Irreverent musings, armchair geography, piscatorial haiku and ground breaking ethnographic insight on the subject of San Francisco's marine fisheries, written by fish inspector, tuba player, baseball historian, n'er do well, stogie chomper, puppet master, crab killer, tenor and reigning monkeyface eel record holder, Kirk Lombard.
{Monkeyface News editorial machine: if you're here for the video scroll to the bottom. The vimeo video is higher quality but may take longer to load}
Champion's white sturgeon, thanks to Arturo for sending me this photo.
Well, I was just sitting down to write another post about the advantages of limpets and mudsuckers (yawn yawn) when the phone rang. Champion de la Banana, (scroll down after you hit the link) who doubles as Monkeyface field operative and herring scout #007, was on the line. Being that everyone is talking about birds, sea lions, and big schools of clupeids loaded up in the channels, I figured it was winter 2012-13 herring run #1, and I was already looking for my rubber boots and buckets when the Champion posed a strange question.
"When are you coming here to make me famous, champion?" Guys laughing in the background, as they always are when Champion's speaking.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"I just caught a 64 inch sturgeon on a number 6 hook with 10 pound test, come poot me on the internet!"
When this man speaks, everybody smiles.
Well... even though I have dipped my A-frame into the musky lands of sports biography of late and tend to shy away from reporting on the mainstream Bay Area fishes... this is, after all, a fishing blog. And really, what kind of fishing blogger am I if I can not grant so humble a request from so great a local fisherman as Champion de la Banana?
Suffice it to say, I threw on my Santa hat and rain pants and headed for Champion's secret location (not much of a secret, really. Everyone in the know, knows where the Champion likes to fish in the winter... and though I tried to limit the background (which is why the field of view is so annoyingly low in the group shot at the beginning) a few harcore types will easily figure it out. Go crazy guys. It still takes (on average) 100+ hours of fishing time to produce one shore caught sturgeon (anecdotal data only, just my opinion).
Mikis Theodorakis
In any event... here is the latest Monkeyface cinematic masterpiece. Been a while since I made one of these. By the way, even though his nickname is Spanish, the Champion hails from the ancient land of Hellas. Hence the soundtrack here, which I hope he likes (it is quite possible that every Greek on earth is woefully tired of this particular album... Nevertheless, the Monkeyface News considers it one of the greatest soundtracks ever).
Oh yeah, I should mention that Pedro did a pretty awesome job removing the notochord so if you are new to sturgeon butchery, take heed.
You know, I just spent like 5 hours trying to upload this sucker on Youtube. In the end I decided to go with Vimeo. But because a lot of fishermen have no idea what Vimeo is, I'm also uploading the crappy Youtube version down below.
Have at:
Nice Version From Vimeo:
Crappy version from Youtube:
Oh man... the herring ran today. (Mark that down: first run winter 2012-13, was Nov 29th) and here I was with my phone turned off, sitting on me arse, screaming at the computer. Aaaagghhh!
Anyway, from high above the storm-wracked city, this is Lombard of the Intertidal... signing out.
Sort of riffing on the Bukowski line from Bar Fly here. You know where Mickey Rourke says of the Frank Stalone bartender character: that guy symbolizes everything that disgusts me... unoriginal macho energy.
Well I'm going to go out on a limb here and state for the record that the late Hector "Macho" Camacho, for all his crimes--and they were many--did not frequently dip his water bottle into the pool of "unoriginal macho energy." Lunatic, drug addled macho energy? Sure. Homo-erotic male dominance displays featuring Village People inspired wardrobe and a Pee Wee herman spit curl? Yes. Blood curdling feats of stamina wherein he took skull crushing blows from some of the fiercest, strongest and swiftest athletes of the later 20th century... yeah, that too.
To those of you who are recent viewers of this blog, be forewarned, I have on occasion been known to devote whole posts to prize fighters, baseball players, classic hollywood era leading ladies, and seminal figures from San Francisco's nefarious past--without so much as a single fleeting mention of a fish. So here we go.
Macho Time, "The Liberace of boxing" hams it up.
Hector "Macho" Camacho died a few days ago. Shot in the face while sitting in a parked car outside a club in Puerto Rico. The kid from the 'hood could never quite shake it's worst elements. As I indicated above "Macho" has always seemed to me an ill-fitting moniker for Hector Camacho. Can't really think of any other macho guys that were so heavily into tassels, pink trunks and spit curls. Remember the Indian head dress? The weird Graeco-Roman loincloth against De La Hoya? Camacho always reminded me of that quote from Blood Meridian, where McCarthy describes the attacking Comanches materializing out of the dust (quoting from memory here so cut me some slack): "One in a stove pipe hat worn backwards and otherwise naked, one in a blood stained wedding veil... and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns... death hilarious."
Camacho: the ealry years.
That was Hector. Death hilarious. A punk kid from the projects who made it big, threw it all the way, got it back, abused the people he loved, surrounded himself with lowlifes and parasites, lost it all again and probably had a fair share of Jake Lamotta-punching-the-walls-of-his-jail-cell type evenings in his life. Oh yeah, did I mention the cocaine? There was a lot of cocaine involved in Hector Camacho's life.
LaMotta's dark night of the soul as portrayed by DeNiro in Raging Bull.
You can read all about it in this article by Ring columnist Randy Gordon.
It may sound absurd but every time I saw Camacho interviewed a sort of innocence prevailed. To talk about innocence in connection to a person like Macho Camacho may seem silly, but check out this totally ridiculous video from the eighties (muscle beach speedo and all).
"I don't look humble but I am... just don't mess with me."
I just sat here and watched a bunch of his fights on YouTube and I was struck by two things: 1. The continuing relevance of the old Dylan song: Who Killed Davey Moore (yes I'm conflicted, so what). And 2. Hector Camacho was one tough little mother fucker. I mean you can say what you will. Call him a clown, an egotist or a pretty boy. (You won't get very far with this assessment if I'm around. The guy fought Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad, Julio Cesar Chavez, Ray Mancini, Edwin Rosario--all in their primes. And what's more he went the distance in almost all these fights. And was never knocked out. Jake Lamotta bedamned. I just watched the De La Hoya fight--where he took 50 shots to the face and head, any one of which would've put an average macho man in traction for 6 months).
When the fishwife told me that Hector Camacho had been shot in the face, I said: "That's not the way to kill him." Guess I was wrong.
Back In The Eighties
Back in the eighties when I worked on the moving trucks in uptown Manhattan, I'd say about half of the
guys in the industry were from Spanish Harlem. Of these, a fair proportion aspired to be prize fighters. My favorite of the lot was a kid named Jay who had dollar sign etched into one of his gold incisors (Money Makin' Jay The Kick Ass Kid). Macho Camacho was Jay's white whale. He could maybe go 14 minutes at a time without mentioning how badly he wanted to kick Hector Camacho's ass. He'd rail on and on and on about how Camacho had no respect, about how he was a terrible representative of Puerto Ricans, about how he was "a sissy" a sucka, etc etc etc. Jay obviously had a touch o' the ol' Ahab syndrome, but over the years I ran into a lot of Alpha male unoriginal macho energy types, all of whom felt intense antipathy for the so called "Macho Man." In a field where everyone from the lowest guy on a moving truck to the top challenger in the world, wants to beat the living shit out of you, it's incrrdible that anyone is able to rise to the top--and to this day never fails to amaze me.
But then to take all that hateful male-dominance energy in, and show up at the ring in a loin cloth, and spit curls... i dunno... I think that's pretty damned awesome. Sugar Ray Leonard may have said it best: "Hector Camacho is the Liberace of boxing."
When will there ever be another?
Quien es mas macho?
Looks like Hector Camacho's funeral will be in New York. There was some debate about whether they'd have it in Puerto Rico south (the island) or Puerto Rico north (Spanish Harlem). But Mama's will prevailed.
Anyway. Got some reports of herring in the south bay. Will report tomorrow.
Kirk-out
Here's what Oscar De La Hoya recently said about Camacho:
"As I was walking up a hike, at the foothills here in Pasadena, Calif., and as I'm walking up, I'm a little tired because it's a steep mountain.
"I received a text from my wife that reads, 'RIP Macho Camacho, he has passed.' I started running faster up the mountain. I started walking and running faster. I just got this energy.
"That's what Camacho was all about. He motivated a lot of people. He was a rock. This guy was courageous. This guy was a warrior. I felt anger, and therefore, I ran up the mountain faster.
"I felt frustration because he's one of our own. I say that as a fighter and I say that as a man who is going through what I'm going through also. He's one of our own. So it hurts. This one really hurts. It hurts in your soul."
1. The first Thanksgiving, as has been stated here before, had a lot more to do with eels (true American eels!) than it did turkey and mashed potatos. There was a recent article in The Times about this
And somewhere on this blog I did a little piece on unagi... wait here it is: No More Unagi.
2. The American eel has fallen on hard times. This is what I've read, anyway. But here's what I don't understand. The Hudson River was absolutely choked with eels when I was a kid. The river is, supposedly, much cleaner now. We know for a fact that eels aren't an indicator species like candlefish, they are relatively impervious to nasty water. Back in the 70s and 80s the Hudson was the kind of river that occasionally caught on fire (not really, but it was wretchedly polluted) and yet eels were everywhere. (The juvenile delinquints in my neighborhood used to fish eels under the piers with wrist rockets and m-80s--I am still traumatized by this, and tortured by the fact that I couldn't stop them).
Home sweet home.
It seems unlikely to me that there has been all that much dam building since the eighties. In looking at commercial eel landings they don't seem to be very high, there's a bait fishery and very limited rec. fishery. So what the hell is killing them off? (global warming anyone?) The idea occurred to me that maybe it's the capture of elvers. But only two states on the Eastern Seaboard allow elver fishing: Maine (400 licenses) and South Carolina (10 licenses)--with Maine accounting for the lion's share of landings.
To those of you who are wondering what the hell i'm talking about. Unagi, that oily and delicious marinated piece of flesh that you can now buy pretty much anywhere on earth, is made from eels
raised on "farms" in Asia. These are not typical farms, rather they are more like ranches. They do not breed eels but simply buy elvers (juvenile eels) that are caught (by dip net and fyke) as they ascend large American (and formerly European) rivers.
Check this out. Just take a guess... what was the going rate per pound for elvers at the docks in Maine this year? Come on. Wild guess. The price per pound for elvers?
Drum Roll Please...
That's right. The elver market topped out at $2,600 dollars per pound. Read that again it's not a misprint. Obviously the price is that high because the demand is that high. When supply is severely limited but demand continues to increase, that's what happens to the price.
In truth I'm confused by all the data. It's hard for me to believe that 20 years ago you could stand under a pier in the Hudson River and watch the water boil with eels. And now I read that US Fish and Wildlife is actually
considering listing the American Eel as an endangered species (!) This is doubly weird because they just did a study four or five years ago that determined eels were not overfished and that populations were not endangered. To make matters even more confusing, the group spearheading the current drive to list American eels is called CESAR (Center For Environmental Science Advocacy and Reliability) and is headed by that great champion of the Endangered Species Act, former Bush administration Dept of Interior honcho, Craig Manson. Not sure what these folks have to gain by throwing their weight into the push to rescue eels from oblivion. But it's all rather confusing to me and I should probably research it a bit more before I make any more bold pronouncements.
Really the reason I'm concerned is because of what has happened to European eel stocks since 1970. If you think about it, there isn't that much difference between American and European eels (Euro eels prefer bad techno music). I mean as far as life patterns and habitat are concerned. And what we're talking about with Anguilla anguilla (Euro eel) is a 90 to 95 percent decrease in stocks globally. Extinction now being a real possibility. So when population trends in American eels start to show a universal tendency towards decline... we should at the very least be concerned. Let's not let 'em go the way of the European eel.
What Else?
Matt sends this pic of deer, evidently munching on seaweed.
Lots of eel-mails pertaining to Columbia black tailed deer. Okay, okay I got it! Sheesh! Lots of hunters reading my blog I gather. I had always lumped mulies and black tails together. Sort of like lumping yellowtail rockfish and olive rockfish together (but not quite). Thanks for disabusing me of my errant notions. Seriously, though. I appreciate it.
As to the why and wherefore of deer hanging out on beaches, Matt sends me this pic he snapped of a small group of (blacktail?) deer munching on seaweed on a minus tide up north. I've heard of cows doing this and sheep... but was unaware that deer do it. Open to more edu-ma-cation on this from the mammal hunters.
(Of course what no one realizes is that deer are avid poke polers. Using their antlers to probe for MF eels under the rocks).
Soon Come
Last year'sHerring spawn, Sausalito (January 2012). Note: gill net parallel to shore and herring boats off Scomas.
As far as everyone's favorite native clupeid is concerned, all this rain is definitely a good thing. DFG predicts another monster year. Very happy for the reduced quota (for the last few years the commer. quota was reduced from 10 percent of the estimated biomass to 5 percent). Means more fish for the net flingers (that's you and me). Can't possibly tell you guys how excited I am for herring this year. For one thing I think my herring tour is going to be a blast. For another, I did not keep enough for bait last year. Time to invest in a new vacuum sealer. Just wish those suckers didn't break down so easily. Hey anyone out there want to school me on the best vacuum sealer? Deer hunters? Tuna men? I need a friggin champ. Nothing flashy. The Smokin Joe Frazier of vacuum sealers. Preferably in the 200 dollar range.
Well... I was out there every single day this week, in one way or another, hanging out inter-tidally. Exploring the inaccessible areas. Doing tours. Had a big school group on Monday and found this lunker moonsnail...
Catch and release moonsnailing.
In fact I found no less than 5 of these brutes this week. Catch and release only. I have long since given up trying to turn moonsnail meat into something palatable. Beyond hammering the meat to a pulp I'm saying. And frankly I have no interest in chemical meat tenderizers. I hear papaya and ginger can be used to this end but dang it, I refuse to believe that papaya enzymes can break down a moonsnail. Anymore than they can break down the sole of my hiking boots. Someone please prove me wrong on this. I looked in the logbooks of Lewis and Clark to see if I could find the first ever reference to the moonsnail, but it seems that Merriweather did not actually name the species. It was named by another biologist later in the 19th century, who felt indebted to Lewis for all his hard work exploring the uncharted wilds.
Always makes me sad thinking about how this great man died. But imagine for a moment the America he got to see.
One interesting development this week was my discovery of a wildly abundant and easy-to-get-at shoal of common piddock clams. How strange! This is one of those rock-boring species that used to be caught by means of an 8 pound sledge hammer (and a total lack of ecological propriety). Of course no one takes a sledge hammer out on the reefs any more. I mean, with all due respect to ye old tyme clammers, smashing the reef with hammers to get at the clams is a bad idea. But as I was walking out to my favorite horseneck location I saw a number of tiny spouts shooting off in the sand.
Actually. These suckers are better than littlenecks! I can't believe it! Okay, okay a tad chewy but unlike cleaning macomas, you can clean the guts out of a piddock and there's still enough clam left to make it worth while. Next time I'm gonna dig a little deeper.
Thing is, I was early. Normally, I don't start clamming until about an hour before flat low. Today I was taking new friend and visiting pleistocenic forager par excellence, Prof William Schindler on what I hoped would be a representative California intertidal foray, so I wanted to start early in order to get everything in.
And What Did We Learn This Week Grasshoppah?
Well for one thing, that it's a good idea to mix things up a bit (I seem to remember Don Juan telling
Carlos Castaneda (see left) this in Journey to Ixtlan... alas, the inner hippy is revealed). So you think surf perch only run on high tide? Night smelt only run on the outgo? Every now and then start fishing at low tide and see what happens. Walking out on the mudflats three hours before low tide I saw these tiny spouts going off about 20 feet from the top of the tide-line. Never would have seen them had I started two hours later. Thinking they were sand macomas I shoved the shovel down, and discovered that two inches below the sandy surface was a thick layer of clay. The first scoop of the shovel revealed two long siphons of a clam species I could not immediately identify, the second scoop revealed the tell-tale shells. I love this kind of surprise! Had no idea there were easily accessible beds of piddocks here. And I don't even need a sledge hammer to get to them... How cool is that?
William Schindler
One nice thing about all the crazy exposure I've been getting of late is that occasionally I am contacted by extremely cool people that never would have heard of me otherwise. I figured Bill found me through the Times article, or one of the TV shows but it was actually from the thing i did for an in-flight magazine that I totally forgot about.
If I'd had professors like this I might have actually stayed in school! Bill Schindler demonstrates his hand made sickles and spears.
Bill turned out to be an upright bloke, a walking talking encyclopedia of primitive skills (has a PHD in Archeology of course). Not only did he come bearing gifts (some hand made dogbane cord and a handsomely napped projectile head--for which I would have gladly sold Manhattan Island), but he was full of good cheer and even ate a raw limpet. It's not everybody who wants to wallow in the muck for horseneck clams but Bill leapt into it with childlike abandon!
Primitive Skills
Flint spearhead and dogbane cord made by William Schindler. Too bad my camera sucks so bad because the detail on the spearhead is truly awesome.
It's interesting how regional the whole primitive skills thing can be. Late last night after spending the day with Bill Schindler, I got inspired and busted out my copy of Kroeber's Handbook of the Indians Of California. I've always been fascinated by the idea of cordage. Even more than stone tools. It seems to me that human life is almost impossible without string, rope or cord (how, for instance does one fish without it?). Anyway, Kroeber tells us that ground iris (Iris macrosiphon) was the preferred plant for this. Indians would use ground iris even in areas where dogbane was abundant. Bill had brought me a very strong cord he made out of dogbane fibers (see pic above) so I find this interesting. I guess I'll have to make some ground iris cord and compare the two. It seems from what I've read that fishing lines and nets were universally made of ground iris... maybe it holds up better in salt water?
Ground Iris, the fibers evidently come from the leaves not the stalks.
Looking at the leaves of ground iris compared to dog bane stalks, can't even imagine how many hours the local natives spent doing this. I mean the leaves are only about a foot long. Probably took something like 30 feet of cord to bind a tule canoe. My gawd 30 feet of ground iris fibers. That's gotta be like... 600 hours of labor or something. I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about here so i'll have to go get myself some leaves. Now, forget about the bass, halibut, sturgeon and salmon... can someone please put me on the ground iris?
Anyway, I have decided this is something I must do. Make a net or a tule canoe or a tule skirt for the fishwife using ground iris fibers. How cool would that be?
That's it for tonight... got guests coming over to sample the fishwife's smoked herring (No, i did not find an early herring run, these are from the Russian market on Irving, I imagine they were caught in the north Atlantic) cream cheese dip and clam chowder. More later this week. Hey... three posts in eight days! Getting back to my past form.
Wow. I actually found a sea chanty pertaining to herring. "Shoals of Herring" by the great Ewan MacColl. To those folksies out there Ewan MacColl married Peggy Seeger (Pete's sis). Gonna have to do this one with ye fishwife. Here, give a listen. This is the Clancy Bros. version which is a little more uptempo... forgot how great they were:
MacColl's daughter Kirsty MacColl co-wrote Fairy Tale Of Old New York, with Shane MacGowan, which in addition to containing the greatest string of expletives in song, has this line: "And the boys in the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay, and the bells were ringin' out for Christmas day."
I can't even write the words to this song without weeping. Let alone listen to them. Kirsty died in the most tragic way. Struck by an idiot speed boater while snorkling in a marine reserve in Mexico--a spot where boats are not even allowed! What a tragic horrifying waste of a rare and brilliant person. She evidently, used her body to shield her son from the prop. Gawd help us all.
A-hem
Wow... too early in the morning to go there. What else... yes, crabbing has been awesome. I don't need any more pictures of crabs, thankyou very much! I'm proud of your snaring skills. The only crabs I intend to show on this blog are my own.
And now we begin our string of crazy minus tides. Got a bunch of school groups going out. I actually had to turn down a few tours! Why? Because I need to get out there myself! You know there's a whole lot of coastline in the area south of SF (and north) that I've never actually explored. Hard to reach spots that require either an ill advised kayak trip, a death defying George Willig type stunt, or a very low tide.
George Willig the human fly. On The WTC, 1977.
Let's see... Tuesday is a -1.4... Perfect. I will wade out and around a certain rocky promontory. I will cling to intertidal boulders, and scramble along virgin tidepools. I will claim whole swathes of shoreline for the Monkeyface News, and the followers of my crude animistic religion: C. Violaceism. (From the latin: Cebidicthys violaceus). Any natives I encounter will be forced to accept the true faith. They will give up their Grady White's for tule canoes, their bulky vestments for grass skirts, skins and loin clothes, their superfluous trinkets and phones will be replaced by bone awls and hand axes. They will be forced to don lip discs and facial tatoos. Just kidding...
Yesterday while jogging the trail that runs along the cliff above the unreachable beach that I intend to explore in two days, I looked down into a cove and saw a family of mule deer. They were standing together like a scene from bambi. Daddy, mommy and two fawns. That's what it looked like anyway. A family outing to the beach. Couldn't figure out what they were doing down there. Don't think I've ever seen deer on the beach before. The female, or what I assumed was the female, detached from the group and walked all the way down to the top of the wave line and just sort of stood there, facing out at the ocean. For maybe 20 seconds. I'm thinking, what the hell is she looking at? But then she turned and rejoined the group, and they walked back up towards the base of the cliff--where I couldn't see them.
It was one of those beautiful moments in nature that always happen when you're alone and least expecting it. I'm glad I didn't have a camera. Some things are better remembered and later described than seen captured and shown off.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.
Will post my reflections on exploring the virgin coast later this week. Until then... from a hidden bunker deep below the surface of the known world, this is Lombard of the Intertidal... signing out.
{more below}
That 1 Guy: "Nature is Awesome."
* "That One Guy" was one of the many manifestations of Mike Silverman, a unique mad scientist/musician from the East Bay, that Rube Waddell (my band) occasionally played with back in the day. Not sure whatever happened to Mike, but man his shows were almost as awesome as nature... the greatest one-man band since Dr. Isaiah Ross (my personal fave).
Dr Ross's set up was harp, kick drum and guitar. Here's a descrip of Mike's set up from his site:
"That 1 Guy set off on his own, challenging the idea of what a one-man band can and should be. Rather than altering and adding on to the bass, he started from scratch, conceptualizing and creating the Magic Pipe. Standing at seven-feet-tall, the collection of swiveling pipes, metal gears, bass strings and electronic buttons forms the shape of a harp, but is played like a futuristic gutbucket."
Well. After four trips to the big Island in the last four years I am slowly, ever so slowly, becoming a threat to the fish population. I'm not saying they tremble at my approach. Quite the contrary! They're still laughing. But they aren't laughing quite as loudly as they did last year and the year before. And with any luck, next year I will be posing with the ol' shaka-shaka fingers over a stud ulua somewhere in the back pages of Hawaii Fishing News.
In my own defense, it's hard to show up in a place for seven days and without any instruction or local insight, figure out how to catch fish.
(You know, someone who does what I do for a living would make a killing over there--think about it... your cheapest charter boat on The Big Island costs over a grand for a half day trip... a shore-fishing guide, or even a kayak guide, could charge substantially less, cater to people who don't have 1,000 bucks to burn (the 99 percent if you will) and end up with a thriving business... there's gotta be somebody on this already... gotta be.
An assortment of inneffective lures.
So interesting. I brought about 200 bucks worth of Yozuri Crystal Minnows, Rapalas, Bombers, Krocodiles, Castmasters, surface plugs of several varieties and even some big spinners. I fished mornings (06:00-09:00) and/or evenings (16:00--18:00) for five of the seven days. And in that time not one single fish hit any of my offerings (okay I caught a few needle fish, but they don't count). I changed leaders, went with and without swivels, tried fast retrieves, bouncing retrieves, slooooow retrieves, bobbers, you name it. Not a bite.
Actually there was a brief interlude where I just went for reef fish and had a blast catching mamo and triggerfish on light tackle. But after a while it gets kind of tedious, and these creatures are way more fun to observe while snorkling...
Mamo, The "pogie" of Hawaii:
Luckily for me I soon met Danny. Local guy's been fishing Hawaiian shoreline his whole life. Because I've been avidly reading my Jim Rizzuto (thanks to braddah Noa), I knew exactly what he was doing with that crappie pole. But it's one thing to read about someing and another to watch it or do it yourself, n'est pas? Anyway, in fifteen minutes I learned the basics of catching oama--the best baitfish Hawaii has to offer. I said basics and I mean that.Obviously, there's no way to gain any kind of expertise in 15minutes...but at least I had some fundamentals to start with.As I had suspected it's all in the details. 2 pound test and size 18 hook. Now, I've got to dig way back to my blue wing olive days to find a time when I fished with 2 pound test and a size 18 hook. I had been trying for days to jig a few oama with a size 12 hook, pieces of shrimp and six pound test--to no avail.
Hangin' loose with Danny and small papio at "A-bay." Note cane pole and bobber for oama.
To make a long story a little longer: After three days of almost total skunkhood, I popped an oama on my hook and caught two papio in two casts. Which means they were there the whole time I was plying the water to a froth, just had no interest in my expensive rapalas and what not. Everyone knows live bait is the key but jeez... that was ridiculous. Too bad I learned this on my last day in Hawaii!
Oama!!! (The hook and bobber are for papio, obviously. It takes a size 18 to catch oama).
Anyway... when Danny left, he took the oama home for dinner, and (rather generously I thought) left me with two dead ones. They both got slammed in a matter of minutes. Like 2 minutes. The first one was another 2-3 pound papio.
The second one, after slicing the oama in half, came back and hammered the other half. Then after a 3 minute fight showed me why I need to go back to a 30 pound leader (I'd switched to a 20 pound leader thinking maybe it was the leader that was spooking them from my rapalas). Not having any proper oama gear I was out of bait and out of time (flight out the next morning), so I will file away my oama lessons and return next year with a vengeance. And if I report more lost papio because of broken leaders I give you all full permission to kick me in the seat of my waders.
Aloha and mahalo to my Hawaiian ohana, (Big Noa, Lins and Nai'a) Oh yeah, and a shout out to Danny for helping a poor haolie out!
{Monkeyface Editorial Machine: Yes, there's been a lot to blog about of late, and there is a forthcoming post on the 2012 SF Giants, the opening of crab season and the big event at Camino etc. But it's hard to focus on anything but Hawaii when in Hawaii. Feel me people?}
