Farrokh Bulsara

DATELINE: JANUARY 31, 2019 – KAZIMKARI, ZANZIBAR

Our second morning, we decided to make the 35 mile run to Zanzibar, so I could add one more country to my list. (It’s semi-autonomous, and I go by the Century Club listing, so, for example, Wales and Gibraltar would count as countries, Cleveland might, but Berkeley doesn’t no matter how much they complain.) Mohammed is from Zanzibar, so he knew the coastal waters very well, and he was certain that the fishing there would be better than what we had found in Tanzania. As it turns out, they thought that pretty much everything in Zanzibar was better – there is a definite rivalry between the two. Hamissi was quite proud of his Zanzibar soccer jersey – I never did find one to take home.

It was a bumpy run all the way over, two hours of my tender buttocks banging on a sliver-laden wooden plank. You have no idea how hard it is to dig slivers out of your ass using a pair of tweezers, laying across the bathroom counter to use the mirror, and I pray you never find out. (Unless you work for Lufthansa customer service, in which case, may a forest of dry oak fragments violate your hamstrings. I tried to change one of my flights down here by one day, to a nearly empty airplane, and you would think I asked them to sacrifice their children.)

In the swells, I was mostly concerned with keeping breakfast down, but now and then, I would look over my shoulder and see if land had come into view. Finally, there it was – the coastline of Zanzibar. I’m not sure what associations Zanzibar may have for you, but for me, there is only one – it is the birthplace of Farrokh Bulsara. I can hear you asking – “Who, or what, is Farrokh Bulsara? And why, Steve, are you going on another one of your tangents?” Because Farrokh changed my life. He was a singer, and it was his soaring voice that provided the soundtrack for my high school years. He was born in Zanzibar, and years later, after his family had emigrated to England, he fronted a band. He changed his name to Freddie Mercury, and as you know from here, the band was Queen.

“A Night at the Opera” was the first album I ever bought with my own money.

“We are the Champions” is what Sean Biggs and I belted out at the top of our lungs when we finally won the BHA Bantam hockey title in 1978, but for some reason, another song came to mind when I saw Zanzibar.

I want it all, I want it all, I want it all

and I want it now

I had my Seaside Rendezvous in Zanzibar. Now all I had to do was catch a fish, and I would be at 94 countries. We dropped anchor on the edge of a big reef and started dropping baits. After a few tentative nibbles, something went full-bore after my squid strip and started peeling line. It was an emperor, and a decent one – bigger than anything I had gotten on day one. This family of fish is found through the Indo-Pacific, and they pull hard. It was a great start.

Kids, don’t try to ID these yourself. They can change colors and patterns pretty much randomly.

We went through a few decent fish – all larger than our catches yesterday. Groupers, jacks, rabbitfish – all good fights, but nothing new. (Not that I really worried about it at the time – good fishing is good fishing.) Mohammed and team kept changing spots, which doesn’t seem like much until I explain that they had to manually pull a heavy anchor out of the reef every time we wanted to reset. A normal fishing guide doesn’t usually work this hard – these guys really wanted to see me catch every possible fish.

A white-edged lyretail grouper. Marta caught this species several years before I finally did.

Spotted rabbitfish. These are very, very venomous – do NOT put this in your pants.

I was not going to bring four pounds of jigs all the way from the USA and not use at least one – that’s not how we Play the Game. I started tossing a one ounce metal lure over the reef. I had several hits before something stayed hooked – it unceremoniously ripped out 200 yards of line and broke me off on the reef. I was disgusted, but The Show Must Go On, and even though I was Under Pressure, I raced Headlong into casting another rig as soon as I could tie it. I thought “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and I hooked up again almost instantly. It was another fast, line-peeling fish, and after about 15 minutes, I landed a nice orange-spotted trevally.

I’d caught them before, but they’re A Kind of Magic fish.

Later in the morning, I cast some sabikis to check on the small fish. I got some of the usual goatfish and monocle breams, but then I hit a sandperch that looked like it could be new. Courtesy of Dr. Jeff Johnson of the Queensland Museum, it was identified as a spotted sandperch.

I love these things.

The next new species threw me off a bit on the ID. I’m sure you would look at that long tail and think it was some kind of anthias. Me too. But it wasn’t. If you look closely, especially at the face, you can tell it’s a really frilly version of a hawkfish.

My second species of the day and 1835 overall. This is the general size of anthias species, which is what threw me off so badly in Kenya last year.

On my next sabiki drop, I had a few taps and then a solid thump. When I set the hook, the rod stopped dead, and then the fish took off for Diego Garcia. Big fish sometime eat sabikis, and this is usually a time of quick and painful reflection, in the instant before the line breaks. But I was using P-Line sabikis (which use a heavier leader than Hayabusas) so I had a chance. I backed off on the drag and chased the fish around the rail for half an hour. I slowly started making progress, and after a 38 minute fight, we landed a green jobfish.

Jamie Hamamoto would call this an “uku.”

It’s always hard to get me away from bait, but late in the afternoon, I saw some fish splashing around the edge of the reef and started tossing a “Mad Hungarian” swimbait. A few casts later, I got smashed – whatever it was peeled line off so fast I thought about pulling anchor. But there is always a lot more braid on a spinning reel than you think there is, and I managed to turn the fish before I got spooled. It was a splashy, aerial fight, and as it got closer, I could see it was a needlefish. But which needlefish? If it was a regular Agujon, it would be a nice catch, but if it was a keel-jawed needlefish, it would be a world record.

I believe it is a keeljaw, and as of press time, the record application is pending at the IGFA. My first keeljaw was with Jamie in June of 2016.

I went back to the small baits on the reef and got another group of emperors and goatfish, followed by a big hit and a screaming run on my lightest spinning rod. I ended up landing a larger version of our old friend – the red-toothed triggerfish.

At a pound and a quarter, it would be world record #192. I was breaking a record set in Oman in 2011. Another One Bites the Dust.

It was getting late in the afternoon, and we had a two hour ride home ahead of us, so I had Mohammed start us on our way. I got the feeling he would have stayed out past dark if I asked – the whole crew really seemed to want me to catch as much as I possibly could. About halfway home, we spotted birds diving, and as we got closer, we could also see tuna boiling everywhere. Mohammed skillfully positioned us upwind and we drifted into the feeding frenzy, close enough for me to fire a metal jig into the fracas. I hooked up immediately. It was a hard, vibrating fight, clearly some kind of tuna. It turned out to be bullet tuna, about three pounds, and as I landed it, we were still in the center of the action.

A bullet tuna. I’m not sure if that blood is from the fish or my leg.

I got another, and another, as quickly as I could clear the jig and cast again. Then, just like that, the birds moved off and the school disappeared. You might say things took a tern for the worse.

We ran to Zanzibar again the next day, over a much smoother sea. The ride passed quickly, as I had learned to take a hotel bath towel to belatedly pad my poor, splinter-afflicted buttocks. This was about as sore as my rear end has ever been, and my rear end has been pretty sore a few times, but this felt like Death on Two Legs.

We anchored up a bit further north than we had yesterday, and I immediately caught a hogfish, the same species I had whined about already catching in Hawaii when I got it in Kenya last year.  But, just like Cousin Chuck’s honeymoon, things got confusing quickly. It turns out that the hogfish in Hawaii, Bodianus albotaeniatus, is endemic to Hawaii. And that means that this hogfish is indeed something else – B. bilunulatus – the tarry hogfish, which is what I thought I had been catching all along. Species hunting is an endless process of learning – no ID is ever fully safe.

A new species! Hurray! The Kenya blog has been updated. I This would count as species 1836. 1836 is the year Davy Crockett died at the Alamo. Although the Fess Parker version is my favorite, Billy Bob Thornton gets big points for his line “So you’re Santa Ana. I thought you’d be taller.”

I went about my morning, unaware that these life-changing developments awaited me once I got back online. We got a few more red-toothed triggerfish, and one of them was a beast – a pound and a half. This broke my record from yesterday and would qualify as record #193.

That’s a big red-toothed triggerfish.

This is why they are called red-toothed triggerfish.

The morning passed pleasantly. We had relatively flat water, Good Company, the fish were biting, and every bite was a chance of something new and unusual. I started pulling up pennant coralfish – a species I had gotten before in Thailand, but always a thrill to see.

Nemo fans – this is NOT a Moorish Idol.

Throughout the three days of the trip so far, I had always set one medium rod out on the bottom with a big lump of squid, hoping to attract a moray. I knew there were some interesting eel species in the area, both for my lifetime total and for world records. We’d had a couple of decent bites thus far, but no hookups. I was staring expectantly at the rod tip, because I do that sort of thing, and it finally did what I wanted it do. It pulled down hard, about six inches, then pounded a few times and went down another six inches. Then it slowly sank until the rod tip was nearly in the water. I pulled the rod out of the holder and gently reeled into what turned out to be a short but violent fight, and when the fish surfaced, I was thrilled. It was a laced moray, a new species and what I thought was world record #194. (I turned out to be below the IGFA “half of maximum size” requirement – turns out these things get really  huge.

I may be the only person who likes to catch these on purpose, but I was ecstatic with a new species.

Once of the more attractive morays I have ever gotten, and it didn’t bite off any fingers, so that’s a plus. I released it in the harbor after we weighed it later, and the crew was not pleased to have it swimming around in ankle-deep water.

I couldn’t help pulling out the small, metal lures late in the day. I got a few familiar jacks, but I also landed one that I didn’t think I had seen previously.

This is a coastal jack – a new species and #1837 if you’re playing along at home.

It was late when we finally set a course for Dar es Salaam, but I could tell Mohammed was reluctant to interrupt a great day of fishing.

Mohammed and the crew. They worked their tails off to make it a great trip.

Pulling in to Oyster Bay. I fed Bahati the kitten again when we landed.

We didn’t see any tuna on the way home, which was fine, and as we eased into Oyster Bay, I knew I had a surprisingly good chicken quesadilla ahead of me – and one more day of fishing.

Steve

PS – See how many Queen song titles you can find in the text. The bidding starts at 10.

 

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