DATELINE: MAY 5, 2024 – ALAMO, CALIFORNIA

Hi everyone. Just a quick reminder to all of you who fished with Dom Porcelli or were inspired by him.

Dom in South Africa last year.

I am putting together a tribute photo album for Dom’s family, and the idea is for us all to get a good fish picture while wearing one of Dom’s signature Ferguson hats, along with any short backstory you would like to add. The hats are easily available on eBay – some examples are shown below.

 

Classic examples – they come in styles to suit all fashion tastes.

There are a lot of hats that say “Ferguson” on them – the key to getting the right one is the “WW” (Waterworks) emblem somewhere near the “Ferguson” logo.

That’s what you’re looking for. This is the extent of my photo editing abilities.

I’m not exactly the social media type, and I’m sure there are lots of folks who fished with Dom who don’t read my blog, so I would appreciate any help any of you can offer by putting this on your Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok pages. Cousin Chuck, please do not put this on your OnlyFans page. This is supposed to be a family show.

Folks who want to submit a photo can either contact me through a blog comment, email me at S_Wozniak10@Yahoo.com, or call me at 408-219-7438. Looking for roughly 3-4MB file size if possible, and I’d love to get most of the files, and any related notes, by mid-August. I really appreciate everyone’s help on this – I can’t imagine the pain Tracy and the family are going through, and I’m hoping this will be a great reminder of what an amazing impact Dom had on so many people’s lives.

Thanks much,

Steve

DATELINE: MARCH 20, 2023 – PUERTO PENASCO, MEXICO

We’ve hopefully all had jobs we loved. My best was Macromedia, a startup I joined in 1992. The company had around 100 employees at the time; there were long hours but great teamwork, and the sense of belonging and building a success story from the ground up allowed us to go public in 1993 and keep expanding.

A random Macromedia party, Hawaii circa 1998. From L-R, that’s Sherry Flanders-Page, me, Linda Grant, Brian Dudley, and Debbie Kersey. Linda was the operations dynamo that made the place go, and Debbie kept Sherry’s life in order so that business trips to Sydney, Australia didn’t end up in Sydney, Nebraska. Sherry and Brian were both my boss for long stretches, and both of them suffered accordingly, but of the perhaps five people who taught me what I needed to be successful despite my unfortunate personality, they are two of them. (The other three being Len Vernon, also from Macromedia, Al Jacoby, who hired me at BancOhio, and Jim Tolonen, who is a good enough fisherman to be mentioned in this blog now and then.)

I was able to grow my career from a credit manager to a compliance VP, until we were unfortunately gobbled up by Adobe in 2006. I never liked Adobe.

My job for the past 16 years had been at a gigantic German company, and while I loved my staff dearly, I found myself increasingly at odds with senior management. I know many of you can imagine me being at odds with almost anyone, but the politics had gotten tiresome. I was as late in my 50s as I was going to get, and had certainly started running the retirement numbers.

Sometimes, opportunities land right in your lap. I had just gotten home from Africa – and I’m talking just walking in the door, smelling like a yak. Marta was in that honeymoon phase where she could at least pretend to be glad I was home while desperately searching for a way to avoid fish pictures.

I signed into my work email, and it was a dumpster fire of management talking about “re-organization” and “cost optimization,” which are code words for “someone’s going to get let go.” So basically, the very first thing I had to face back at the office was laying off employees. Good people who had done great work who have families and mortgages and responsibilities. It’s one of the worst things about being an executive. There was a decent buyout, but the economy was rough and most of the people would have a hard time finding an equivalent job.

Then I got thinking. I was eligible for the same buyout. I didn’t have long to think about it, but I’m good at math and good at following my heart, and my heart wasn’t there any more. I couldn’t believe I heard myself saying the words, but long story short, just like that, I went from grudgingly employed to AARP. Holy #@%$.

I will never forget the look on Marta’s face when I went downstairs and told her I was intentionally unemployed. She just said “You really didn’t like the place, it’s a great package, and don’t even think you’re hanging around the house all day.” I do not deserve a partner as good as her.

That was Valentine’s Day, a Tuesday. I suddenly didn’t have to worry about weekly reports, employee reviews, crazed salespeople, or some guy with a sinister accent calling me in the middle of the night for some meaningless report by 5am. I would miss my direct staff – they were all superstars – but I wouldn’t miss the job.

I spent most of the day calling friends and relatives with the news. When I got to Chris Moore, he shocked me out of my stupor and talked some sense into me. He mentioned that they were going to San Diego that Friday and fishing Mexican waters for rockfish. I started to tell him that Friday was staff meeting day, and then it hit me – no it wasn’t. Friday was now a weekend. Every day was a weekend. I booked a ticket and started the next phase of my life.

Just a few hours later, Marta and I enjoyed an intimate Valentine’s dinner, possibly at Taco Bell.

I am indeed a hopeless romantic.

Somewhere between the enchirito and the burrito supreme, Marta suggested that I might actually not be done working, and that perhaps I should consider taking a break and seeing what was out there while I was still employable. I did not take well to this concept. There was fishing to plan, and even though it was winter, I was going to find stuff to catch.

The San Diego thing is an interesting excursion. California rockfish is closed in the winter, but Mexico is not, so San Diego boats set up trips to the Coronados to fish deeper water for rockfish. They catch a lot of Mexican Rockfish – there’s a species called that, Sebastes macdonaldi, just so we’re not confused because actually any rockfish I caught down there would technically be from Mexico. The Moores had caught the heck out of them on previous trips, and I was looking forward to my first new species as an unemployed person. We would also be joined by 1000Fish friend Luke Ovgard.

The water was nicely calm, and we passed the long ride eating breakfast burritos and looking up the world record on Mexican rockfish.

The Coronados come in to view.

Fishing started well – I knocked off a few solid reds, and added a couple of chilipeppers.

Let’s unpack this photo a little – Mr. Ovgard tried to sneak behind me and give the photobomb bunny ears, but instead ended up being caught by surprise with that look on his face. Bad timing? Demerol? We’ll let you decide.

But there were no Mexican rockfish. We tried a bunch of spots, and while we caught plenty of fish, there was not a single Mexican rockfish caught on the boat that day. I was stunned.

On the way home, we were looking at each other’s photos when The Mucus, of all people, noticed my picture of what I thought was a small chilipepper. Checking the book, it didn’t look quite right, and as I dug further and examined all the photos carefully, it turned out to be quite a rarity – a shortbelly.

So I had a species. And oddly enough, I owe the ID to The Mucus because he accidentally put my camera on burst mode and got 73 pictures of the fish, several of which showed the position of the anus, which is the main identifying factor for this species. So yay.

We also got some other interesting fish, like this greenstripe, but nothing beats that look on Chris’ face. It’s not as hateful as the Penasco pompano photo, but it’s close. 

That afternoon, we searched the harbor for the elusive reef finspot, but it remained elusive.

We thought we saw one, which resulted in this spectacular photo of my pants about to fail.

We spent the evening eating pizza and chasing California morays for the Moores. I am pleased to report they were both successful, but not successful enough to break my record.

The Mucus with his moray. Chris also got his, so it was a productive if chilly evening.

We decided to go on the boat again the next day, because there was no way that we could miss Mexican rockfish IN MEXICO two days in a row. The weather stayed great, but the fishing, not so much. I got a few nice chilipeppers, and some guy in the back of the boat got one Mexican rockfish, but it was fairly thin pickings.

A decent chilipepper.

I did manage to scrape up a new species in the morning – the greenblotched. This a very emotional one for me – I lost a potential world record in October of 2022 because large greenblotched and greenspotted rockfish are very difficult to tell apart.

This more modest example was at least easy to ID.

September 2022 – we’ll never know what this one was for sure without a full DNA sequence. Heartbreaking.

But this digression actually has a happy conclusion. Later in 2023, Ben Cantrell and his fiancee Ally came out to visit. They’ve moved from Florida to Illinois, and I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like – this is a guy who has helped me with tons of fish and been a great friend over the years. On September 3, I took them rock cod fishing on the Queen of Hearts with Captain Wally Klughers, and lo and behold, Ally nailed a big greenspot. We could prove that this one was indeed a greenspot, and Ally had herself an IGFA world record.

2.25 pounds of steaming world record, complete with Ben photobomb.

Of course they got the beautiful day that Chris Moore never gets.

So, back to San Diego in February. Well into the afternoon, during an especially slow stretch, I got a big bite and hooked up something large. Whatever it was had to be at least five pounds, and from 500 feet down, that’s a lot of lifting. I was hopeful I had a record Mexican rockfish. I got it to the surface, and to my combined delight and dismay, it was a cowcod, a rare and protected species I had seen only a few times in my life.

The crew did a great job netting and getting it descended so it would survive the ordeal. 

The gang on the way home. It’s tough to get four people to take a bad photo at the same time, but we managed.

So I was up three species, taking me to 2167 lifetime. I headed home and continued planning trips for the rest of the year, but managed to burn through February with local fishing, bad weather, and the endless paperwork that comes with leaving a job. It’s like getting divorced, except that I got paid.

I did get to spend more time watching Marta’s band, The Hyperdrive Kittens.

Yes, she plays in a band. She’s so much cooler than I am.

Except when she does facials at home without warning me. At least I presume this was a facial. Maybe she was cleaning the oven. Maybe she tried to change her own oil. I’m going to stick with facial.

My next major effort would also be to Mexico, again with the Moores – a return to Puerto Penasco. The trip was not based on blind hope – The Mucus had carefully researched where we could get at least two clingfish species. The kid is actually darn smart – he just hides it well. That and the hope of a Cortez stingray made the idea more than worthwhile.

We have the Penasco trip down to a science. Leave early to avoid border lines, drive the ridiculous 12mph speed limit in Sonoyta, come home early to avoid border lines. Stock up on Frito-Lay products and Red Bull, and put The Mucus in the back seat with a juice box and a bucket. We got down there late morning and checked into our hotel.

The Playa Bonita Resort. Nice place, except that we are only there about six hours a night and have never been to the pool.

We slapped gear together and headed for Bad Band Beach. We call it that because there is a bar there that always has a band, and, at the risk of sounding unkind, they are awful. The tidepools on this beach are some of the most fertile I have ever seen, but we always wander half a mile or so to get away from the botched Journey covers. 

While these tidepools have been very kind to me over the years, I have only ever seen one clingfish there. Still, we dutifully flipped rocks, because The Mucus swore that this was the time of year to see them. The tide was coming up and we were discussing an early dinner when another beachgoer asked us what we were looking for. (That happens a lot when you’re carrying a rig with a #32 hook and fishing in pools the size of a bucket.)

The beachgoer, Ernest from Indiana, who spotted my clingfish.

I explained what a clingfish was. He asked me if they look like tadpoles. I responded that they do – indeed, the one we were looking for is called a tadpole clingfish. He told me that he just saw one about 15 feet away. We went over to his spot, and bingo, there was a clingfish head sticking out from under a rock. It took some doing, but it eventually bit and I was up a species. The trip was worth it, and dinner at Capone’s was just that much better.

The tadpole clingfish gets its closeup. This was not an especially pretty one, but stay tuned.

Me, the beast, and the fish.

This is what they look like from underneath. Darn cool.

We spent the next morning fishing with El Jefe, one of the better local guides. The water was wonderfully flat, but we have fished these inshore areas heavily. A new species would just be blind luck, but I was strong with blind luck that morning and pulled up a creature known as a Shining Grunt. I knew it was a grunt, and I knew I hadn’t caught one before, but The Mucus actually recognized it and named the genus and species right away.

Usually, when I say a teenager spends way too much time on the internet, I mean something completely different.

Needless to say, Chris did not get a barred pargo.

To put this in perspective, my buddy David’s six year-old daughter Giovina caught one on her first try.

In case we needed to make the point any more clearly, Marta got her barred Pargo on the first try.

And, well, you know.

The evening would be spent hunting under rocks at Pelican Point. This area is supposed to be loaded with clingfish, but I had never seen one there in two tries. But this was a negative tide, exposing a lot more tidepools, so we approached the situation with optimism.

Chris and The Mucus hunt the tidepools.

It was a very slow optimism, because the rocks were insanely slippery and I didn’t want to die. I kept three or more points of contact at all times, so it took quite a while to get where I wanted, especially because this was all done after dark with only a headlamp to guide me. I got dozens of gobies, and I got a couple more tadpole clingfish, much prettier than the one from yesterday.

Tadpole clingfish photo upgrade #1.

Photo upgrade #2.

Chris and The Mucus fished a few hundred yards away from me. From texts back and forth, I knew the guys had caught some kind of new clingfish that wasn’t a tadpole, but it was getting late and I was getting hungry, so I suggested heading for dinner at Capone’s. I checked one more tidepool – the last reasonable looking one before the rocks got dry, and began searching the crevices and ledges. I was about to give up when my eyes, dulled by the paradigm of looking deep into holes for these fish, suddenly focused on one laying out in the open. Whatever it was, it was gorgeous – stripes of several colors running along its tiny body. I assumed one of the required “tidepool twister” positions, and after a moment, it bit.

It was a Sonora clingfish, something of a rarity, and I was thrilled.

Alternate view.

When we compared notes, whatever Chris and The Mucus caught wasn’t this, but it wasn’t something I had ever caught. Knowing we had another night to fish, we were content to go get burgers.

In the morning, we headed for the lagoon. Chris’ friend Eric, an area regular, took us down there in his dune buggy and we spent the morning trying to dredge up whatever would bite.

This is why you use a dune buggy. It’s a year later as I write this, and the guy may still be digging out.

I caught several stingrays, but alas, none of them were the Cortez variety – all Haller’s. I did get one big croaker – a solid fight on light tackle. There are several closely related species in the area, but after some dedicated ID work, this one was pinned down to Winterseen’s croaker (a.k.a. Cortez croaker,) and so became a world record.

World record number 227 – my first as a retired person. I had caught the species on a previous Baja trip with Martini and Spellman.

Interestingly to almost no one else on the planet, my research on the Sea of Cortez croakers led me to a stunning discovery. (Again, stunning to me and almost no one else on the planet.) A croaker I had caught in November of 2014, which I had long thought was a Bussing’s croaker, turned out to be a Gulf croaker, so that’s one more for the good guys.

Thank you to John Snow for his tireless research on the fish of Mexico.

We fished a rock levy that afternoon – I caught plenty of rays, but alas, not the right one.

This one even had yellow on it, but it’s still a Haller’s. Crap.

As it got late in the day, we headed back over to Pelican for a last shot at the clingfish.

Sunset over Pelican Point.

I was hopeful to get the one Chris and the Mucus had caught last night, they were hopeful to get the Sonora. The mystery clingfish, which The Mucus correctly ID’d as the rather rare Northern Fraildisk Clingfish, was easy for me. I went to the pools they where they had caught them the day before, and got three right away.

The northern fraildisk clingfish. Though they are uncommon overall, that particular area was jammed with them.

Alternate view.

Chris and The Mucus were not so fortunate – it seems that I may have gotten the only Sonora clingfish in the area. Seeing the look on Brayden’s face, I can’t say I wasn’t faintly pleased by this.

So four new species on this trip, plus the old one that I had finally identified, plus the two from San Diego, took me to seven post-retirement fish and 2171 lifetime. With trips to Arkansas, Georgia, and Florida coming up, even if Marta couldn’t get used to this, I knew I could.

Steve

The actual retirement party, purposely held on April 20, birthday of a famous German. These are some of our local inner sanctum, from left to right, Michael, Ziad, Danielle, Scott, Me, Marta, and Megan. All the guests in this picture have kids I have taken fishing.

 

 

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 10, 2023 – DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA

We had three days of fishing left together – Dom would sneak in one extra without me, because he was willing to take a much tighter flight connection than I would risk. Dom had somewhere around 70 new species for the trip, which delighted him, and I was sitting at 32, which delighted me. And of course, I could text people and tell them about my fish, but Dom, without his phone, was stuck in medieval times.

February 8 was another “half and half” day – we fished the morning on the boat, where I was very pleased to finally get an old adversary – the catface grouper. (Guides caught these right in front of me in Tanzania and Zanzibar.)

Oh hell yes.                          

Dom knocked off some solid gamefish, including a huge green jobfish, before, say it with me, he got slammed by a giant grouper and broken off in the rocks.

Dom’s jobfish. The biggest one I’ve ever seen.

The grouper. One of the biggest Dom has never seen. It’s not like I didn’t share his angst – that’s my rod he’s using, and he’s going full thumb.

My personal best on the jobfish. These things are voracious predators.

And a very lost malabar blood snapper.

Lizardfish were everywhere, but these are another ID nightmare.

Oh, and I may have gotten broken off once.

We then landed, got the boat on the trailer, and headed for some famous tidepools – Mission Rocks. There was substantial wildlife on the way.

More zebras.

A wildebeest, which I am certain was eaten by something later that day. Everything eats wildebeest. They’re like the anchovy of the savannah.

I even got a photo of a hyena skulking off into the brush. We also saw a rhinoceros, but he was too far away to photograph effectively.

When we got to the coast, I was stunned. Even a year later, it is difficult to describe this place without drooling on the keyboard. Hundreds of yards of rocks and coral, absolutely crammed with pools and gullies of every size and description, very walkable, except by Dom who slipped and fell once because he wasn’t wearing his white shoes. We would only have a couple of hours because of a rising tide, but it was so perfect I hardly knew where to begin. It was like dropping a six year-old in Disneyland with $9000 in cash and asking them to make a plan in two minutes.

There were some obvious targets – well-marked damselfish that dashed around some of the smaller pools. I pulled out the micro gear and made short work of two of them – the singlebar devil and the dusky damselfish.

The singlebar devil. Not to be mixed up with the single’s bar devil, who was my old buddy Shaun in Columbus.

The dusky damsel. They looked blue underwater.

Dom ran up a huge score working up and down the small pools, but my tendency toward target fixation occupied the rest of my time on the rocks and likely cost me a few species. As I was looking at a blenny hiding under a ledge, a small moray came out and sniffed my bait. It was a snowflake moray. The same snowflake moray that is found in Hawaii, that Jamie has caught and I haven’t. I wasn’t going anywhere, except to get heavier gear.

I left my rod laying across the crevice to mark it and ran back to get my tackle. The return trip was an adventure, because my Loomis escape rod blended perfectly into the rock color and it took me half an hour to find it. The moray was still there, and I dropped a piece of shrimp to it on a #6 hook and a 20 pound leader. Even though it was relatively small, the eel easily rocked me up and bent the hook out. I was heartbroken. But moments later, it reappeared. I went with a heavier hook and line, but the fish was much more cautious. The tide was coming up, but I was convinced I could get the fish.

Mark, acting concerned but more likely bewildered, walked up to check on me. He assessed the situation and said “You need a piece of sardine.” He trotted back, got his bait bucket, and cut me some slices of baitfish, and he did this all with a straight face, even after seeing the eel was about 10 inches long. I baited the hook and the eel came completely out of its hole to eat it. I set hard and flipped the entire beast into the bucket, then threw my body over it so that the eel would have to chew its way through my body cavity to escape. I was that serious.

Take that, Jamie!

After the fish calmed down, but well before I did, we took photos and I bellowed in primal triumph. I immediately texted the photo to Wade and Jamie, who both responded and reminded me that Jamie had the world record on this species. But even that could not ruin my day. We got off the rocks just as they were disappearing. I had 19 new fish so far on this part of the trip, and Dom easily had double that, including that striped galjoen, the redfinger, and now some scorpionfish I’d never seen in my life.

Still, I had the red steenbras.

February 9 would be our last day with Mark, and our second-to-last day fishing together in South Africa. We launched from a proper boat ramp right in Richard’s Bay, and spent a pleasant morning and afternoon hunting the bay. The wind had picked up, so we weren’t going outside, but there was plenty to do. 

We wasted at least an hour on the dock looking at the assorted tropicals roaming around in the pilings.

Unfortunately, most of them turned out to be raccoon butterflyfish – the same ones that live in Hawaii.

Once we got out on the boat, I got dozens of grunters and other assorted tropical bay denizens that I had caught previously, but there were three new species to report. And this is despite me insisting on spending hours trying to catch a butterfly ray, a low-odds proposition that time of year. But I did land the following beasts – 

The slender blaasop – a type of puffer.

The strongspine silverbiddy, which is a mojarra.

And a threadfin silverbelly, which is also a mojarra.

On our way to Durban, we stopped by Mark’s home. He too has a lovely wife and children, and we couldn’t thank him enough for six great days on the water.

Dom, Mark, and Steve. Note that Dom is still smiling even though he had been phoneless for five days.

As with Zander, we have kept in touch with Mark over the year since our trip, and he can always be counted on to send something hysterically funny when I’m the middle of a meeting.

For example …

We got to Durban around dinner time, and checked into a Hilton, the first western-style hotel we had seen in a week. We raced to get dinner and set up for the next day – we would be fishing Durban with highly recommended Captain TK from Mitchell’s Just Fishing Charters. Durban is far enough back to the southwest where we knew we had a good chance at a bunch of new stuff, but it also looked like it was going to be windy.

Morning came quickly, and we took a taxi over to the wharf. TK and deckhand Calim were waiting for us – friendly, knowledgeable, and eager to go. The boat was a comfortable cruiser, and while we were worried about the substantial breeze, TK explained that there were plenty of sheltered spots to hit, even some outside the bay.

We get under way as Calim prepares the rods.

We fished inside the harbor for a couple of hours, catching quite a variety of local estuary creatures. Dom cleaned up, and I got a couple of new ones – 

The Malabar trevally. I now have the “Malabar hat trick”- the Malabar Trevally, The Malabar Grouper, and the Malabar Blood Snapper. (Tied with “Sarcastic Fringehead” for coolest fish name ever.)

The common ponyfish. These are an ID nightmare.

We went outside for a while, anchoring carefully in the lee of the channel jetty. With cut baits, we had plenty of action – seabreams, grunters, and some small groupers, but TK was not satisfied. Begging our pardon, he said we were going to go back into the harbor to pick up some more bait. So we lost half an hour, but we gained a big bucket of ghost shrimp. This was a great move. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, wanted to eat these.

For the next four hours, I don’t think 30 seconds passed when we weren’t landing a fish. Dom and I both worked small rigs right under the boat, and caught all kinds of fish old and new. My first add was a smallscale sandperch.

Many thanks to Dr. Jeff Johnson for the ID on this one.

I also got a familiar but cool fish – a bar-tailed flathead, which I had caught previously in Qatar.

I’ve always been fascinated by this family of fish.

While we dodged occasional rain and amused ourselves with the smaller fish, TK and crew put out some big baits for sharks, rays, or whatever would bite. Dom and I both got greyspot guitarfish this way – our biggest fish of the day.

These things always fight well.

Continuing the shrimp rigs, I got another puffer species – the smooth blaasop.

This was the fifth newbie of the day and the 27th in this part of Africa.

The big bait went down again, and I set into the heavy, sullen fight of a moray. We swung it on board, and for the life of me, it looked like a yellowmargin. But digital photography is free, and we took pictures. Months later, the eel was identified (again by Dr. Jeff Johnson,) as an Elaine’s Moray, a fairly recent split, but from the undulate rather than the yellowmargin.

And it would have been a world record if I was paying attention.

Do not put this in your pants.

We were well over time when Dom caught an interesting damselfish under the boat. TK patiently waited it out until I finally got one as well. It turned out to be a bluespotted chromis.

A new species and the final fish of a life-altering two-week adventure.

The 29 species I had gotten in the tropics, added to the 17 I had caught in the Cape, came to a staggering 46 new species for me, taking me to 2164 lifetime. Dom tacked on nearly, but not quite, 100 species to his impressive total, and did most of it without a phone.

Calim, Dom, TK, and Steve. That’s my happy face.

We said our goodbyes to TK and Calim, had dinner and a beer, and headed off to our respective rooms. I had to clean everything and pack, but Dom was going to dare one more morning of fishing and cut his flights a little closer. He was off in the morning before I got up, and I headed to Durban airport, then off to Johannesburg, then a long layover there, and finally, after two weeks and more fish than I ever could have dreamed of adding, I was on my way home. 

This was a team effort, and I can’t thank Zander, Mark, TK, or any of the deckhands or launch crews enough. I can’t thank Dom enough for inviting me, and I especially can’t thank the red steenbras for choosing the rod nearest me, because, I figured at the time, that alone would guarantee that Dom and I would be back someday.

In hindsight, it is a sobering thought that on that day, February 11, 2023, that day that Dom snuck in an extra day of fishing, and got a few extra species to take his South Africa total to 99, that he had exactly one year to live. I wonder now that if he knew this, if he would have lived his life any differently. I don’t think he would have, and I have to admire that.

Steve

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 7, 2023 – ST. LUCIA, SOUTH AFRICA

It was pleasing to think that we were not even half done with our South Africa trip, and that we were just entering the tropics, where we could expect even more variety. The Cape province had been especially kind to us, but now we were now entering what I expected to be a reef fish free-for-all.

Travel was easy. A car service dropped us back at Capetown, and we made an easy connection through the vast Johannesburg airport.

In the car to Capetown, Dom actually slept. This may be the only time I’ve seen him sleep.

In Johannesburg, I realized we were only a short drive from the grave of “Breaker” Morant, one of my favorite characters in Australian history, and the subject of one of the greatest movies ever made.

Yes, that’s Edward Woodward, “The Avenger.” He also played a terrifyingly righteous Ghost of Christmas Present in George C. Scott’s “Scrooge.”

An hour later, we landed in Durban. There was a car waiting to pick us up and take us to a lovely hotel, where we slept until Red Bull call on the 4th.

Our guide, Mark de la Hey, was waiting for us in the lobby. A pleasant, knowledgeable guy, Mark was very interested in our species hunt and how he could add to it. We had a lot of driving to do before we could get a line in the water, most of it through game preserves. We got to see most of the cast of The Lion King, some of it uncomfortably close.

There were zebras everywhere, wildebeest on every road, and cape buffalo everywhere you didn’t want them.

Cape Buffalo are terrifying.

And that really African-looking tree that always seems to have lions nearby.

From a respectful distance, we saw lions, giraffes, and elephants. Dom and I would have skipped all this stuff to get fishing more quickly, but that was the route to our first stop. The place names in this area are only slightly less confusing than Hawaii, so for simplicity’s sake, we would be fishing generally around Richard’s Bay.

By late afternoon, we had set up in our lodge, and were racing down to the beach. The place looked glorious if crowded, but we could still get a line wet. We tried set baits out on the surf, but that didn’t seem to attract much attention, so we scaled down and fished the lagoon.

It was a gorgeous place, until we found out how dangerous it was.

By dark, I had added three new species – the wandering seabream, the slender glassy, and the grooved mullet.

The seabream is a close relative of species I’ve caught in Australia, Taiwan, and Qatar. Thanks to Dr. Jeff Johnson for the ID.

The glassy.

And the grooved mullet, proof again that many mullet species will eventually eat shrimp.

It was only on exiting the lagoon to the main road that we discovered the place was supposed to be full of crocodiles and hippos.

No wonder we had the place to ourselves.

People were concerned about the crocodiles, but downright terrified of the hippos – these otherwise cute beasts are responsible for more human deaths in Africa than all other mammals combined. They are bigger than you would imagine, faster than you would think, and grouchier than Marta when I wake her up at 2am to discuss a rec league hockey game.

Not wanting to face off with a hippo in the dark, we decided to head back to the lodge and figure out dinner. It was then, just when all seemed right with the world, we discovered that Dom’s phone was missing. Whether someone took it off his bag on the beach or it just fell out, it was gone.

Dom’s phone may still be somewhere on this beach.

Until you are in Africa and have no cell phone, you have no idea of how reliant we are on these devices. All of Dom’s travel arrangements, hotels, schedule, payment details, contact information, and photos of the striped galjoen – were all gone, and we had a week to go. I am glad it was him rather than me only because I would have had a complete meltdown and been unable to function. Dom actually handled it all very well, using a combination of good attitude, my phone, and occasional hotel internet to work everything out. The guy was truly Zen when he needed to be.

The morning came quickly, and once I made sure there were no leopards on my porch, I joined the guys to head down to the water.

The group prepares to do battle.

Mark can be reached via the number above or Facebook. He was awesome.

I also got a gut-wrenching answer to a question I had been asking myself – where is the harbor? Well, there wasn’t one. We were doing what is called a “surf launch,” in which the boat is shoved into the shallows via tractor and left to fend for itself.

Preparing for the process. Even Dom looks concerned.

The boat before us being pushed out into the wash.

This was safe enough inside a reef, but the fishing was outside the reef, which meant driving at great speed along wavelines until we could find a relatively safe place to jump out into the open water.

For video of our first launch, click here. The really exciting stuff happens after 2:00. A few screen grabs – 

That’s us, catching air. This would have been the exact moment I discovered religion.

The moment after we caught air. Note we are not visible. If you figure I’m six feet tall and that the rods are seven feet above my head, that means we fell at least 13 feet.

While they do this safely every day, I was terrified. (Go on Youtube and search “surf launch fails” sometime.)

Soon enough, we were out in safe water – there was a fairly large swell but they were spaced out nicely, so I stopped screaming by the time we approached the fishing grounds. We pulled out sabikis to catch live bait, which is always good fun, and in this process, I added two new species – the shortfin scad and the yellowfin goatfish.

The scad.

The goat. I already had five species and we hadn’t used anything but sabikis.

We then moved onto the structure and started casting baits and lures. I already had a lot of the main predators that live here, so I was disciplined and stayed with smaller rigs, but Dom was having a blast getting red bass and all the other stuff that crowds tropical reefs from here to Tahiti.

Dom and a nice Red Bass. Do NOT eat these – they seem to attract ciguatera like no other species.

His first GT. As good of a day as it was for me, it was epic for Dom – it was his first crack at a lot of these gamefish.

And a coronation trout. It’s not a trout, it’s a grouper, but Australians messed up common names for everything, and South Africa seemed to follow. I remember the sheer joy of catching all these, and it was a delight to relive it all watching Dom.

He also tried dropping a big live bait and was promptly slammed and broken off by a big grouper. This would become a theme.

One of the better photos of Dom losing a grouper. There were many to choose from.

I caught dozens of snappers, groupers, and emperors, mostly repeat customers, but the action was non-stop. One of the first fish I pulled up was a familiar face – the bridled triggerfish, which I have caught in eight countries. This one looked solid, so I weighed it, and to my conflicted joy, I had broken my own record, caught in Kenya in 2018.

That was four for the trip.

Here and there, I would tack on a species. The first two new ones were emperors, to my great surprise – I thought I had gotten almost all of them.

First came the yellowfin emperor.

And then the Natal.

While I was doing this, Dom was racking up an impressive batch of catches and had also hooked and lost several more groupers. I figured it was only a matter of time until he got one the right size.

Somewhere in there, my tendency to get target-fixated cost us a couple of hours. Dom and I noticed that a chub-looking fish would occasionally come up behind the boat in small schools. No matter what we threw to them, they would show brief interest and then sink back into the depths. Mark told us “Yeah, they do that. We don’t really catch them.” I was not to be deterred. I tried increasingly smaller baits and finally went weightless – the fish came close but still wouldn’t hit. Mark suggested bread – we had a loaf of white bread in our provisions. He tossed in the crusts and the fish tore through them – we had our solution. But we still had to execute. Dom got one first, and then I managed to miss at least five good hits before I hooked up. It was a nervous couple of minutes, but we landed it, and I had my fifth species of the day – the knifeback seabream.

Locally called a “Christie,” this was one of the hardest fish to hook on the entire trip. It was also an open world record, so that was two for the day and five for the trip. (And species 2142.) Note that Dom’s was bigger.

Meanwhile, Dom had hooked a huge grouper and was in the process of getting rocked up. If grouper fishing was the Indy 500, Dom would be Mario Andretti. Except that Andretti finally won once.

There were also lots of other great reef fish I had gotten before. This one is a tomato cod.

Late in the day, we were starting to pack up, and Dom and I both were squeezing in a few last drops. As soon as I hit the bottom with a cut bait, I got absolutely slammed. I snapped up instinctively, which Martini would have reminded me was a bad idea with a circle hook, but I somehow still latched onto the fish. It shook hard from side to side and was tough to wrench off the bottom, but I finally got it out of the reef and headed toward the boat. Moments later, even Mark let out a small gasp of surprise.

It was a Scotsman seabream, a rarity that wasn’t even on our wish list – it was more in the “wildest dreams” category. I have no idea why it’s called that – this would be pretty far from Scotland and it doesn’t look like any Scottish people I’ve ever met. 

Dom had just mentioned hoping for one at dinner the night before, and here I was with likely the only one we would see on the trip. I felt bad. But not that bad. Dom had the striped galjoen and the redfinger.

Then Dom hooked another huge grouper and had his line unceremoniously snapped. It was time to go, but six species in a day doesn’t happen for me very often.

Although I had brought a bunch of REI freeze-dried food, the pizza at the lodge was excellent. 

By our third day, the seas had gotten a bit swellier, and Mark was concerned about launching. He told us we would probably survive, but that we would have several moments where we would question this. He was absolutely right. It took about ten minutes to find the right swell to jump, and we got fully airborne – at least the outboards roaring drowned out my screams. 

Once we got offshore, the swell was simply too big to fish effectively – although Dom managed to hook a big grouper and break it off. We decided to head in, and it was the same terror, but in reverse. And remember, because there is no ramp, the skipper simply powers the boat at top speed on to the sand. 

This was equally terrifying.

Look at the surf we had to get through.

Mark had a great “Plan B.” We headed to a set of tidepools down the coast a bit, and even though the water was slowly coming up, we had a couple of hours of great fun.

Steve and Dom prepare to hunt the tidepools.

We saw dozens of rockpool denizens, and I ended up adding four new species.

The first was a fiveband flagtail, a close relative of the Hawaiian flagtails that Jamie Hamamoto helped me catch.

I then caught the stonebream, a species Dom had gotten on our first day in Vleesbai. These come up into just a few inches of foamy water as the tide rises.

Now I just needed a striped galjoen and a redfinger.

The other two species were blennies that we hunted down in quiet pools above the wash.

The maned blenny.

And the horned rockskipper.

This took the count for this part of South Africa to 13 in just three days. Dom got everything I did, plus a nice peppered moray – a species that ranges all the way to Hawaii. (As featured in “The Eels of Justice” blog episode.) We saw three of them, crawling out of the water over the rocks to get to squid we had placed in the water to attract blennies.

It always pays to keep your eyes open.

The next day, February 7, we had some driving to do, so we spent the morning fishing some inshore reefs off the boat, mercifully with a less dramatic launch. We found some great structure, and hammered all kinds of beautiful reef fish – Dom scored a bunch of stuff that was already on my list, so his total was staying roughly twice mine.

A blue and yellow grouper – I’d gotten one in the Maldives in 2016.

I did add one new fish – the slinger seabream.

This one would also qualify as a world record – the 6th of the South Africa trip.

I almost forgot to mention that Dom hooked a big grouper, which promptly buried in the rocks and broke him off. He also had a big bronze whaler shark on for at least half an hour on a heavy mono rig. We figured the whole time it would eventually bite through it, but heartbreakingly, the hook just pulled. I felt awful – Dom isn’t The Mucus or Jamie, so I take no joy in him losing something I’ve already caught.

When we beached the boat, Dom and I worked the sandy flats for an hour or so. Dom continually caught largespotted dart, a pompano relative, but no matter how close I fished to him and how I rigged exactly the same as he did, they would not bite for me. So Dom just handed me his rod and let me cast it, and of course, I promptly caught one.

Fish psychology is often a mystery.

Looking down the beach. Mark mentioned that there are crocodiles, and that was it for the shore fishing.

So we had been at it four days, and I had tacked on three world records and 15 species, meaning that I had 32 species and six records for the trip so far. Dom had at least 70 new fish, including that striped galjoen, the redfinger, and then some damn scorpionfish I’ll probably never catch. We had three more days, working our way south into waters that would hold new groups of fish, and as we sat down to a magnificent steak that evening, we agreed things were pretty darn good. He called Tracy on my phone (kissy-face, kissy face,) and I checked in with Marta, who faintly admitted to missing me, mostly because she wanted a couch moved.

Steve

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 2, 2023 – STILLBAI, SOUTH AFRICA

We were up early on February 2. We had an hour drive to Stillbai, where we would meet Zander’s friend, Eckard Nel, and fish on his boat for the day. Drives with Zander were always great, because when we weren’t talking about fishing, we had his amazing iTunes playlist. I discovered such gems as the Bad Wolves cover of “Zombie” and Kaleo’s “Broken Bones,” but one song that really jumped out at me was “Impi” by Johnny Clegg.  

Initially, it just seemed like a catchy song, with some definite African roots, but when I researched it, I was amazed. Johnny Clegg, a white South African, was a noted musician and anti-apartheid activist who brought Zulu language, culture, and legend into his music. “Impi,” which can mean “war” or “army,” retells the battle of Isandlwana. In the late 19th century, colonial Britain, expanding into South Africa, came into conflict with the Zulu people. Imagine that. When diplomacy failed to settle the increasing demands of the British, they sent an invasion force, some 1800 strong, with modern firearms and artillery. On January 22, 1879, they were met by around 10,000 Zulu warriors, armed mainly with spears. Although Zulu casualties were horrific, they wiped out most of the British column and sent the few survivors scrambling south in defeat. While movies such as “Zulu” give mainly the British side, this rare victory of an indigenous culture over a colonial army is still celebrated in the region.

When we got finished debating the merits of Michael Caine’s performance in the film, we were already at Stillbai and looking out over the water. Conditions looked perfect, although it was hard to get me and Dom away from the dock, because it was loaded with interesting little tropical species.

The Stillbai boat ramp.

Abuzz on three Red Bulls, I pestered Eckard with a list of every fish I could think of, including the elusive pajama shark. He kept patiently answering “Yes, we get those from time to time.” I was cautiously optimistic. 

Eckard launching “The Muffin Man.” I never did ask why he named it that – he didn’t look like someone who sold muffins. He looked like someone who could bench press a car. And “Cape Crusader and the Muffin Man” sounds like a superhero duo that could revive the Marvel universe. We want at least a cameo by Deadpool.

We motored down the coast about five miles, and anchored in around 50 feet. We set up medium-sized rigs with cut baits and freespooled to the bottom. Eckard and Zander had told us to expect seabreams, small sharks, and other assorted reef fish, but they had undersold the whole thing substantially. 

From that very first drop, all hell broke loose. My first fish was an absolute wonder that I had only seen in books and did not expect to catch here. It was a red stumpnose, a glorious red and white creature that made the whole day worthwhile already. But there was much more to come, and quickly.

Perhaps my favorite fish picture since the swallowtail anthias.

I will be the first to admit Dom’s was bigger. But an hour later, I would strike back.

My second catch was a spiny dogfish species that I had gotten in 2006, but my third bite, on a bass-size casting rig, pulled down hard and gave a determined, bottom-hugging fight. Zander and Eckard smiled at each other, because they knew it was a good-sized pajama shark. It surfaced, and while I like to remember that I was calm and collected, let’s face it – I (practically?) wet myself.

Neither guide had ever seen an adult so excited about a small shark.

They dutifully brought it on board without laughing at me out loud, and a preliminary weighing told me it was more than big enough to be a world record. I bellowed in triumph – and my pants would dry eventually.

They have deceptively sharp teeth. Do NOT put this in your pants.

Nicely curled up in the bottom of the boat, waiting for a bare foot to get too close.

Next up was the Koester, a grouper-like creature that often appears in great numbers.

I was thrilled with the first one. But I caught 12 of them.

I went through a few assorted breams I had caught in 2006, then hooked up something that took off and pulled out quite a bit of line. I stayed with it, and as it surfaced, I was pretty sure it was a starry smoouthhound, the same kind I had caught with Roger Barnes in Southern England.

But it wasn’t – it was a whitespotted dogfish, and a new species. (I found out later that Dom got one of these off the rocks earlier in the week.)

We moved spots a couple of times, and had just settled onto a slightly deeper reef. Zander had rigged up a bait and dropped it to the bottom, and headed to the back of the boat to chop up mackerel with Eckard. His rod went OFF – from zero to screaming in a split second. I jumped up and he told me to grab it. I hooked the fish and held on for dear life as it peeled line and tried to dig into the rugged bottom. I was only working with 30 pound braid, so I had to be careful, but after a few tense minutes, I got it out of the rocks and started steering it toward the boat. Zander and Eckard exchanged glances and got the net. 

As the fish got higher in the water column, it looked pink and rockfish-shaped. There is indeed a rockfish species in South Africa, but they live deeper and don’t fight this hard. I made two final reel-and-lifts, and Zander grabbed – a red steenbras.

Holy $#%&.

At perhaps eight pounds, it was a small one, but it was a red steenbras, a fish that had been on my mind for 17 years. They were both astonished – this species doesn’t come in shallow that often, and I celebrated like I’d won the Stanley Cup. For the Red Wings. In overtime. Dom gave me a high-five, but I also know he desperately wanted to get one. Still, he had the striped galjoen and the redfinger, and I didn’t, so this seems fair.

Through the course of the afternoon, fishing stayed hot – a lot of bream, more pajama sharks, and even a small bronze whaler for me. (A species Dom wanted bad that I had caught many times. I felt awful.)

A larger pajama shark. It coughed up an octopus, so Marta was right.

A few minutes later, Dom had a big pulldown and a breakoff, which I presumed was a small bronze whaler. But moments later, Eckard pulled up a gully shark – a species Dom wanted in the worst way – and it had Dom’s broken-off leader in its mouth. 

Two of the breams were new species for me – the dageraad and the blue hottentot. That took me to seven for the day, and we still had a couple of hours left before we would head to port. Eckard kept moving us to different reefs and structures, and Dom was running up quite a list himself, notably lacking a red steenbras.

The dageraad. If I had know what it was at the time, it would have been a record.

The blue hottentot.

As it got late, one particular patch seemed jammed with pajama sharks. Dom and I each got a couple, and then Eckard reeled up a shark that looked different. I gave it a glance – it was a leopard cat shark, much rarer than the pajama, so I was determined stay in this spot, overnight if necessary. (Marta would fully support me staying as long as necessary.) Luckily, no one had to camp out – we all got one in less than five minutes, and again, they were big enough to fill the open world record. (Note – Dom has never wanted to do all the paperwork for world records, as it takes away from fishing time, but he caught at least six fish that would have qualified during the South Africa trip. Both of his catsharks were bigger than mine.)

The leopard catshark, another natural enemy of the octopus.

These would be our last fish of the day and of that segment of the trip. So, in a single day, I had added eight species and two records, taking the total for the Cape to 17 species and three records – far exceeding what I could have reasonably hoped for. We had truly saved the best for last.

The gang celebrates. That’s my celebration face.

Zander and Eckard were superstars, and we all took a night off steak and ate local pizza, which was great. It’s pizza, for God’s sake, and pizza is almost always great, and safe to eat, except in Japan, but that’s another story. (Summary – I thought “pizza” would be a vanilla option on Hokkaido with Phil Richmond, but the Japanese version was not what I expected. I don’t think there were tomatoes or cheese involved, and whatever those black things were, they were not olives or mushrooms.) After we got home, Zander, who was nowhere near tired, took Dom out for a late night shark/ray thing while I slept.

The good news is that I was up to 2135 lifetime, and the even better news was that we still had seven days of fishing left, most of it in boats, and all of it in a region I had never visited. I was just getting used to being out of the office, and we were on a roll.

Steve

 

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 1, 2023 – VLEESBAI, SOUTH AFRICA   

My first trip to South Africa was in 2006. Even though I was only there for a few days, I caught a good load of species – 21 to be precise, taking me to a total of 582. We didn’t have the best weather, so for each fish I got, the guide would casually mention that we should also have gotten this, or that, or some other one. It was a nice trip, but the place seemed like it could be an absolute gold mine, and I knew I’d be back someday.

The return trip would have to wait almost 17 years, and of course, a lot happened in those 17 years. My cholesterol went up, for one. I met Dom Porcelli, for another. (Dom is one of the seven persons on earth who has caught more than 1000 species.) While meeting Dom wouldn’t go quite as high on my list as meeting Marta, for example, he is a fellow species angler who loves to do long trips to exotic locations – a man after my own heart. And we travel well together, as far as I know. As he was setting up a two-week extravaganza in South Africa, he was kind enough to invite me along, and so begins our tale.

This wasn’t even my first long flight of the year. My employer, a German monolith who shall go nameless, decided it was somehow a good idea to fly my department senior management to a small frozen town near Frankfurt for a few days of rambling discourse in which the word “Cloud” was spoken at least 9,317 times. (Interestingly, the German word “Kloud” means “We have no business strategy.”) At least I got to sneak out for a day and have a sausage and sauerkraut lunch courtesy of Jens Koller, the fabled zander angler and Sportex pro staff member. Still, 2023 would be the year I turned 60, and thoughts of retirement were creeping into my head with greater and greater frequency.

Steve. Jens, and a bunch of Sportex rods that will travel the world with me. Have a look at their travel stuff – it’s the most varied selection I’ve ever seen, and I do a fair bit of travel fishing.

The flight to Cape Town was uncomplicated – for me. San Francisco to Newark to Cape Town. Period. The idea was to arrive the evening of January 28, so our guide, Zander de Beer of Zoolook Sportfishing, could pick us up bright and early on the 29th and head a few hours east where we would base our fishing.

The Travel Gods made Dom’s life a bit more complicated. His original flight, which was Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta to Johannesburg to Cape Town, was cancelled on short notice, leaving Dom rescheduled to arrive two days late. There was no way he was going to miss two days of fishing. With utter calm, he rebooked a new flight from Miami through Qatar to Cape Town, which would arrive some 90 minutes before the guide was due to pick us up. Meanwhile, I got to the Hilton around 6pm, had a lovely dinner, and a long night of sleep. This proves there is no justice in the universe.

On final approach over what I believe is False Bay. If that’s false, then it would be Table Bay.

A relaxed Steve arrives in Cape Town.

My alarm was just going off just as an exhausted Dom stumbled into the lobby. He checked in, showered, and got maybe 45 minutes of sleep before our guide arrived. We would be spending the next five days with Zander, who is a noted specialist in shore-based big game fishing. Ben Cantrell had fished with Zander a couple of years ago and gotten into big sand tiger sharks and some monster rays from the beach. Dom and I came a bit earlier in the year, because that’s what our schedules allowed, but we were still hopeful we could get into a good mix of inshore variety and a few trophies. 

Zander impressed me the moment I met him. Very friendly but super-efficient, he had us all packed up and on the road before I could open my Red Bull. It’s about four hours to Vleesbai, and we had to make a couple of stops, for provisions and bait and tackle, so we wouldn’t be fishing until well into the afternoon. I thought this made me impatient, but Dom somehow had the energy to be even more overeager than I was. We were both searching drainage ditches by the 7-11 for stray fish.

The whole province is beautiful.

Grocery shopping with Xander was awesome. We bought four things – meat, potatoes, more meat, and Red Bull. There is so much Marta could learn here. We also stopped in a tackle store and got what turned out to be a critical item – white rubber-soled rock shoes. These kept me from falling to my death during the next few days, and for this, I was grateful.

The white shoes. Highly recommended, especially by Billy Johnson. (No one under 50 is going to get that one.)

We got to the house midafternoon – it was a beautiful vacation home, plenty of space and an amazing view, perhaps five minutes walking from the ocean.

Welcome to Vleesbai.

The view from the patio. I could get used to that.

Steve and Zander head to the water.

We unpacked frantically, put equipment together, and raced down to the rocks. Xander hefted most of the gear, in an enormous backback that must have weighed 80 pounds.

And yet he was the one sprinting ahead of us down to the water. I was fine with him going first because there are cobras.

 

Social media info for Zander, for those of you young enough to have social media.

We finally set up to fish around four. It was only then that we considered that it was actually really, really windy. Zander still set up a couple of big baits, casting out impressive distances with giant surf rods.

Zander casting into the wind and waves.

The forecast showed decreasing breeze each day, but this first evening was difficult for lighter stuff – whereas half an ounce would normally be fine, we found ourselves having to cast at least two ounces to get on the bottom. With my chronically limited attention span, I quickly started poking around the tidepools with small baits, and it was there I made the first score of the trip – a banded goby.

It wasn’t the 300 pound sand tiger I imagined, but I was on the board, and we had a lot of fishing ahead of us.

Turning my attention back to nearshore holes, I managed to get a white steenbras – giving me three of the four steenbras species. (The first being the west coast steenbras in Namibia and the second being the sand steenbras in Israel. The final one, the red steenbras, is a large, deep-water predator that takes a serious, targeted effort. I have dreamed of catching one since 2006, but we were unlikely to see one on this trip.) 

A small white steenbras. That’s my thrilled look.

Dom, not intending to be a jerk, got two species I did not – a striped galjoen and a stone bream, a close relative of the sea sweeps I have caught in Australia. To be fair, we was working harder than I was – he’s surprisingly nimble and was scrambling out onto rocks I wasn’t going to try.

Dom fearlessly works the bigger tidepools.

Dom’s striped galjoen, a gorgeous little fish. I never did get one, and don’t think that doesn’t bother me.

We pounded it until after dark. Zander was game to keep going, but Dom and I needed food and sleep. He is truly 24/7 with this when he is on the job. His business involves a lot of travel – he goes wherever the big fish are, but he has also a lovely wife and a fishing-crazy son at home. He was on the phone with them every chance he had, and his son’s fishing portfolio is extremely impressive.

Two species in half a day wasn’t bad, and we had four more days – one of them on a boat. 

We had to organize cooking around the daily scheduled power outages that affect most of the country, but between flashlights and a gas grill we had steak and potatoes on the table quickly.

This man knows how to stock a fridge.

We then went through the whole local species book with Zander and asked him what we could and couldn’t expect in these waters. Many fish were either boat-only or up in the tropics, but we still had dozens and dozens of targets. One that caught my attention in particular was a pajama shark, a small cat shark that was supposed to be common locally. I was fascinated with catching one because a Marta favorite Netflix film, “My Octopus Teacher,” portrayed the pajama shark as an octopus-murdering villain. Zander thought they would actually be something of a pest in the reefy shore areas, but I had no idea how hard this was going to be.

The morning started out very well. We began again with big baits off the rocks.

Gorgeous, to be sure, but casting out and landing fish in this stuff was a challenge.

It was still windy but trending downward, and after an hour or so, one of the rigs got absolutely crushed – rod folded over, line screaming off the reel. I grabbed it, realized the fish was big and fast, and idiotically asked if it could be a pajama shark. Zander shook his head sadly. 

It was then I learned exactly how skilled Zander has to be to catch these big fish from shore. The fish, naturally, changed angles and headed for structure. This required running and jumping along sharp, slippery rocks, which Zander did like a crazed mountain goat. I took my time and went carefully, which means I almost lost the fish a bunch of times. Zander was patient, and slowly, we guided the fish into a small cove. I had no idea what it could be – too big to be one of the small sharks, too fast to be a ray. When it finally surfaced, even Zander was surprised – “It’s a #$%^ing yellowtail!” he yelled. It was a yellowtail – by far the biggest one I had ever seen, pushing 40 pounds.

So while not a new species, it was a gamefish, and a spectacular personal best.

Without Zander’s incredible skill and athleticism, I would have been left with a broken line – the guy was now officially a superhero: The Cape Crusader. (I know puns are the lowest form of humor, but it was the best I could do. Deal with it.)

We then decided to head down the coast to try for some other species and, of course, the pajama shark. He packed up his 80-pound tackle backpack, and we were off.  We spent a fair bit of time that second day chasing a small shark and not catching it. My bad. Dom tacked on quite a few species, but most of my catch consisted of silver porgies and klipfish – hard-fighting and beautiful, but not new species.

The dreaded silver porgy. Vleesbai’s dominant pest. I caught over 100 of these on the trip.

A klipfish. They are all gorgeous, and they all look different, but they are usually plain old Clinus superciliosus.

As afternoon became evening, the tireless Zander was just getting into his groove. He suggested we go down onto Vleesbai beach and try for sharks and rays. He felt fairly confident we would get lesser sandsharks, which are a guitarfish with an open world record, so that had my attention. We took a pleasant late-summer walk down the beach. 

We set out a few big baits and waited. Fairly quickly, one of them went down hard, and Dom landed a beautiful common dogfish.

That’s about four times bigger than mine.

I was next up, and the second bite happened right away – sort of a shaking, rattling strike that Zander predicted was a guitarfish. It was, and even better, it was sufficiently large to qualify as a world record.

Now we’re talking.

Later in the afternoon, I also added the local eagle ray – quite a battle on surf tackle.

As with most rays, all you can do is hang on. And it wasn’t all that big.

This is what it looks like with a big fish.

A close relative to our beloved California bat ray.

So I was up four species and a record – not wide open yet, but it’s not like I could catch these anywhere else, and we had three days of improving weather ahead. 

Dom and Steve on the beach.

Zander volunteered to keep fishing all night, but even Dom, who goes harder and on a lot less sleep than I do, was done for the day – he had spent hours rock-scrambling while I stayed on the beach. I think that was the only night I had REI camping food for dinner, because the sausage looked a bit adventurous for me. 

The next morning, we started again with big baits off the rocks, targeting sharks. We both got smooth hammerheads – not monsters, but perfect to get the species and not spend all day fighting it.

This pulled plenty hard. I can’t imagine getting a 200 pounder on to the rocks – Zander has had to do some insane things to beach big fish, including wading/swimming out into the wash with the rod. The man is fearless.

This photo was taken by one of Zander’s friends a few years ago. If you look carefully, below the X, you can see a hand and a fishing rod out in the wave. And remember there was a big shark on the other end of the line. We are not worthy.

These things are one of the strangest designs in nature.

We then drove off to some rubbly, less steep coast to try for the bewilderingly absent pajama shark.

Our spot for the afternoon. Every pothole, ledge, and dropoff was loaded with fish.

While we didn’t manage to catch one again, we both got white musselkcrackers – one of the most sought-after shore-based gamefish – and a zebra seabream, which I had hooked and lost in 2006. It was nonstop light-tackle action.

I was proud of this, but these things get to 50 pounds.

Cousin Chuck will have no idea why it is called a zebra seabream.

The silver porgy continued, but at least they were decent-sized.

So that was three species for the day, and seven for the trip. The weather was laying down perfectly, and we looked forward to day four chasing big sharks and rays in the surf.

This is what we were hoping for – a sand tiger that weighed more than me. 

They also get some monster kob in the surf. I’ve gotten fish half this size in Namibia and was pretty proud of myself.

Sometimes, things just don’t break your way. We knew we were a bit early in the season, and our big targets just weren’t there. Zander gave it an enormous effort, but the big bites just didn’t come. We were treated to some incredible scenery, and late in the day, we decided to move spots and try for a pajama shark.

On the way, we stopped at a river and cast for leerfish – a species which I had also dropped off the hook in 2006. I also discovered the dassie, a soft of groundhog/flying squirrel/wolverine thing that lives in local brush.

Sure, they’re cute, but they bite. “Dassie” may be the only word that sounds sillier in English than Afrikaans – we call them “Hyrax,” which sounds like something from Dr. Seuss.

Once we arrived, there was plenty of scrambling through jagged rock, and I owe my safety to those white rubber boots. There were no sharks, but I managed to scrape up two species – the redeye sardine and the bluntnose klipfish.

You knew there would be a baitfish in there someplace.

Finally, a different klipfish. Dom randomly found these and pointed out the spot.

Disturbingly, Dom also caught a redfinger – another species I have never gotten. I was crushed. He tried to get me one for hours, but that was the only one we saw.

The place was insanely beautiful, but I wanted more fish, dammit. To be fair, I was catching a lot of stuff I had gotten in 2006, but I cannot be reasoned with on this topic.

This is a Red Roman, one of my favorite photos of the whole adventure. Zander took the picture.

The sun sets on my pajama shark chances.

That was nine for the trip, taking me to 2127 lifetime – not insane numbers, but steady production. Zander took us back to a beach to try for big sharks well into the night before we returned to more meat and potatoes. I could live there easily, and to be fair, if it was March/April, the big stuff would be all over the place. 

I slept fitfully that night, as I always do when there is a big trip the next day. The ocean had calmed, and we were heading out to sea for what hopefully would be a bonanza. The shore fishing had been hard work but worth it – but we would have one shot at a bunch more variety in the morning, and I wanted to get it right. Even in my brief dreams, I couldn’t have imagined how well it was going to turn out – and I have quite an imagination.

Steve

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 11, 2024 – LIGHTHOUSE POINT, FLORIDA

In the next four episodes, you will be hearing about my 2023 adventures in South Africa with Dom Porcelli. I can only hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I did re-living the whole magical two weeks. But I wrote these posts with the heaviest possible heart. There is no easy way to say this, but Dom passed away suddenly on February 11, 2024, at age 60. When I got the call, I was devastated, and I cannot imagine the grief his family is experiencing. Dom has been a friend for almost 12 years, and of course, I wanted to pay tribute to one of the best people I will ever know. I was conflicted about announcing this awful news before publishing the South Africa trip – part of me wanted you all to read the articles without the crushing sadness of losing a great friend.

Dom Porcelli.

But delaying the news won’t bring him back. So I am telling you now, because it is what it is, but please celebrate Dom’s unbridled joy in fishing while you read these posts. For a couple of thousand words at a time, embrace Dom as he was in life – adventurous, fearless, passionate, and kind.

His first GT, on the South Africa trip. It was a truly epic two weeks.

On the beach in Vleesbai, South Africa, January 30, 2023 – one of our best days in the surf.

Dom Porcelli was born on March 8, 1963, four months and two days before I came along and ruined things for my parents. He grew up on the east coast, went to Virginia Tech on a wrestling scholarship, and married his college sweetheart, Tracy. (Who is actually even funnier than Dom. She is one of the few people who can routinely leave me speechless.) They had two daughters, and between them, Tracy, and their incredibly small but spirited dog Phoebe, they are as close a family as I have ever seen.

Bizarrely, Phoebe LOVES The Mucus, despite the smell.

The Porcellis became nearly native Cincinnatians when Dom moved there for work. A few years ago, having caught all the fish in Ohio, Dom and Tracy moved to Florida, allegedly for work, but he sure did a lot of fishing down there.

I met Dom online in 2012. He was a 1000Fish blog reader who had looked me up to offer some help on South Florida species – here’s a guy who was putting together his own journey to 1000 species and he was offering to help someone who already had that many. That’s just how he did things.

But he did have a sense of humor. The first photo he ever sent me was of a species I hadn’t caught, still haven’t caught, and will probably never catch – the red coronetfish. And yes, Marta has one.

I met Dom in person on October 14, 2017, when he took time out of his day and brought me bait when I was running low.

Steve and Dom at Silver Palm Park – 10/14/17. It’s still one of my go-to spots.

Our first day actually on the water was May 10, 2019, although it felt like we had been fishing together for years by that stage. It was a mosquito-laden Everglades evening chasing the elusive brown hoplo, and I got that plus a bonus South American catfish.

The elusive hoplo. Dom didn’t get one, but he was thrilled with mine.

Two days later, he put me on a Caesar grunt, a species Jamie Hamamoto had caught before me. 

He was now officially my hero. He had given Jamie one less thing to hold over my head.

Trips together started to become more frequent, and in the process, we became very close friends, despite Marta’s insistence that I am petulant and difficult to fish with. In May of 2021, I caught 21 species with him in Alabama and started making my darter collection respectable. That was the infamous “Schrodinger’s Collie” trip, and about the third straight night that he was still going strong at 3am, it hit me how much of a dynamo he really was. (It’s not like I don’t go pretty hard, but by midnight, I just wanted a Red Roof Inn and a Denny’s. Dom would make do with whatever cold cuts hadn’t mixed with the worms in the bottom of the cooler.) He didn’t like being away from Tracy, and if he was going to be gone, he was going to squeeze every possible moment of fishing out of the trip.

Dom made friends everywhere we went. That’s Dr. Alvin Diamond of Troy University on the left, who showed us some of his secret spots around Southeastern Alabama.

We had a lot in common – born the same year, big sports fans, passionate and competitive fishermen. Over the years, we braved hostile wildlife, bewildered observers, unreliable airlines, rough seas, unexpected weather, slippery creekbeds, and motels that could be all of the above.

A cottonmouth Dom stepped on. It was so big I thought it was an otter at first. Dom didn’t get bitten – he was remarkably agile, although he screamed so shrilly that he offered me $20 not to describe it in the blog. It was in Arkansas, either at a boat ramp or the shower at La Quinta Inn.

The same Arkansas trip. We accidentally wandered onto some private property, but Dom made friends with Officer Irvin. We ended up with a police escort to a much better fishing spot. 

In November of 2021, Dom got his 1000th species, a mussel blenny in Puerto Penasco, Mexico. I had the privilege of being there, along with the Moore family.

Dom with a gulf grouper from that same trip – a much more dignified photo than the blenny.

Dom was the fourth person ever to cross the once-unthinkable 1000 species barrier. By the time he passed away, he had progressed to 1373 – which is third overall globally. He wasn’t just good – he was one of the greatest all-time.

There was a May, 2022 trip where we suffered through miserable seas to tack on a striped grunt and a dusky squirrelfish, and then he sent me off on a 1000-mile solo drive to some of his handpicked spots in the southeast, where I added another big batch of darters. Dom took as much joy in helping someone catch a new fish as he did in catching one himself.

Fishing with Dom was always “your trip” – he was completely focused on getting you the species you needed. He took great joy in helping others to succeed, and he took even greater joy in his family. No matter where we were, he always managed to check in with them, and he never stopped telling Tracy that he loved her, even though we always gave him a hard time, whispering “Awwwwwwwww” in the background and making kissy faces.

Dom with George Brinkman, another 1000+ species angler, April 2, 2023. That blog is also coming up.

I fished with Dom around 40 total days, landing 42 new species under his tutelage – more than 10% of the species I’ve caught since our first day on the water. And as impatient as he could be when something got in way of his fishing, he was the model of kindness when any species hunter would write him for advice. Dom took dozens of strangers fishing on his boat, and they never stayed strangers after that. As this terrible news made the rounds, I had over 100 people write or call and hope it wasn’t true. There are dozens and dozens of people who have a greater passion for fishing because they had the good fortune to know Dom. 

Coming home through driving rain with Chris and The Mucus, June 17, 2023. Notice that Dom is the only person smiling. Note also that he is the only person in the photo who doesn’t look like they’re on a prison dating app.

But as much as he loved fishing, Dom loved his family more. He was like a lovestruck teenager every time he spoke to Tracy. Many who fish every corner of the globe are trying to get away from something, but Dom always talked about what he was going back to.

Dom was the first of the 1000 species club to pass away, but I also know that many of the people who join that group someday will owe a large part of it to Dom. 

The last fish I ever caught with Dom, a fat snook, November 4, 2023 – I missed the cast half a dozen times until he coached me on to the exact spot.

Dom got every gift except old age. We all lost a lot on February 11, but no one lost more than Tracy, McKenzie, and Avery. All of our hearts go out to them; they will always be a member of our families, and we hope that someday their grief will be outweighed by the many good memories of a man who lived his best life and loved his family beyond words.

I’ve burst into tears three times while writing this, and I’m going to again when I hit “publish.” Dom was one of the best fishing buddies any of us could ever have, and he is gone far, far too soon. Please keep Tracy in your thoughts and prayers, and please enjoy the remaining eight episodes that will feature him. It’s my small way of preserving the memory of a man I love like a brother. 

Steve

DATELINE: NOVEMBER 13, 2022 – PUERTO PENASCO, MEXICO

Part of fishing, especially species-hunting, is timing. Each day might have only a golden hour where the fish are really biting – if you’re lucky. Sometimes even a few golden minutes can make it all worthwhile. But it gets worrisome to write a blog about a three-day trip that, like Cousin Chuck’s first date, was marked by perhaps 15 golden seconds. (And five of those were watching The Mucus slip and fall in a tidepool.)

The destination – Puerto Penasco, Mexico – has become a traditional “last hurrah” of the season with the Moore family. I have been to Rocky Point six times, and this means we have to face the math of diminishing returns. Still, there are always a few species to chase, notably that awful Cortez stingray that I irrationally blame Carson Moore for taking away from me. And this time, we would be joined by great friend Gerry Hansell.

I always leave for this trip knowing that will be the last meaningful fishing of the year – once we’re back to our respective homes, holiday season is in full swing. There are lights to put up, parties to plan, and relatives to avoid. 

This all has to be up and running by the day after Thanksgiving, or Santa will be angry.

And so we did the traditional meeting in Phoenix and the traditional piling into Chris’ truck early the next morning. Gerry got stuck in the back with The Mucus, and I must say he was very patient with the drooling and food throwing. (But Gerry has children and pets of his own, so he was ready.) Sadly, Carson was on a church mission and would not be joining us. It’s about a four hour drive, loaded with desert scenery.

The truck of Chris. Big, comfortable, and no one minds if you spill a bag of Fritos on the floor. And no one minds if you eat them later.

The road trip conversation is always entertaining, unless The Mucus gets going on politics or global warming. Speaking of global warming, The Mucus actually caused some. Chris was subtly delighted to share a story involving Brayden and one of his first attempts to cook for himself. He tried to prepare something less than advanced – prepackaged rice – but somehow, it went very wrong. 

This is what he ended up with. Not edible, but they’re still using it as a doorstop.

We arrived in Penasco and jumped onto a boat with Eduardo, another very solid local guide.

That’s me and Eduardo, photobombed by The Mucus.

While the weather was decent and the scenery was gorgeous as always, the Moores and I were mostly stumbling into the same species we had seen previously – triggerfish, sergeants, triggerfish, and grunts. Gerry, a Penasco newbie, was doing quite well, as most of the normal Sea of Cortez fish were new to him.

Note that Gerry has a properly-applied Scopolamine patch behind his right ear. Note that he is upright. These facts are related.

Gerry added several species on the boat, including his first Cortez bonefish. 

   

These are always a thrill – pound for pound, one of the hardest-fighting fish in the world.

And his first Pacific-side sand perch. It made me fondly remember how thrilled I was with my first one, and how not thrilled I was with my 400th.

I just kept catching the same Cortez grunt over and over.

This is a Cortez grunt. “Cooooortez grunt” is also the noise Chris makes when he gets seasick. It sounds like someone trying to speed-gargle scrambled eggs.

But the waters were calm and the medication was effective, so Chris’ breakfast stayed put.

Day two on the boat was more of the same – a lot of fun catching inshore species on light tackle, but nothing new for me. Gerry continued tacking on a few, which is always nice to see, but let’s face it, I would have preferred I was catching at least the occasional new species. 

The porgies were especially plentiful, and these things pull hard on a trout rod.

Lovely scenery, but what I noticed first was that flock of birds. Unfortunately, there was nothing under them.

No, the Mucus was not actually barfing. But for that majority of you who just look at the pictures, that’s how you’ll remember it.

We also tried shore fishing each evening, but alas, the Moores and I got only the usual suspects. (Gerry again added a few, which is nice, but, you know, not as nice as something new for me.)

Gerry starts stacking up the blennies.

We did have one startling moment that afternoon. We made a quick stop to get some Pepsis. Gerry, who is frighteningly intelligent, relentlessly reasonable, and an even more cautious eater than I am, randomly wandered off and got a fruit smoothie – from a street vendor. He consumed half of it before I noticed and pointed out that he was now at high risk for spectacular food poisoning. From my own awful experience, I fear street food and the only stuff I would ever buy from a street vendor would have to be in a can that was sealed in the American Midwest.

While I am happy to report nothing happened to Gerry, amoebic dysentery wasn’t out of the question and would have made for a more exciting story, which we would have called “Gerry Discovers Flagyl.” I never like to see a friend sick, but I have also never outgrown the urge to say “I told you so.” I was certainly surprised to see Gerry show a culinary adventurous side, or an iron stomach, and the fact that this was the most exciting thing that had happened so far tells us how bad the fishing was for me.

The inadvisable smoothie.

There were some lovely sunsets.

On our last day, we had planned a deepwater charter for big grouper, but the wind came up and they advised us to cancel. Limited to shore fishing, we decided to mix it up and try a spot recommended by old friend Dom Porcelli that was alleged to have a small permit relative called a Paloma Pompano.

For a tourist town in Mexico, beach access was way too complicated. The spot we had from Dom was in the middle of two big hotels, and they were flat-out hostile to the idea of guest parking. Even the normal offers of small-scale bribery didn’t help our cause. We ended up parking in a golf course lot about a mile away, and, despite the fact that the course was closing and so the place was almost empty, the attendant still really had a problem with us. I know this sort of redistribution of resources sounds socialist, but politics are unimportant when fishing is involved. So we took our chances and parked there. (The attendant went home and dutifully locked the gate, but Chris went all monster truck and four-wheeled us out over a curb and possibly some landscaping.)

When we got down to the beach, I was nearing desperation. We set up small sabikis with shrimp tidbits, and began casting to likely-looking seams. About half an hour later, I started getting tiny taps, and before long, I hooked something. Saying pompano prayers, I reeled it in, and OH HELL YES, it was the target species. 

So thank you Dom. On a side note, that is the most hateful look I have ever seen Chris give. I am certain this is the look he gives students who don’t pay attention, and it gives me chills. I can only presume he hadn’t gotten a pompano yet.

Seriously. I take one look at this and want to apologize, and I don’t even know for what.

Fortunately, everybody got a pompano at some stage that afternoon.

Gerry’s fish, handsomely photographed.

I kept casting and got a few more pompano, and then a small miracle occurred. I got an elongate grunt – another new (and completely unexpected) species.

 

The elongate grunt. Chris also got one, but The Mucus did not, and as immature as this will sound, I was delighted. This was lifetime species number 2118 for me.

  

The gang poses for a selfie. Chris must have caught the pompano by now, because the hateful look is gone. Gerry is smiling because 24 hours had passed without him developing dysentery.

I also caught a gulf grunion, a species I had caught but misidentified on my first Penasco trip, so it was good to get a photo upgrade and an ID clarification. While I was content with two for the trip, Gerry had quietly added 15 – so nice work!

 

I got my first one of these on the “Marching Band From Hell” trip in 2015.

And with those 10 golden seconds, we closed out the fishing year and headed back to Phoenix. Gerry and I flew out the next morning, and we were all off to our respective holiday seasons. Of course, no Thanksgiving is complete without the Michigan/Ohio State football game – perhaps the ultimate confrontation of good vs. evil. (And yes, Marta, and most of my friends, relatives, therapists, and neighbors think I take this game too seriously, but we’re talking good vs. evil here, so there is no such thing as “too seriously.”)

Happily, good prevailed. Resoundingly, because evil can’t defend the run.

 

And a merry if belated Christmas 2022 to everyone.

While it was a quiet and beautiful holiday, there was planning afoot for a January trip that was certain to be memorable and hopeful to be epic. The first fish I would catch in 2023 would be 10,257 miles from home – pull out your globes and make your guesses, and we’ll tell you the whole story in about two weeks.

Steve

 

 

 

 

 

DATELINE: OCTOBER 10, 2022 – RURAL WESTERN KENTUCKY

Running up a big species list takes sacrifices, and losing sleep is high on the list – but all-nighters are not to be taken lightly at age 59. Sure, I gave them no thought in college, whether it was finally doing the required reading the night before an exam, or a party that got out of hand and ended up with us mooing at passing cars as the sun rose. The trip described below was not designed to take place in 26 hours – it was meant for a much longer time period – but circumstances being what they were, I was glad we toughed it out.

It all began with two gracious Hoosier invitations. Steve Ramsey, who has steadfastly supported Indiana football since the leather helmet days, keeps inviting me to IU/Michigan games even though I show up in maize and blue and the Wolverines typically blast the Hoosiers like a directional school creampuff. And Ron Anderson, half of the fabled Ron and Jarrett species-hunting duo, kindly offered to take me south for a couple of days of fishing. As I continued looking at sports schedules, it turned out that the next weekend featured another Indiana game and then a Colts game, and Steve, against the advice of friends, neighbors, and the authorities, invited me for the whole week-plus. The result – two days of fishing, three football games, and nine days of Skyline Chili. If that isn’t a winner of an itinerary, I don’t know what is.

I arrived in Indianapolis on October 6, a Thursday. Steve and I promptly ate at Skyline Chili.

Skyline Chili. It’s a food group, and, about six hours later, a medical condition.

We then went over to Ron and Carol’s to watch the Colts play the Broncos. It was, I dare say, the worst NFL game I have ever seen that didn’t involve the Lions. There were botched plays, turnovers, and the constant whining of Russell Wilson. The Colts prevailed in overtime, but we were just glad to turn off the TV and be done with it.

The end of a truly awful contest. Russell Wilson is offscreen to the right, having Malcolm Butler flashbacks.

And then THIS was facing me back in Steve’s guest room.                                 

The following day, we ate dinner with my old friend Pam, at a well-known Indianapolis institution – the Rathskeller. Although both Steve and this restaurant have been in town for at least two world wars, he had somehow never eaten there previously. (To Carol’s rather loudly-expressed surprise.)

An Indianapolis classic. Carol has also made it famous in Iowa.

But all this friendship was swept aside the next day, as we headed to Bloomington for what Steve was certain would be an epic IU upset. Sometimes, I just want to smile and pat him on the head. 

A-10 flyover before the game. These things can destroy tanks almost as quickly as Michigan can destroy IU’s defense.

In a game that was close until shortly after the coin toss, Michigan prevailed, 31-10.

I kind of stood out in the IU Athletic Alum section.

But there were other UM fans there. There are two Hoosiers in the photo – see if you can guess which one had been drinking.

I was supposed to fish the next couple of days, which Ron figured could take us through some prime spots in Kentucky and Tennessee. But somewhere in the text string, a schedule misunderstanding became obvious. I had thought we were coming home Tuesday night. Ron – who has lots of adult responsibilities that I don’t, like two kids and three cats – actually needed to be home Monday night. So we made the best of it, but I recognized that this would mean very little sleep, a tall order at my age. But there were so many possibilities that I wasn’t going to let exhaustion get in my way – Red Bull can work wonders, and failing that, laxatives can keep anyone on their toes.

Our first stop was right in Bloomington. The recent longear sunfish splits had left me in a conundrum – I had caught most of them, but not photographed them because they were all just longears at the time. My photos were all of the Rio Grande version, so I needed to get the others, starting with the original, which was abundant in a local creek.

The O.G. longear sunfish.

The creeks here are gorgeous.

We then headed south. As we were trying to compress as many spots as possible into one overnighter, Ron had trimmed things down to a “run and gun” approach – hitting spots that he knew held at least one “slam dunk” species, trying to get that fish, and hitting the road again quickly. It was a long haul through Indiana to western Kentucky, and the evening would take us to a mashup of spots hopscotching between Kentucky and Tennessee. 

Conversations on these road trips range far and wide. Ron is a bit more quiet than I am – most people are – but I did get him going about a road trip he did to Arkansas with Jarrett and Cody from Ohio. These are young guys, and so road trips tend to be more compressed and budget-conscious, but this went a bit extreme. Not only did they sack out in the truck for several unwashed days, but there were some disastrous packing mishaps. Ron, who I believe sleeps in his waders, somehow forgot them. He also did not bring extensive (or possibly any) extra clothing, so not only did he get bitten up by insects and blown up with poison ivy, he also never quite got dry. This combination left Ron’s entire lower body festering with some sort of trench foot/swamp groin thing that took weeks to clear up. Cody, out of support for Ron, did all his wading in rubber deck boots, so after a few days, he had a bleeding ring chafed around each calf that I swear went down to the bone. Jarrett seems to have survived unscathed, and they did all catch a bunch of fish, which is worth facing chafing and fungus.

Our first stop netted something truly strange that I have admired in books for years – a cavefish. These creatures live in crevasses and caves, some of them never seeing daylight in their lifetime. This particular one was a spring cavefish, which lives deep in springs but ventures out at night. It took a few tries and a heartbreaking mid-air dropped hook, but I finally got one. Say what you will about spending hours on small fish, but seeing something like this fills me with wonder at the amazing diversity of the fish world. A chance to catch something like this is why I love the sport so much – only a handful of people have ever seen one of these in person.

One of the weirder fish I have gotten on my Midwestern adventures.

We then hit the road for another hour and made another the “run and gun” stop. It was a small creek rumored to have a population of Guardian darters, another one of the very localized species found throughout the midwest. They were there, they bit, and we were back on the road. It was already 11 at night.

The Guardian darter, species three of the trip and 2111 lifetime.

We then drove two more long hours, going from interstates to state highways to rural roads to dirt tracks that went miles back into the woods.

I mused how much I had come to trust Ron, because these are exactly the kinds of places where bodies are dumped in low-grade horror films that involve depraved power-tool maniacs and exceptionally stupid teenagers. At about 1am, we pulled up at a dead end with the classic “bridge out” sign, and parked the car. It took me a moment to put on my waders – but Ron will never, EVER takes his off again. The embankment was a bit dicey, but even from a distance, I could see it was darter heaven – shallow, some current, an assortment of rock sizes and structures. We got down there, set up the micro rigs, and despite the 39 degree temperature, action started quickly. The first score was a brighteye darter.

The brighteye darter, number four of the trip.

About an hour later, I got a firebelly darter, the fifth species of the evening.

And 2113 lifetime. The only disadvantage to fishing this late in the season is that the fish are not in their spawning colors, but hey, a species is a species, and they’re still beautiful.

It was another hour, pushing 4:30am, when I got another new species. This is not to say there wasn’t constant action the entire time. We caught plenty of darters – and madtoms – we had gotten previously, and we also wasted quite a bit of time trying for sand darters, which were present but do not eat food. Ever. But at some stage before the sun came up, I zeroed in on a darter that looked different than everything else I had seen and got it to bite. To even Ron’s surprise, it was a Gulf darter – very unusual this far north.

Again, not the most colorful specimen, but that’s six for the day.

As the first light was beginning to show, I reached the limit of my endurance, and luckily, so did all my headlamps, so I had an excuse to leave and find a local hotel for a quick nap. I think Ron would have been ok with me leaving him there, but he reluctantly came along when I mentioned that I thought I saw some guy wandering through the woods with a chainsaw. 

I don’t remember taking this picture.

After a couple of hours of shuteye in some off-brand place in rural Kentucky or Tennessee, I forget which, we saddled up again and drove off to hit a couple of spots Ron knew on the way home. I was so wiped out I made a memorable hygiene mistake.

Oh, like you wouldn’t have missed this too.

Wading through a few small creeks buoyed by Red Bull and hope, I was likely not at my best. (But neither was Peyton Manning when he won his second Super Bowl, and I always take inspiration from that. And we both knew that if we dropped something, Cam Newton wouldn’t try to pick it up.)

I missed at least two slough darters because I pretty much stepped on them, but just as we were ready to head elsewhere, I found one that clearly was not as smart as the other slough darters. It stayed cooperatively in the open and snapped at every bait I presented, allowing itself to be hooked and dropped twice before I landed it and added number seven of the trip.

And number 2115 overall. Life was very good, despite the fact that my bladder wrote me an official letter of protest after the sixth Red Bull.

At the next creek, we, and by “we,” I mean “Ron,” had a terrifying close call. Part of looking for darters is flipping over rocks and poking under banks. This should be done with great caution, as some of these same hidey holes contain unpleasant wildlife, like snapping turtles and snakes. 

For example, this is me inadvisably poking around prime serpent territory.

I was perhaps 150 feet upstream of Ron, who (thank goodness) had started using a stick to explore the undercut shoreline. I heard a noise – let’s call it a manly grunt of alarm, because I wouldn’t want to call it the high-pitched stream of bad words it really was. I turned around to see Ron in full Wile E. Coyote mode, feet spinning backwards in place on top of the water with a large, irritated cottonmouth in hot pursuit. Luckily, he got away, but it was a sobering reminder to be careful out there.

Safe due to his excellent reflexes, Ron breathes a sigh of relief. I would have wet my waders.

We made one more stop on the way home, chasing what Ron described as an outside shot at a bandfin darter. I entered the water with low confidence, clinical exhaustion, and snake awareness, and I nearly stepped on a darter. Ron eased up next to me and verified it was the right one, and it bit immediately. 

The beast.

The triumphant anglers. I was ready for a nap, but we had five hours of driving ahead of us.

So that was it for the catching on this trip – eight species in less than 24 hours of fishing. That doesn’t happen for me very often. I can’t thank Ron enough for going with me, and Ron and Jarrett for their incredible knowledge of the area.

But notice I said the catching was over, but not the fishing. Because I had such a long stretch in the Midwest, and because Steve likely reached the limits of his hostly patience when a batch of redworms escaped in his immaculate refrigerator, I decided to head for Columbus, Ohio. Cody Cromer, who is one of my lifetime heroes because he helped me get a bluebreast darter, was kind enough to meet me in central Ohio and give it a try for variegate darters. 

Success has many parents, but I was the single mother of failure that day. Cody must have shown me at least six variegates, and I managed to spook or miss them all.

The river was absolutely gorgeous. And full of variegate darters.

Steve and Cody, as he tries his level best not to burst into laughter at my inability to hook a variegate.

That night, I had dinner in Columbus with two very dear old friends – Scott “K-Man” Kisslinger, one of the greatest wiffleball pitchers in history, except for one notable meltdown, and Sue Niezgoda, who is probably better at wiffleball than either one of us.

Yes, I wear Michigan stuff at restaurants in the middle of Columbus.

I headed back to Indianapolis Thursday evening for another Skyline dinner. Marta took the redeye into Indianapolis on Friday morning, went straight to the art museum to let Steve and I sleep in, and then joined us for a weekend of sports and fried food. Although she had been through Indianapolis before, this was her first stop for any length of time. 

Marta irrationally hates John Elway, so Steve prepared her a special pillowcase.

At the circle in the center of downtown Indianapolis. I used to work – and met Steve Ramsey – in a building just out of the shot to the left.

Saturday was a return trip to Bloomington to watch the Hoosiers get blasted by Maryland. It was still a beautiful fall day, and Steve gave Marta a better tour of campus than he ever gave me. What the heck.

Steve and Marta in some alum building I had never seen before.

A tribute to “Breaking Away,” one of Marta’s favorite movies.

Before kickoff, so the game was still close.

As things got out of hand, a group of IU supporters decided it was a good idea to take their shirts off and wave them around. Unfortunately, they were all men, and unfortunately for them, it had gotten rather cold. They didn’t seem to care.

I’m guessing beer was involved, but you have to respect their commitment.

They even made ESPN. Note that the Michigan score happens to be on screen.

Sunday was the big event. Ron and Carol, Steve’s best friends from college, were hosting a large group of family at a Colts game and generously invited us, mostly because Carol likes Marta.

Lucas Oil Stadium – “The House That Peyton Built.”

Speaking of Peyton Manning.

We got to watch a thrilling Colts victory over Jacksonville, and even though I think it was the last game they won that season, it was still a great experience. 

The whole gang poses for a photo post-game. A big thanks to Ron and Carol for putting it all together and including us.

After the game, we wandered the downtown area, taking in more sights and mocking the fact that Trevor Lawrence has better hair than Taylor Swift. Dinner could not have been better – we managed seats at St. Elmo’s steakhouse, an Indianapolis landmark that I first experienced in 1989.

It was founded the year before my grandfather was born. 

St. Elmo’s is also famous as the favorite steakhouse of Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson.

We are standing in the exact spot where they filmed dinner in the “Two Parties” episode. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please take the week off work and binge-watch the whole thing. It will make your life better.

Marta and I flew home the next evening, but not before I gave the elusive goldeye a shot in a river south of Indianapolis. I failed, again, but I did catch something memorably unexpected.

A shovelnose sturgeon, first caught by me in Nebraska with Martini in 2015.

And so we were back in California, putting up the Halloween lights and preparing to watch such terrifying fare as “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” There would be one more major fishing trip before the weather and the holidays set in, and if I had known how badly it was going to turn out, I would have … oh who am I kidding. I still would have gone.

Steve

 

 

DATELINE: SEPTEMBER 22, 2022 – DULUTH, MINNESOTA

Covid had seemed to wreak havoc on almost everything – everything from toilet paper to Taco Bell was suddenly much harder. Even simple gatherings with friends took on an element of risk unseen since the 1350s. One of our most beloved rituals lost in the pandemic was our annual “Deja Bru” trip. For the uninitiated, these are an annual autumn excursion Marta and I make with two great friends from Indianapolis – Steve Ramsey, and his college friends Ron and Carol “The Facebuster” Feeney. The idea is to pick a town that has a baseball and football game on the same weekend, and then experience the local culture in the meantime. We’ve been to places as varied as Milwaukee and Detroit, and the rescheduled target would be Minneapolis. As a Detroit fan, I am bitter toward the Twins, especially their ill-gotten 1987 ALCS win, but I would try to get over it for a few days at least.

An actual Wheaties box with the 87 “champs.” It has its own museum, and is the single most sacred thing in the state. It’s even more sacred than Fran Tarkenton’s Super Bowl ring because, well, there isn’t one.   

Some of you have actually asked “Steve, do you ever take a vacation that doesn’t involve fishing?” This blog has been going on for 13 years, and if you don’t know the answer, you must be a new reader. Welcome! Sure, I can pretend I’m going someplace for a cultural experience, but I’m going to find a way to try for a species, even if it’s a longshot.

Fishing on this trip was fairly straightforward – I flew in a couple of days early, rented a car, and headed for western Wisconsin. Species-hunting genius Tim Aldridge generously forwarded a few prime spots, and I also had some great info from old friend Mike Channing. There were perhaps seven solid targets, more than enough to fill up a day and a half, then head back to Minneapolis to meet the gang. 

United was somehow on time, and I was soon in a rental car heading east through a perfect, warm evening. My first target, the central mudminnow, is a nocturnal creature, so I had plenty of time to hit Walmart for worms and I actually found a Culver’s for dinner. (Oddly enough, it was the only indoor dining I found. Everything else had gone carryout – lame.)

Culver’s is awesome. This is the best thing Mike Channing introduced me to, just ahead of the lake sturgeon.

Well after dark, I pulled up to a random culvert that Mike had suggested for mudminnow. I rigged up a tenkara rod and explored a series of weedy pools. I got a few nice shiners, but alas, that was all that would bite. Even though I was on public property, the local farmer was certain I was up to no good and kept driving by me, slowly, with a spotlight array reminiscent of WWII nighttime air defenses. As a thunderstorm moved in, I decided it was time to get some sleep. 

The fishing was near the intersection of “NO.” You think I would have gotten the hint.

I stopped in Neillsville, Wisconsin, a quiet farming town near a bunch of Tim’s spots. I went to sleep dreaming of dace species and an outside shot at a blackside darter. This is when the Fish Gods decided things should be more challenging. Temperatures plummeted, going from a solid 85 to a low around 38. I suppose I should have looked this up, but I was going to try it either way, so I just let myself be surprised. 

The spots were all medium-sized creeks, easy to access and beautifully clear. The first two produced nothing but creek chubs, which seem oblivious to weather. The other species seemed to have shut off, but I had all day and I am nothing if not stubborn. 

The classic creek chub, the first fish species I ever caught by myself.

The third creek was gorgeous.

This gives me wet wading dreams.

I inspected it from a low bridge, and could see several redhorse feeding their way up deeper seams. Even though I have gotten the species before, this was too much to pass up.

I caught three – nice fights and sight fishing is always a thrill.

I then tried the micros. I put on a small sabiki because there was a rocky side pocket that had some interesting fish flitting in and out of the structure. I caught a couple of nondescript Notropis, but something darker kept dashing out of the rocks. I cast again, and the fish finally came out and got hooked. It was a darter, and likely something I hadn’t caught before, so, heart in my throat, I tried to gently ease it out of the water and up onto the bridge. At the same moment, the sabiki weight got stuck in the rocks, leaving the fish splashing on the surface. Sweating profusely, I assessed my options, which didn’t seem good. There was no shore access – it was steep and overgrown – and trying to yank it out would likely break off the fish. I finally tried to put steady pressure on the weight, which left the fishing hanging about eight inches above the water. Just as I thought the line would break, the weight suddenly came free and the whole rig came hurtling directly at my head. I ducked, and some of the stray hooks embedded in my shirt. I looked down, and, against all reason, there was the darter.

It was a blackside darter, a new one, and the whole trip was worth it.

There were supposed to be several other species here, and I love wading around creeks, so I spent much of the day poking around riffles and seams, and while I did get the occasional fantail darter, it was mostly creek chubs the rest of the day.

I will hate fantails until the day they finally split them. I know there is a Carolina – I have that one – but I hear rumors of a Chesapeake Fantail. If anyone can find a reliable source on this, I’ll buy them dinner.

The weather was clear but windy, and much colder than the day before, so stuff was off. But I still had a species in the bag. 

A country road in Western Wisconsin.

I decided to drive a few hours north to set up for a dace spot in the morning. The scenery was beautiful midwestern farmland, glorious in the setting sun. I passed a number of streams and ponds, and the central mudminnow kept crossing my mind. Mike had told me they live in the stillest, weediest backwaters, and just at dusk, I spotted a random weed-choked little side channel and decided to stop.

This place just screamed “Central Mudminnow!”

Using a micro-sabiki loaded with bits of redworm, I carefully eased the baits into a break in the weed mat. There was a tiny bite. Then another. And another. I lifted gently and pulled up two central mudminnows. Mike’s advice has been perfect. I stayed and caught seven more, but darkness and hunger eventually took me away.

That was two species for the day, taking me to 2107.

Then I drove off into the night. I couldn’t find another Culver’s, so dinner ended being Red Bull and cheese curds, which is (barely) not as bad as it sounds.

I recommend taking a lot of fiber with these.

I found a hotel near a possible Iowa darter spot from Mike, so I could give that a go in the morning.

Dawn was clear, windy, and cold. The darter spot looked great, but the temperature change had clearly shut things down. I’ll be back there, but in the meantime, I had a few more hours to get to Amnicon State Park, up toward Duluth. There were supposed to be a couple of different dace species here, but often, having a mark on a map and actually finding your way to it are two different things. After wasting an hour crashing through a poison ivy-laden swamp, I drove around to the main park entrance and a kind-hearted ranger directed me to the pond in question.

It was a gorgeous walk – a place I could hiked all day except that I had about 30 minutes to catch the fish and race back to Minneapolis for dinner.

It was a beautiful spot.

When I found the pond, my heart sank. Access looked cliffy and terrifying – the kind of place only Luke Ovgard would try.

It’s steeper than it looks.

I finally found a way down to the water, and the fish were thankfully cooperative.

They turned out to be Northern Pearlscale Dace, species 2108.

I tried the creek on the way out, but it was jammed with creek chubs, which is always a sign to leave. I had a long drive ahead of me to Minneapolis, where Marta was already shopping, and the rest of the gang – Steve, Ron, and Carol – would soon be arriving.

I got to race a train on the way back.

I got to Minneapolis late afternoon, got rid of the rental car, and headed downtown to start the cultural stuff. Marta had already been all over town, and had discovered a book – Bunnicula.

I have no idea how this never became a movie.

Downtown Minneapolis was surprisingly vibrant – a lot of restaurants, theaters, and shopping. Our main concern was to keep Carol from “accidentally” punching Steve, so we sat them on opposite sides of the table and enjoyed a great dinner. Walking back to our hotels, passed the Mary Tyler Moore statue.

This is another cultural reference lost on my younger readers, but the MTM show, a Saturday night staple in the 70’s, was both groundbreaking and hilarious, especially the “Chuckles the Clown” episode, which we went home and found on YouTube. Still the funniest funeral ever.

We played tourist on Saturday – the Mill City Museum was especially interesting, especially the Washburn portion, which blew up in 1878. (Who knew flour dust is flammable?)

Tribute to some local musician.

We also visited the Mall of the Americas, which is built on the site of old Metropolitan Stadium.

This marks the 5o yard line of the football field. I made a little history – I was wearing a Lions jersey, so I am the only thing in Lions gear to ever cross midfield in that stadium.

Marta and Steve call out Kirk Gibson at home plate.

Toward evening, we walked to Target Field, to see the Twins play the Angels.

Pre-game rituals.

I had been to one other Twins game, in 1990, but that was a different stadium, so this would count as a new one. (Ramsey and I hope to see a game at every current MLB stadium before we die.) We were joined by old fishing buddy Bob Reine and his wife Shari.

From left, that’s Marta, Steve, Steve, Bob, Shari, Carol, and Ron.

I’ve been fishing with Bob off and on for the past 30 years, and we’ve shared some amazing trips, including my first (and only) three muskies.

We gritted out a Twins loss in light drizzle. Dinner that night was steak, always a favorite, and as we get late in these evenings, there always seems to be a new Ron/Carol/Steve college story, which typically begins with Carol getting Steve in trouble and ends with Little Bit biting someone.

The five of us after dinner. Carol is waiting for us to all look away so she can elbow Steve in the cheek.

The next day, we had tickets to watch my beloved Lions play Minnesota. The first NFL game I ever attended was also the Lions losing to the Vikings, on a miserable, sleeting day at Tiger Stadium with my father in the mid-1970s. And yes, even though the Vikings venue was amazing, the result was the same – the Lions wrenched a defeat out of the jaws of victory, which made Bob happy.

The field. It’s one of the best venues in the league, except that the Viking play there.

I’m still a bit annoyed at Ramsey for outfitting everyone with Vikings gear. Fun fact – everyone in this photo has won just as many Super Bowls as Fran Tarkenton, and, unlike Jim Marshall, we left the stadium heading the right direction.

Post-game, Steve, Ron, and Carol hit the road for the long drive back to Indianapolis, and Marta and I had dinner with Bob and Shari. It was great to relive some of the old fishing trips with Bob and our Macromedia days together. Marta and I flew out early the next day, taking off about the same time that there was an incident at a restaurant in a small town in central Iowa, that involved Ron, Steve, and Carol, mostly Carol. Until the lawyers can straighten out all the facts, I won’t report details, but suffice to say that the Ottumwa Ladies Prayer Brunch will never be the same.

Once we got home, my main task was to repack with clean underwear and new football jerseys, because another midwestern sports-oriented trip was coming up in less than two weeks. Of course, if I was going to travel, I was going to fish – but there was quite a logistical surprise waiting for me. Stay tuned.

Steve

SPECIAL HOLIDAY NOTE – 

As this one is being published just before Christmas, I wanted to put in a good word for a local organization that does amazing work with foster children – https://www.fosteringwishes.org/. As difficult as families can be on occasion, imagine being without one at the Holidays. Any donations are always greatly appreciated.