The Monkeyface News

Herring 2012

Stephen sends this picture of pickled herring.  He caught his fish on Pier 32 after my tour was over. Yum yum.  

 

Okay.  Time to put the fork in this puppy and call it done. I'm officially herring-ed out.  It was too bad about the commercial fresh fish permit, but hey, you can't win 'em all.  Nevertheless, it was quite a banner year for net throwers.  McCovey Cove/Embarcadero, Coyote, Kincaid's, Paradise, San Quentin and even Point Richmond have all had some pretty good spawns. Only thing I didn't see was a nice Sausalito run.  And what's up with Candlestick?  Anybody know?  I'll never forget the biggest spawn I ever saw was four years ago on Super Sunday.  So hopefully that will be repeated.  Though at this point I am only a spectator. 

 

Kent sends this picture of his herring in mid grill.  Learned a lot about grilling small fish this winter.  The secret folks, is in wood chips and super high heat.  I mean, like 900 degrees and whatnot.  Haven't ever had much success pan searing Pacific herring.  They always turn to mush. But a super hot grill works like a charm!

 

Anyway, nothing major to report here, just thought I'd share a few pix from the herring tours and crazy days in pursuit of small fishes.  

 

 

Even taking into account that the folks pictured below were fishing totally irresponsibly, taking way too many fish, and possibly even selling them somewhere (what else do you do with that many fish?  Feed an army?), let's stop and consider for a moment how many they actually took in two days... a robust estimate would be 1 ton.  Okay maybe one and a half.  3 thousands pounds.  That seems like a lot until you compare it to what a single herring boat catches in one day.  Somewhere between 5 and 15 tons. And the total herring quota is what? I forget, 1,900 tons or something.  At least these folks are eating them here, (males and females!) not shipping 'em all off to Japan for 200 bucks a ton.  Not that I begrudge those guys their quota.  At this point they're only fishing 5 percent of the projected biomass. I'm just saying... to not allow a limited commercial throw net fishery is... well... ludicrous.

Anyway... here's what it looked like out there:

                                                         McCovey Cove Jan 2012

 

                       Same day.  Pier 32,  Jan 2012, Champion de la Banana on the prowl

 

Speaking of the Champion here's 25 seconds of him (below). Which should illicit a few smiles from the regulars. Oh yeah, and BTW, that is in fact a fish checker (Ed) on his knees counting herring (in photo above).  So at least part of the day's catch was entered into a database somewhere.

 

 

 

And that's going to do it for my herring posts.  I'm done.  February is four days off and you all should know what that means... 

                                                        C. sordidus

 

 

And (towards the end of the month) this little guy:

                                                             S. Starski

 

So stay tuned!  And remember there's plenty of other websites out there if you want to read about sexier game fish like Marilyn, Ava, Rita and Lana.

Kirk-out

 

 

 

Productus

 

 

Haiku # 2,765

Cancer productus

Intellectual of crabs

And yet so macho

 

Got pinched again last week by a large red rock crab.  The feeling can only be likened to having a car door slammed on your finger.  The scream that emanates from my mouth when a rock crab gets me is the loudest un-amplified sound I have ever produced.  And for those who have heard me sing or play the tuba that's saying something.

 

         Now I finally know why he's screaming.

 

Reinventing the crab trap this week.  I mean seriously.  If you are a rock crab anywhere in the Bay Area you are in deep trouble.  When I say "reinventing the crab trap" I am being inaccurate. I myself reinvented nothing.  What I did was something I should've done long ago.  I handed the project over to the Leonardo da Vinci of metal.  Jerry Bonnafair.

 

Jerry Bonnafair in his Oakland Studio, with daughter Isabella and the Sabbatinni column wave machine we built for my puppet troupe several years ago.  Note Jerry's hand made banjo leaning against the wall.  In addition to playing and building banjos, Jare is a talented old time fiddler and a disciple of the great NC old tyme legend, Tommy Jerrell... oh why not... here's part of Les Blank's tribute, a beautiful little film in the opine of the MFN editorial machine.

 

 

 

Those of you who have read the print version of Monkeyface News #4 will remember Jerry as the unfortunate machinist/welder who gets to bring all my half-baked ideas to fruition.  So several years ago when I was starting out in night smelting, having no idea what an A-frame net was, I went to Jerry and had him build what I thought would be the ultimate smelt killing device.  The Lombard-Bonnafair Knuckle Breaker (AKA: The Blue Meanie).  So Jerry built exactly what I asked for: a horifying 50 pound tool with a scissor hinge perfect for breaking knuckles, and an 8 inch spike on the bottom for piercing human feet (I mistakenly thought that an A-frame net would need to be anchored in the sand!).  I caught a total of 6 smelt with this miserable device--and nearly crippled myself in the process.
 
 

                              The Bonnafair/Lombard knuckle-crusher, aka Blue Meanie

Again this is all explained in great detail in the print versions of the MFN.  The ridiculous sand crab trap (Marilyn Death Hammer) I designed, the steel clam tube (AKA: Lumbago Death Tube) that still juts defiantly from the mud of HMB, like excaliber unsheathed! Not to mention the mudsucker trap otherwise known as the Lombard-Bonnafair Shin Wrecker!  (They say the echoes of my screams are still heard in the Dumbarton salt ponds).

     Not very good at capturing mudsuckers, but if you need to lose a little blood, this is your baby.

Anyway, where was I?  The problem is, that for all his metalurgical skills Jerry Bonnafair is not really a clammer or a night smelter or a mudsucker fisherman.  And so he just went ahead and followed my instructions (to a tee).  Of course, I have no business designing anything made of metal when I am standing within 100 yards of someone of Jerry's genius.

 

 Marilyn Death Hammer.  A sand crab trap to end all sand crab traps.  Breaker of human spines.

 

    {For the full story behind all these misbegotten fishing tools, order your copy of MFN # 4 now!}

 

And so after my early failures in rock crabbing I ended up at Jerry's shop in Oakland.  We were there because, well, frankly it's hard to find 3.25 inch rings.  Rock crab traps must have escape rings.  And those rings can be as small as 3.25 inches.  Too many medium sized rockies were escaping from our dungy traps.  So Jerry made a template to bend steel rod into perfect 3.25 inch rings. Then he set about welding cross bars and weights on all the doors of our modified dungy traps.  Then we went out on the water again and discovered that even with weighted doors and 3.25 inch rings rock crabs tend to pull a Houdini when the bait is gone.  So overnight soaks were useless.  We tried Promars, Danielsons, Octagons and standard circular dungy pots.  All with mixed results.  Then Mikey saw some top entry stone crab pots online last month and so we started thinking along those lines.  I contacted a few rock crab biologists who confirmed that top entry traps worked well for rock crabs down south (where there is actually a fairly large fishery for yellows and browns).  

 

                                Stone crab trap

 

Discussed all this with Jerry and the next day he presented me with plans for a folding, totally portable, top entry rock crab trap.  So I went out and bought a 100 foot roll of 12 gauge PVC coated mesh, and started making traps at Jerry's shop--following his template.  Doing the math on it, including bait trays, cheap line (BTW, cheap cotton line sinks!) pool noodle buoys and zip ties, we can produce one total crabbing unit for 10 dollars.

Bam!  

 

  Jerry Bonnafair builds the template for a folding top-entry rock crab pot

 

Are they easy to make?  No. Is it a lot of work?  Yes.  But I've got the time right now, and frankly the biggest issue with rock crabbing is lost gear.  Obviously, these guys don't live on flat sandy bottoms like dungies.  So it makes no sense whatsoever to fish with expensive gear that's gonna get humg up on rocks all day. And the amazing thing about Jerry's design is that we can easily fit 100+ of these folding gizmos on an 18 foot whaler.

                      Cutting wire, and sorting the pieces... Jan 2012

 

Anyway, got yet another tour in HMB today. Will post some cool footage of the crazy downtown SF herring spawn that lasted 4 days!  Talked to monkeyface inside man Champion de la Banana yesterday (1/20/12)  and he was still catching 'em. 

Go Niners!

--Kirk-out

 

Tour On Saturday 1/21

Not completely sure on this.  Kind of thought it was a brown Irish lord, any sculpin experts out there?

Got plenty of room Saturday for my Mega Low-tide Mussel/Clam Tour down in Princeton CA.  Usually this tour is sold out but I had six cancellations and rather than cancel the tour completely, I thought what the hell, I'll post it here see if I can get a few more peeps.  Here's the link to BPT: Kirk's Tickets

 

 

Pre-Columbian Pogey

 

Not Even Looking To Break Even

 

It's true kids.  No matter what they tell you. Life is occasionally improved by the slow ingestion of quality intoxicants.

 

 

The commercial cast net uber-fresh herring idea is now officially dead.  RIP.  They stabbed it with their steely knives (but they still couldn't kill the beast. The beast rages on. I am the beast. 666. That is the number of herring I could probably ever catch in one day. Pounds now, not tons). And then they e-mailed to tell me I lost.

Hi Kirk,

I just got the word from Captain _______ that Legal has made a decision (went all of the way to the top of the Law Enforcement Branch too).  They gave cast netting a thumbs down (see below). Budget cuts might effect the regulatory cycle but I think that DFG will have to address the fresh fish fishery and that would be the time to introduce cast netting as an authorized method of take for herring.

Sorry for the bad news and the fact that it took so long to get it to you.

Signed ____________________

                                Herring gill netters getting their fish in McCovey cove
 

From Enforcement:

Dear _________________

I spoke with Legal at length last week about the issues of nets and weekend fishing. I also spoke with Assistant Chief __________ after he discussed this with the Chief of Patrol ____________. Although they agree that the impact of the fresh fish herring fishery is minimal, the fishery is still bound by the regulations established in CCR Title 14 Section 163. The only authorized method of take for the fresh fish permittees is a set gill net no longer than 65 fathoms long, as described in CCR Title 14 Section 163(f)(2)(A). There is also no fishing allowed on weekends in San Francisco Bay (noon Friday through 5:00 PM Sunday night), as described in CCR Title 14 Section 163(h)(5).
 

                                                            My Kind of CCR

If Mr. Lombard wants the regulations changed he will have to submit a regulation change proposal to the Fish and Game Commission.

And of course this is exactly what I will do.  However, there is no denying it is a temporary setback. A loss of sorts.

 

But the loss is ours, collectively.  Because no one gets these gorgeous, scale-on, clear eyed, throw-netted herring siting in my cooler. Except me. And my friends.

Instead everybody else gets the shook, sucked, crushed and pulverized variety.  Oh well.  Wait till next year.  A baseball cliche if ever there was one.

 

McCovey Cove

 

521 homers.  1555 rbi.  Rest assured when this man strode to the plate, first basemen were not in their happy place.  Did anyone out there ever witness a Willie McCovey line drive?  I once heard one called by Ralph Kiner in like 1979.  Towards the end.  Solo homer in a meaningless game.  The pitch comes in.  Kiner goes:  "It's a line drive.  It's in the gap.  It's gone... and that my friends was a Willie McCovey home run."  

Today I stood and watched 100 tons of herring gill-netted in McCovey Cove. They are now getting 200-300 dollars a ton. (So let's see, what does the math-compromised MFN editorial machine come up with?) Which means each boat made about 2,000 dollars for ten hours of fishing--if that. And they came down from Washington. And how much is the permit? 2,000 dollars? More? And the deckhand... how much does he get? And gas? Upkeep on nets and winches and motors? Wow. Mooring fees?  The SF herring fishery is not a growth industry. Let's just put it that way. In 1994 they got what?  $2,000-$3,000 a ton?

Then why the hell not let me catch 25 pounds?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!!!

I don't even need to break even. That's what no one understands about me.

I'M NOT EVEN LOOKING TO BREAK EVEN!

All I'm trying to do is show people how a herring might be fished.  Small quantities, high price.  Feel me?

 

The 1 Hundred and 1th Ton

 

         McCovey Cove.  Herring boat.  Gill net set.  Jan 18th 2012.

 

I said it was 100 tons but really it was more like 101 tons.  Maybe 102.  The Chinese and Vietnamese evidently like herring. Would love to find out how they are preparing it!  (A little help from some of my Vietnamese fishing brothers here?)

My crazy MFN operative # 007, the one known as Pissed-off Pete, looks up at me out of this virile mass Asiatic manhood and screams: "C'mon Kirk!  White man gotta stand up!"  This was one of the funniest things I have ever heard. I am still laughing. The absurdity of it. Poor Pete, the first man to throw a cast net on C. Pallasi inside SF Bay, swallowed in a crowd of... very talented net throwers. Led sinkers winging thru the air.  A very funny sight to behold.  

The average guy on that pier today threw twice as many times as Tim Lincecum does in a typical outing. Seriously. The fish were sort of thick and then not thick. 10 pounds and then half a pound. Like that.

 

"I just love this... I just love being near this."

 

I must stop. I must dig deeper here. I must digress. I was standing there today and one of my favorite regulars was standing just beyond me talking to someone else.  His name is Tom.  He's one of those dudes has a very common name but when you're standing somewhere with a lot of '365s' (that's the name we give to people who fish every day of the year, yo), and you say: "Tom says the stripers are running thick at Candlestick" every one knows who you're talking about.

 

 

Anyway, I was standing there in the thick of it all and I heard Tom say something like: "I just love this... I just love being near this." That was it. Milt in the water. Eggs on the rocks. Fish sparkling in the shallows. Herring shakers on the gill net boats tapping their staccato rhythm. 43 some odd people throwing nets. Scales flying. Chinese music from someone's Buick (the trunk open and filled with blue plastic bins). I dunno, it was a wild scene.  And really, when you add up the ton or so that was caught by the net flingers, what does it really amount to when compared to a single boat? 

Lot of people I'd never seen before out there.  Jeez, I even ran into Bubba from HMB. Bubba is a fire extinguisher guy. And is the most perfect embodiment of bubba-hood ever created. Bubba was checking fire extinguishers at the ballpark, and had some weird cioppino wagon he was hauling. Seriously. Big Bubba was trafficking in ciopino. WTF? Anyway. I gave Bubba about 7 pounds or something. He goes: "did you see all those guys on the other side?? {of McCovey Cove}" 

And poor Pissed-off Pete, sighing miserably and trying with mixed success to elbow his way to the prime spot. "Its like the battle of Keh Sanh!" He screams.

Nets whirling through the air.  Fish dying everywhere.  Bad day to be a herring.  Good day to be a herring eater.

  

                                                   Herring eaters

 

Ayala

 

                     Some Miwoks

 

In my dreams tonight I will be sailing through The Gate onboard the San Carlos in 1775.  I will look towards land and see the grizzly munching on the sea lion carcass that they all decribed, and the tule canoes docked where Ghiridelli is now. And, and... the endless forests of tule grass, pintails, canvas backs and geese. Great shrieking clouds of geese. Horizon to horizon clouds. Vaults of geese. And a plump, well-fed populace given to laughter, steamed mussels and interesting head dresses. I must see this. I must know what it was. I want to catch a pre-Columbian pogey!

 

Seriously, this is a picture of the San Carlos, hard to believe they'd have all sails at full spread so close to the shore tho.  Is that supposed to be the Gate?  Pt. Diablo?

 

I want to catch a pre-Columbian pogey!

I want to catch a pre-Columbian pogey!

And if I don't get to catch a pre-Columbian pogey, I'm going to scream and cry!

Imagine for a moment the sturgeon abundance in 1775.  Green sturgeon! Green sturgeon abundance. Oxymoronic at this point. Not in 1775. The CPUE for green sturgeon in 1775 was probably like .50 per hour. 12 per day. Imagine the clamming in HMB in 1775. I wonder how hard it would be to reconstruct the tide on August 4th 1775 when Ayala sailed in? August 4th.... hmmm... imagine what surf smelt abundance was on Aug 4th 1775. I think maybe this year I'll throw a party for the bay on August 4th. Who wants to come? We'll regale ourselves with stories about the old days. To hell with the present. Forget about the future. I want to live in the past!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!

Now I'm sitting here. The phone just rang. Eric Lee's still on the herring. Live Eric! Live!

 

Of Course

 

                         herring otolith

 

FYI:  They've found herring otoliths in 8,000 year old Indian burial mounds. No surprise there.

 

The 1/1000

 

                                                    Yes.  On Montgomery street.

In parting I will say this. I may not know what a summer run of Chinook salmon looks like, I may not comprehend former pintail abundance, Grizzly bears on Montgomery St., or what Aquatic Park was like when it was full of spartina grass, native oysters and clapper rails. But I sure as hell can visualize what a herring run must've looked like. Since I'm intimately familiar with that meagre 1/1000th that's left to us.

Anyhoo, I may yet hold out for time machines and vistas of impossible former abundance but while I'm doing it, I will profess my love for what remains.  Tom said it best:

I just love it. I just love being near it.

Kirk-out.

Jan 18, 2012

The Cycle Of Life

 

                                                            Loren's buckets

 

So we had a major herring spawn in Marin this week.  The spawn lasted two whole days and nights... (might actually have been three!)  The pickling liquid is boiling even as I write this.   Other than myself and a few select friends, there was no one to witness it... no one except of course the 12-15 herring boats who's gill net shakers can be heard in the distance throughout the movie below, and maybe a thousand sea gulls.  It really is such a beautiful thing to behold... hope this very short movie captures some of it!

 

                                                Herring boats Jan 5th 2012

 

 

I have to say, it was quite a trip to show up there and see the pier completely empty.  Had it all to myself. Became like a party for Kirk's friends the rest of the day.  Thanks Mike C. for the call... anyway, here's the latest cinematic masterpiece:

 

 

Niche Markets

 

                                                              Rockies...

 I was talking to a dungeness crab fisherman at the dock in Princeton and he goes: "rock crabs are garbage, I got no interest in that."  

And that's just fine with me, buddy!  

It all comes down to what your particular version of the American Dream happens to be.  Mine is unique, I think, in that it doesn't include a lot of expensive stuff.  And because of that, I can make underground, under-utilized, non-mainstream fisheries work for me.  But not everyone can.  

It's funny though, I have to say, commercial fishing a string of hoop nets! You guys think I'm kidding but that appears to be the best way to capture rock crabs (more on this later). 

Even funnier, since we started doing this with our buyer (and benefactor!) I'm seeing rock crabs all over town.  Copy cats! Got more demand for eels than I know what to do with. Got people talking about the different kinds of smelts (FYI: there's a huge demand for jacksmelt... yes, jacksmelt. Worms and all!)

Anyway, Mikey and I have been dropping pots everyday.  Okay, let me rephrase that.  Mikey's been dropping pots everyday, I've been tagging along occasionally.  But, we are starting to learn a few things:

1.  rock crabs are smarter than dungies

2.  rock crabs are very good at escaping from conventional crab pots

3.  hoop nets work well because you have to pull them up every 15 minutes and so the crabs don't have a chance to escape.

4.  getting pinched by a rock crab deeply sucks (their claws are designed to break clams, yo).

5.  we need a different kind of pot.

It's weird, even with weighted doors and 3.25 inch escape rings we can't seem to keep these buggers in the traps over night.  Drop a few hoop nets on rocky bottom and you catch more rock crabs in an hour than you do with a 48 hour soak.  Very strange.  I think what's going on here is that rockies unlike dungies evolved to deal with getting in and out of holes.  So as soon as they eat all the bait they start searching the cage for a way out... and they figure out the door quite easily.  I have this image in my brain of one rock crab, the leader of the jail break, holding the trap door open while all the others escape... might have to sink a GO PRO down there... anyone wanna volunteer a camera?

Anyhoo... as far as fishing goes, this is what I've been up to lately (see movie).  Nothing stupendous but some nice footage of our little operation, the wonderful 18 foot Whaler that has been provided for us by our crab buyer, Kenny (mensch of the 7 seas), and the foggy shores of the local coastline.  I think it's fair to say that in a month or two we will be able to triple our catch.  

Again, if there are any former commercial rock crab fishermen out there reading this, I'd love to pick your brain for a few minutes... beers on me.

Anyway, here's my first movie since steelheading on the Trinity...

Happy New Year!

PS: if any of you have photos from my tours down in Halfmoon Bay/Princeton/Mavericks I'd really appreciate you forwarding them to me, especially that monster cabezon Mikey got poke poling!