, gutted, transported 20 miles and still alive!  This of course is no big surprise to poke polers.  But imagine the poor fillet guy.  As my fish buyer said:  "You have to understand Kirk, Latin cultures are a bit phobic about serpents to begin with... but poor Caesar (the fillet man) to have a creature with a broken neck and no guts come alive while being filleted... that's understandably disturbing."

Herring

Not sure what to say.  The herring are not spawning.  No rain.  Waiting and waiting and waiting... good things come to those who...

Kirk-out

 

Robbery On The High Seas

 

Merry Christmas.  

Now let's get down to brass tacks.  

I'm angry... and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

The white Arima CF# 8921 that commonly fishes Princeton Harbor is a boatload of dirtbag, thieving, losers.  See below for CF number, make of boat, and physical description.

 

 

                    Thieves:

                    CF# 8921 (might be missing two letters at the end)

                    18-20 foot white Arima

 

 

Mikey came up on our pots in HMB the other day and found 4 guys in a white Arima emptying them out for us.  When he approached their boat, eyes afire, steam shooting from his ears, he could, understandably, barely contain himself.  For five days Mikey and I have been testing the waters around Halfmoon Bay for rock crabs.  To see if we can make a go of it as commercial red rock crab fishermen. (being poor, the only fisheries we can get into are the open access ones).  Everyone thinks I'm crazy... but this is, in these parts anyway, an underutilized and under appreciated fishery.  Rockies just need a good salesman.  The claws are as good as stone crab claws.  We've been trying to see if we can drum up some interest, but first we have to see if we can actually catch them (open to suggestions on this BTW. So far we are only scoring 3-4 jumbos per pot, and loads of mediums and smalls.  Where the hell do the jumbos congregate in bigger numbers?  Deeper water?  Someone talk to here.)

 

 

Anyway, Mikey keeps calling me and saying: "I don't understand it, I've been setting pots on rocky bottom for a week, and I go out there, pick up our pots and there's nothing in 'em!?"  

So, the other day he goes out there after soaking pots all night. And catches these guys red handed, dumping the contents of one of our pots onto their boat!  Dude smiles at Mike and says: "We are doing you a favor, taking only rock crabs!"  He then opens his cooler to show Mikey how good he is at stealing our crabs!  The cooler is loaded to the brim (hey, I'm not so overloaded with anger that I fail to see the humor here... but still!)

Do you believe the audacity of these dirtbags?  In a boat that costs 20 times what Mikey's boat costs. Guys that don't even need to consider doing crazy things like rock crab fishing to pay the rent... Oh man... I'm fuming here.

 

                     "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

 

Thing is my buddy and former colleague JB has been telling me that a boat fitting this description has been coming in all week with a cooler filled to the top with rock crabs.  No dungies and no crab pots onboard.  And all this time we're banging our heads against the wall, wasting money in fuel, launch fees bait, etc... and wondering why we can't find the rockies... unbelievable.

Do you guys feel my outrage here?  Good thing for the crab thieves I wasn't on the boat that day.  I have a much worse temper than Mikey.  It's all me Irish blood.  I might have flogged them with an eel or harpooned them with a poke pole or something.

I mean, even if you don't particularly care for rock crabs, isn't it just a universal sin to mess with someone else's fishing gear?  I mean, if I was fishing a pier and someone picked up my rod and reeled it in for me, there had better be a damned good reason for it.  Like a seagull caught in the line or something.  If that person then informed me that they were doing me a favor by getting rid of a walleye perch, or say a rock crab, I would, by unwritten pier fishing etiquette, be fully justified in punching that person in the nose. Would I not?

Anyway, Mike reported it to the authorities but there is little they can do since they didn't see it.  At Loren Wilson's suggestion, however, I am posting this on the internet, in hopes that someone will repost it on the board at Coastside (I can't remember my access codes. Same with Fish Sniffer, Highliners etc.) a beer and a small jar of pickled herring to anyone who does this for me.  Feel free to email me when you want to claim your reward.

My personal feeling is that if law enforcement can't do anything about a bunch of thieves...

 

 

... maybe the fishermen can stink-eye them, vibe them, and cast aspersions on them, till they leave the water and don't come back.

Man, I'm mad.

In fact I'm heading down to Princeton today to plaster some flyers around the harbor.  If nothing else I'm hoping to embarrass the hell out of these guys.

So... in spite of my inclination to keep things warm and cozy around the holidays.  I am posting the CF number again.  If anyone sees these guys and gets a photo, I'll post that too!

 

1. CF#: 8921 (I say we're missing two alphas here but Mike says not)

2. Make Of Boat: White Arima, approx. 18-20 ft.

3. Four males in their 40s.  

Beyond that I can only describe these guys by general ethnic type. And I prefer not to do that, as I don't want good fishermen of the same ethnicity to be needlessly harassed.  

Kirk-out  :(

Today...

 ... I will poke-pole for the fifth consecutive day.  Ha!  I defy the gawds of adulthood, even now, at this late stage of the game.  

Anyway, I've never done this before... poked 5 days in a row.  An abandonment of responsibility bad for even me.

 

        Catching a lot of reasonable sized "bolinas" intertidally, of late.

 

Poem 2,876:

 

He poke-poled five days in a row

Until, like some crusty werecrab-semi-mammal clinging intertidally to sheer rock faces and barnacled overhangs, he became one with the eel.

and its mysteries became common knowledge to him

and into them he plunged

remarking in his post eel mongering memoirs

that really nothing quite surpassed bare ectothermism

and it's unexpected pleasures (all of them blue or green...)

and the fascinating possibilities of a totally prehensile life.

 

Which Is By Way Of Saying That I Am...

 

... now intertidal about 20% of my waking hours.

Recent things of note:

Found one of those juvy salmon sharks on the beach recently but couldn't find my goddamned camera.

Saw people abusing the resource three days ago.  (Or was it two?  I can't remember the days have morphed into one single extended low tide).  In this case it was sea anenomes. (I mean, why?  Someone tell me. Why would anyone need to eat a green anenome?)

I broke the current hook and line record for northern clingfish. (See picture above).  

More Monday.

Still waiting on the herring.

 

 

Updates from my clandestine operatives in the south bay (agents 007 and 008):

"Pissed-off" Pete says herring don't generally spawn twice in one spot... and that the spawn in the areas around SFO will be correspondingly small this year... hmmm... hope he's wrong.  Champion de la Banana promises to call me the moment it goes off... and since he's down there every day. I think there is a good chance he will be my Paul Revere this year.  I should point out that there are some fairly huge flocks of cormorants in the south bay right now.  Also, it's been a few years since Candlestick Park had a decent spawn, let us not forget that a lot of these pre-spawn fish are sitting in the deep channel off of Hunter's Point right now.  Four years ago, on Superbowl Sunday the herring spawned directly under Candlestick Pier.  Only two people were there to witness it.  The author (as an employee of Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission) and an elderly Cantonese gentleman who filled up an entire garbage can single handedly. Must've weighed 300 pounds.  I'll never forget it.  When I asked this guy who he intended to feed 300 pounds of herring to, he shrugged and said: "Everybody!"

                                                               Herring roe

A Fish and Game herring biologist tells me he has been marking big schools "in the bay," but that these schools were mixed with jacksmelt and 'chovies.  

In short... there's plenty of fish in the city right now... just not ready to spawn yet.  The Monkeyface News prediction:

Any day now!

But I think it might take one more big rain... 

And guess what's predicted for tomorrow?

--Kirk-out