Fish Tails

Fish Tails — 5 Comments
13
Jul 12

It’s a Shark!

I had to share this.

Now, I love sharks. I think they are downright cool. They are ancient, perfect predators and they play a critical role keeping balance in the places they are found. However… I don’t think I’d want one just off my dock like this.

Bull Sharks, and I’m assuming that is what this is, have been found way up river in places as exotic as the Amazon and as close as the Mississippi.

Plus, my little girl loves sharks (although they are third behind snakes and crocs).

I’m betting that woman is never going to step into even a puddle that isn’t full of chlorine ever again.

Fish Tails — 13 Comments
12
Jul 12

A Permit by Any Other Name

A Permit by any other name is probably way, way less valuable.

I’ve been going to the California Academy of Sciences for a few years now. Located in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, it is packed with aquatic life. Penguins to Sea Bass to Electric Eels, this place has it all (including an adult tarpon). From the very first trip I was particularly drawn to a little exhibit just in the front door to the left with black tip reef sharks, rays, some baby tarpon and pompano. This is a tank you stand above and look down into, since the water in only about two feet deep. There were three baby tarpon and then two and then one and now they are no more. Seems the black tips got hungry at night and ate them. Oops. I still wonder why they were left in the tank after the first one got munched, but, that’s a different question.

I love seeing the pompano in the exhibit since they look a lot like permit and I’ve actually caught pompano down in Mexico. I’ve caught exactly 1 permit and only cast at a half-dozen or so. Over the years those pompano have gotten bigger and bigger and now, they look incredibly like permit and I’d swear they were permit, if not for the yellow, where there should be black.

I submitted a comment card and actually asked what species of fish these were. The director of the Steinhart Aquarium (part of the CAS) told me they were Trachinotus blochii, aslo called the Snubnose Pompano.

Photo by J.E. Randall

The thing that has kind of been bugging me is how much those fish look like what I’ve seen called “Indo-Pacific Permit.”

At fishbase.org there is no fish called the Indo-Pacifi Permit (or Indopacific Permit or Indo Pacific Permit). That would seem a pretty glaring omission.

If I look at a picture labeled “Indo-Pacific Permit,” well, I’m starting to see a Snubnose Pompano.

“Indo-Pacific Permit”

I need to add here that I could be wrong. I’m not an icythyologist by any stretch. However, I don’t see anything scientific about Indo-Pacific Permit anywhere. Permit and Pompano are closely related, so it isn’t that much of a stretch. Jacks, trevally, pompano and permit are all related, which makes them one hell of a hard-pulling family.

I think it is an interesting insight that we need to (if I’m right) re-invent a fish to make it something worth chasing. How many anglers would fly thousands of miles to catch a pompano? It is pretty well known that anglers will fly thousands of miles to catch permit (and drop a few grand in the process). Why can’t a Snubnose Pompano be worth pursuing on its own? It looks a very worthy target.

Anyone have any insight into the Indo-Pacific Permit and if I’m right on this one?

Fish Tails — No Comments
29
Jun 12

Easy to imagine

The Go-Pro thing may not be for everyone, but I do like the angler’s-eye-view it provides. Makes it easy to imagine being there, like this guy, in Christmas Island, casting to some little bonefish. The hookup, the run and the release… all there.

Ah… I’m about ready to make another cast.

Fish Tails — 5 Comments
26
Jun 12

Something I’m working towards

Jim Klug got there first… but I’m trying hard to catch up.

This is what a good dad looks like in my mind.

Jim was just down in the Yucatan with his family and he has some nice pictures from that trip at his site.

I’m just trying to nail down plans for Spring Break 2013, which will be the first chance I have to bring my daughter somewhere to show her the environment I love so much. She’s going to get resorts with big pool complexes from her mom. From me I want her to get starfish and rays and sharks and crabs and bonefish and mangroves and jacks and herons and turtles. That’s what I want to give her.

So, cheers to the dads out there who share these wonders with their children, especially their girls.

Fish Tails — 1 Comment
25
Jun 12

I caught you a delicious bass

I got some time on the water yesterday. Headed off for my first trip this year to a little reservoir south of San Jose in search of carp.

I didn’t find a carp… not to cast to, anyway. I did manage to get a bass and a crappie to hand though. I did see some carp breaching, but they were too far away to get a cast to.

Low water, but still kind of pretty

The water clarity was poor and the water was lower than I’d ever seen it before. This was not a big winter her in CA and it shows.

After that I went to fish down below a little dam where I know there are some monster carp. There is a foot bridge going over this little bit of water and you can stand there and watch the carp come up from the depths and roll and then fade. I’ve never hooked a fish here and I can say today that I’ve still have never hooked a fish there. Those arseholes. Honestly… they are bugging me. I know they are there… but I can’t get them to eat.

I KNOW they are there. They make me kind of mad with their whole “not eating my flies” thing.

Off to the little creek I’ve fished several times in search of little trout. Before I went up to the hills I stopped by Burger King (I almost never eat fast food) and I got one of the new Memphis Pulled Pork Sandwiches. I add this detail here because I will feel like I’ve done something if I can keep someone out there from eating one of these truly hideous packages of crap. Don’t do it.

As I drove along the creek my heart sank. There was almost no water in it. I didn’t even get out of the car. I have no idea how the little fish will survive this and I don’t think they will. It isn’t even August yet.

Such is urban fly fishing down in the South Bay. Hope you had more luck than I did last weekend!

Bass… but I bet you knew that already.

All the other stuff / Fish Tails — 1 Comment
19
Jun 12

Santella and the Yucatan

Well, a nice story to see pop up in my Google Alerts, Chris Santella writing about the Yucatan.

Those of you who follow the blog will know that I got to fish with Chris a bit in Cuba earlier this year with Avalon. Chris was a good boat-mate and was just a fun guy to have along on the trip. He brought his own guitar along and belted out some tunes in the evenings after we were off the water, well fed and a bit boozed up.

Chris, on deck in Cuba.

Check out the story:

For nearly two millennia, the Mayan people along the Yucatán Peninsula’s Caribbean coast have relied on fishing for sustenance and trade. The tradition continues, though today many Mayan fishermen are as likely to be throwing a 10-weight graphite fly rod as a net.

Fish Tails — 4 Comments
18
Jun 12

Inflation

“Dat was a nice 5 pound bonefish.” Says the guide.

The question for the angler is “Was it?”

I often wonder about the reported sizes of fish and I have had more than one guide add a pound, or even two, to a fish once it was released and out of sight.

It makes me look back at my “7.5 pound bonefish” and question if it really was. That was my first day of real bonefishing and that fish was maybe my 5th bonefish ever landed. That would make it my biggest bonefish to date. I have not caught a 10 pounder, even though I’ve cast at a few and seen a maybe a dozen. I have yet to actually tie into one that I can say for sure was that large.

I really try not to inflate the size or numbers of fish caught simply because if you do it once, well, then why not again? If you just say you caught X number of fish and they were X big it kind of cheapens the whole thing unless you actually did. You might as well have not left the dock. I really do try to be very honest about my fishing, as I try to be very honest about all other things in my life. I think my boss would prefer I was a little less honest, but I think he also understands at this point that the tiger can’t change his stripes.

So… how much do you think guides inflate and have you ever argued with a guide about how big a fish was? You ever catch a fishing companion knowingly adding inches or numbers to a day?

I’d say it was at least this big.

Fish Tails — 6 Comments
16
Jun 12

The lexicon of tarpon

No one has ever cared about how many trout I got to eat in a day. You don’t count the number of trout you get to jump.

The reason that no one talks about those things is because they are pretty trivial. If you get a trout to eat, it is likely going to get hooked and if you get it hooked… well… odds are good that it is going to be landed.

Tarpon fishing is different. It is an accomplishment if you can get one of those massive, per-historic piscatorial wonders to eat. If you get it mostly right and you get a little lucky, you’ll get one to leap out of water in a cartwheeling, frenetic explosion.

Only when it all comes together, when you do what you need to do and you have luck on your side do you get to see the whole thing through to completion and hold that fish in your hands and look into it’s bottomless eye and feel the coarseness of its mouth and then see it swim away, maybe coming up to gulp some air before it continues on its migration.

That’s why people care about the fish you fed, the fish you jumped and the fish you landed. It is all hard and unlikely and intoxicating and so, so, so much fun.

That’s a very real smile.

Photo by Jim Klug

Fish Tails — 5 Comments
03
Jun 12

Important stuff

I’ve been trying to get the girl a fish for a while down here. Sadly, the fishing wilderness of the South Bay (SF South Bay) is not exactly furtile. Kind of sucks, actually. Still, I’ve been trying. I’ve thrown at carp with her and even goldfish, but it just hasn’t been happening.

My little lady

Finally, I got the girl a fish down here. Went to a reservoir that rented boats and we set out for a three hour tour. She liked the boat, which I got to row around. She did ask about every five minutes if we had caught anything yet and then why we hadn’t caught anything yet. Motivating.

Just a girl and her fish.

When it finally came, she loved it. I put it in a bucket and she got to see it and touch it and really see the fish. She wants to go back, which makes me happy.

Fish Tails — 3 Comments
29
May 12

Nervous Water

I love this quote…

“Nervous water.”

No that’s not some kind of urological disorder.

A story about success in Cherokee Sound in Abaco.

Nervous Water is always something amazing when you see it and there are a million things that look like nervous water… usually little bunches of turtle grass in the current. Always screws me up. When you are looking for fish, everything looks like fish… until nothing looks like fish.

Bonefish on the Brain Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).