Redtail
Spent the day in Point Reyes with the wife. Nice excursion. Nice not having to work. Drove the entire coastal perimeter of the
park from Inverness to McClure's and from McClure's all the way to South Beach. Lots of cool stuff. The redtail surfperch is the primary target for
surf casters here. This species hardly needs my recommendation but I’m going to
give it anyway.
Elephant Rock and Points South, McClure's Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore
Among
the rest of his clan, (Embiotocidae) the redtail surfperch is unquestionably
the emperor. He fights hard,
readily takes fly, grub or bait, and, they say, makes for some great sashimi—the
slab of meat between lateral line and dorsal fin evidently being the “entrecote.”
{Sadly,
the author has not yet sampled this redtail sashimi so can not offer his
opinion as to the gastronomic qualities of it. He has however cooked redtail surf perch in a variety of
ways and found it rather mooshy and flavorless--as is the case with the other surf perches. Anyone who wants to school the author on this is welcome to… as
always he remains open to cooking suggestions}
"... a beautiful fish" (Photograph taken in Mar. 2006 for the author's "Common Surf Perches of Ca.")
Did I
mention that this is a beautiful fish? Well it
is. What better way to express
that beauty than through the ancient Japanese art of Haiku:
Haiku # 194
Shimmering redtail,
Against the dark sand
gleaming.
Let's make perch sushi!
Real Fishermen
Where
was I? Right. Saturday…. Even with an almost non
existent shore break, a reasonably late high tide (around 10am) glassy surf,
and—get this—no
wind, we didn't see a single redtail surfperch angler out there. Strange. I was hoping to run
into (the great) Mark Won. But
unfortunately, he wasn’t there.
I
need to speak about this dude for a second. Let’s just say this:
Mark is a fisherman—you people feel me here? In addition to being a devoted fan of the surfperch clan and
an all around upstanding guy, Mark’s website is… well… for lack of a better
term, ridiculous. I mean in a positive (if slightly
obsessive) kind of way. What other
fisherman provides a website devoted to his own catch statistics, complete with
pie charts, personal stock assessments and graphs?
Don’t
believe me? Check it out
yourself: http://surf-perch.net
After
writing this I went back and perused surf-perch.net for the first time in a
year. If anyone needs proof of the
sublime beauty of the redtail surf perch—its silver/golden hue, it’s crimson
fins, it’s shimmering rosy luster, gaze upon some of these pictures--and read
Mark’s eloquent prose. Then, when you’re done with that, go ahead and look at his fishing
journal for July 14th 2008 (Bastille day, no?) —towards the bottom or the page.
Won, with a dream fish--five minutes later this man was back to the redtails
The beauty of this particular log entry is that after describing what simply has to have been one of the greatest battles ever fought between man and fish on a beach in Northern California, Mark concludes with this sentence:
"It may have seemed anti-climatic after wrestling with the white seabass in the surf, but I couldn't pass-up the frenzied surfperch bite that was still in progress."
It’s
strange isn’t it how one can become addicted to the pursuit of a certain
species at the exclusion or near exclusion of all others. This happened to me for a while with
monkeyface eels (hence: The Monkeyface News) and more recently with the
osmerid (true smelt) clan—those sparkling golden slivers of pure joy. Everyone on the beach is catching 20
pound striped bass and all I can think of is getting my net on the surf smelt. There was a point at the height of my
monkeyface eel obsession when I was actually considering a monkeyface eel
tattoo—thank God, the moment passed and I do not now have the head of a
monkeyface eel creeping up out of my shirt collar, that’s all I can say. In my case the obsession with a
particular species always has a gastronomic component. I become obsessed with
capturing and eating a certain species. Mark, on the other hand, is an aesthete of a
higher order—he is primarily, a catch and release man. After landing the fish of a lifetime
(his aptly titled “Moby Dick”) what did he do with it? Here, I’ll let him tell you:
"As I flushed water through its gills, I felt the seabass'
strength gradually return. The fish repeatedly thrust its tail before it
finally gave a sudden kick & slipped from my grasp. I watched the croaker
swim off into the waves until it eventually disappeared."
Bravo.
You’re a better man than I am, Mark Won!
Monkeyface News Digression # 12:
Rats and Badgers
As
indicated earlier, although conditions were perfect, few people were out there
fishing the Point Reyes beaches this past weekend. However, despite the lack of fishermen there was one notable
occurrence: We saw a badger. It's not everyday one sees a badger... or every decade… or every lifetime for that matter. Fierce little bugger—gnawing on the carcass of a roadkill deer. Left
my camera at home or you’d be looking at pictures of it right now.
It has
always struck me as a bit odd that the dog traditionally bred to hunt, chase and excavate
these fierce overgrown weasels from their holes was the dachsund—the proverbial hot
dog. Who knew that these
misshapen, in-bred, lap dogs were such ferocious little bastards? I mean, what figurative cajones would
it take to descend face first into the burrow of an enraged badger?
Yeah, harmless. Except for one thing: he kills badgers.
In Mayhew’s epic tome: London Labour And The London Poor, first published in the mid 1800s, there is a substantial section on rat baiting—arguably the most popular gambling entertainment of 19th century London. From the 10 year-old street urchins who trapped the rats at the wharves, to the pub owners who built rat killing pits in the basements of their fine drinking establishments, to the dog owners who trained their rat-killing terriers, (Jack Russells it seems, were the most popular) to the gentlemen in stove pipe hats who laid the bets—a whole underground economy developed around this nefarious activity. As I understand it the pit was filled with a certain number of rats--usually between 10 and 100--and bets were placed on how long it would take for a given terrier or bulldog to kill them all. It was a grisly and horrifying spectacle to be sure. Despite residual bubonic plague associations and the fact that in general we humans feel fully justified in hating them, it's kind of hard not to feel for the rats. Although a few brave rat warriors would turn and attack their assailants, most would pathetically bury their noses in the corners of the pits, unable to face the horrible violence that awaited them. {See engraving below}.
I only mention this because badgers were occasionally used in place of dogs—to great effect. No surprise there. Whereas, a Jack Russel terrier has only had the benefit of several hundred years of human design and breeding, the badger has evolution on its side. Millions of years of natural selection have honed the badger into a high performance rodent-killing machine. A famous 19th century ratter by the name of Jack Black, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Black_(rat_catcher), put it this way:
“I trained a badger to kill
rats, and he was superior to any dog… I used to call her Polly. She killed in my own
pit, for I used to obleege my friends that wouldn‘t believe it possible with
the sight. She won several matches-the largest was a hundred {rats} in a match.”
Anyway, there’s more of this stuff in The
Monkeyface News #3 print edition for any of you warped fishermen who may be interested.
First Rain
Well, the storm they’ve been talking about for a
week just hit. The Bay has no
doubt turned a soy latte brown and somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean a few
herring are getting a wild, desperate look in their eyes. Meanwhile, on the human side of things,
the commercial herring fishermen of yesteryear are sitting in dive bars across
Northern California drowning their tears in whiskey, wondering what the hell
happened to their fishery.
More on this tomorrow.
Herring is a subject I can talk (or write) about ad infinitum. Time to smoke some of this Emperor
Norton pipe tobacco I bought at Grants.
(http://grantspipeshop.com) and
go walk around in the rain. I
wonder where they are right now… the herring, and those big, hulking, dinosaur,
bottom dwellers of the acipenser clan who tend to follow them.
Postscript:
Camilladilla wants me to post this picture of the
rockfish/littleneck/coonstriped shrimp cioppino she whipped up tonight, so here
it is. Mmmmm that was some good stuff! Perhaps a few recipes are
in order for tomorrow, we’ll see.
From
Monkeyface News H.Q. High above
the city of San Francisco, goodnight.
Kirk-out (Oct.2009, 22:22)
Kirk,
Please keep up the interesting commentary. You have a wide deep audience - you are NOT alone!
Juan de Oaxaca
Posted by: Juan Levings | 12/08/2009 at 07:26 AM