Well, like everyone, your narrator has been cooped up without much of a tale to tell. Since March 13th, we have been sheltering in place with the same small family garrison, carefully avoiding all of the projects and self improvement we always told ourselves we would engage in if we only had the time...You know, like the book you would write if only they would send you to prison for the kind of crime you really don't have the balls to commit.
I finally broke out for a dawn patrol exploration with Secret Skipper, who has also been a good citizen like me by staying fully at home and avoiding anyone who is not already totally sick of him.
We planned to head over to Catalina to try and score something good to eat for a Mother's Day dinner that would feature, as it must, home cooking. We were thinking calico bass, yellowtail, or maybe chasing the reds. We agreed to pack our own lunches, rather than invite the contagion of co-mingling.
I was giddy rummaging through my tackle and then going through the samurai discipline of taking just one bag of terminal gear and two rods. I left the house at 4 am and was at the ramp in San Pedro by 5 am. With minimal gear, compared to the siege warfare of lobstering, we basically just got on the boat and drove out of Cabrillo marina toward Mike's Bait barge in the pre-dawn darkness.
We got a nice scoop of 4-5 inch sardines, which remained lively until the survivors were released at the end of the day. We had heard rumors of a big yellowtail bite at the west end, so we headed for the east end and a chance to pick up live squid from the Carnage, which was supposed to be set up east of Avalon.
The ride over was easy and emerging gray light revealed a lot of overcast that would stick with us most of the day. We ran at a steady 31 mph and burned fuel at a rate of over 1.3 miles to the gallon, which is damn good mileage on a boat this solid with twin 250s. We spotted the lights of the Carnage right where he was supposed to be and got a great scoop of squid, which mostly settled down with our sardines, except for the ones savagely engulfed in their tentacles and torn to pieces.
We decided to fish the quarry off the east end at sunrise. We had the place mostly to ourselves, except for constant strafing from the seals who took turns taking our sardines right behind the head on every cast we made. We switched to squid and got a few bass that we released, along with some halfmoon. We decided to move up the island.
We fished Hen rock for a few more calicos and barracuda and then moved on to Empire, where the birds telegraphed yellowtail water. We saw a big one break water and the birds got busy. We anchored up well to the east of another Parker which was crewed by a Dad and his boys out for a fun day. We watched them pull in a calico and we started to get the same action as we fought off the seals and hoped the yellows would come our way. The dad then got into the stern and put a big arc into what was clearly a solid fish. It began taking line and he was pumping back against it. His kids were excited and he was handing it off to them to reel down and then taking over when the fish started to outmaneuver the young anglers. The Dad's generosity in giving his kids their turns was increasing the risk that the fish would get away, or that the seals would get their chance to lurk below the boat and pounce on an exhausted prize they could never catch on their own.
Sure enough, as the fish came to color and Dad went for the gaff, a huge bull sea lion erupted on the fish in a boil of tragic piracy. The yellowtail was way too big for the seal to simply gulp down, so it surfaced about 40 yards outside their boat and proceeded to thrash the fish to bits at the surface for the next 30 minutes while the disappointed kids looked on across a short stretch of water and the birds churned in a frenzy above that mayhem. Eventually, they pulled anchor and left their mocking tormentor trying to gator down chunks of the prize they came so close to capturing for themselves. We caught a few more mediocre bass, halfmoon and a sheephead before heading west.
By late morning we had only landed a few keeper calicos and Skipper was debating chasing the radio fish that were supposedly wide open at Eagle Rock on the other side of the west end. We did not want to go there and had several other spots in mind on our constant probe to the west. We then stopped at a very familiar and versatile spot near the Isthmus, where we metered around before selecting a spot for the hook in 60 feet of water that would put our stern above a steep decline and a strong west current. It was a good corridor for calicos and the right structure through which yellows or even a white seabass might flow. There were other spots nearby to try for deeper species and the current was perfect.
Using squid on leadheads and sliding sinker rigs, we each got a steady bite from calicos, including a nicer grade of fish. Then Skipper got lit up on a fish that started taking line in head-shaking pulses and he knew he had something good.
The fish was in heavy structure and Skipper masterfully worked the braid through the stuff near the bottom and got it up to where it was swimming free. He had to dance back and forth near the transom and bury his rod to keep the line out of the props a couple of times as the fish blasted several short bursts of power that caused us to speculate as to what it might be.
When it seemed like Skipper was finally gaining the upper hand, the fish just sort of gave up, which caused Skipper to say that maybe it was a white sea bass. Moments later, the fish came to color and showed itself to be exactly that. Skipper dragged it up and it laid out perfectly for a gaff shot I was poised to deliver right to the head.
Now, I consider myself to be a competent gaffer and nobody had been drinking, but somehow I managed to forcefully deliver a gaff shot to the gill plate that resulted in the gaff coming out of my hands and landing in the water beyond the proned-out croaker. I was mortified and instinctively reached down into the water, seized the head of the fish and dragged it up and into the boat just like I meant to do it that way.
I was so relieved to see this totally bitchen ghost of the sea stretched out on the deck instead of swimming away with Skipper glaring at me that I might have thought of Jesus for a moment (The Jewish one who died for my sins, not the Mexican one who is the God of fishing boat repair).
We admired the amazing copper to purple coloration on this unexpected prize until it was time to pull the anchor and start looking for the gaff that the current had so swiftly carried west.
We found it and then reset, but the current went abruptly slack and then, in a moment, turned a 180 and started eastward. We took this as a sign that we should cut fish and head home.
Skipper, as usual, did a handy job with the wet work and we were back in Pedro by 3 pm, having telephoned upgraded meal plans to our small circles of lucky diners.
We had our maximum allowable dining group attend a feast that started with cocktails amidst the always rare seabass sashimi, followed by a beautifully side-dished pile of seabass fillets.
Despite our efforts to chase these ghosts whenever we can, white seabass remains among the rarest and most appreciated game-consuming experiences our family ever gets to have.
We ate the calicos the following night as part of our official Mother's Day chow-down and honestly, they were just as delicious, if more familiar.
Here's hoping that brighter times are ahead, but even in what has been for most of us a crisis of inconvenience, we all know that
These are the Days.
On Friday, March 6th, I experienced the extremely rare double feature of having a Motion for Summary Judgment granted in my client's favor in Los Angeles Superior Court, and then going to San Pedro Harbor to run the table on the lobster one final time this season.
Because of my concern for LA traffic (which seems a quaint memory now), I left my house at 4:30 and arrived more than two hours early for my hearing, which in turn was made last on the court's calendar, so that we argued to a judge in an empty courtroom, where no one could hear the final gurgle of a lawsuit being put to death.
Since the judge went my way, I was suddenly free to head out for one last trip with Secret Skipper and to meet Isaac for his one and only shot at these critters since he returned home from his 5 month trek through South America. The truth is that I had planned this victory party regardless of the outcome (It's a Victory party and Somebody has to win), so I was going either way.
On my way down to the harbor, I stopped in Long Beach to have a giant breakfast with my brother Charlie. He chose a place and navigated me to the Pot Holder, which is a great place to get some eggs and marijuana, as one might surmise from its name. After dropping my brother off at his office and heading across the bridge to Pedro, I discovered that I left my cell phone at the restaurant, but managed to go back and find it, even though I did not remember where it was and had no cell phone or brother to guide me.
I then met Secret Skipper down at Cabrillo Marina where I changed out of my black suit/wingtip getup and into my Grunden rubber Lobsterwear. Isaac soon showed up with sandwiches and other provisions which were loaded onto the boat in carts we tried to stay in front of on a ramp that was dramatically steepened by a big low tide.
The moon would be mostly full, but we had no fear of lunar-inspired failure, as this has been a season like no other. We had an experienced crew of three, which is the ideal number for getting the hard work done without having too many limits to try and fill in one night. Skipper is the ruler and driver, I am the buoy grabber and line puller, while Isaac expertly coiled all of the line off the wheel and onto the deck so that our lines were as straight as if we had soaked them in Jeri-curl.
The ride over to the Island of Romance was windy and bumpy as it has been most every time we have gone, but that just keeps the fair weather crowds thinner. Skipper had secured fresh salmon carcasses and we bought eighty bucks worth of live sardines from Mike at the San Pedro Bait Company barge. Mike entertained us with one of the greatest stories about the relationship between fishermen and seals that I have ever witnessed, complete with stage-worthy acting out of certain scenes. I am forbidden by an oath I took from repeating any of it in writing, but ask me some time when we are together and consuming something other than Corona.
We arrived at the island early enough to get all of our gear deployed by 4:30 pm and do a little bass fishing. We caught no little bass, nor did we get big ones, despite saving some of our sardines for bait. Each sardine we threw was expertly eaten by the big seals which relentlessly plagued our efforts. We resorted to throwing plastics in a kind of half-hearted way to kill time before the now daylight savings delayed darkness would envelope us and allow the bugs to crawl our way.
We were stoked to get our gear deployed early because soon two other boats came over to start sewing their hoop pattern around ours. We sort of had dibs under the loosely interpreted Law of the Fish, but that did not stop these otherwise friendly fellow piscatorians from placing some of their gear in our way.
We started pulling at 6:15 and got some action in the deepest set of 300 foot rigs. We moved into the mid-range hoops we set in 150-200 feet and got even better results, giving us six solidly legal bugs before we got to our last three shallow hoops, which produced no legals.
We rolled back out for another set of pulls and things began to thin out. We did manage four more legals in the mid range set and so had ten in 20 pulls, which is usually a damn good ratio, but this year has spoiled us with expectations of easier limits.
We then began a long process of pulling mostly empty hoops and took many pulls to get to eleven. At that point, we were concerned that limits might not be achievable, but we all knew it was probably our last trip and nobody was remotely ready to puss out and go home.
We took a break from the constant pulling and ate our chips and sandwiches as the seas and wind became progressively calmer. One of the other boats reset their gear on both sides of our set, so we were treated to them churning back and forth across our set to leave us bobbing in their wakes as they checked their own gear. It was a bit of a party foul, but nothing worth mentioning to them. The other guys stayed shallow and left relatively early after a couple of unproductive sets.
We had many more empty pulls on our way to thirteen good sized specimens after four sets, but there was still activity worth chasing, including more short lobster and a rare (in southern waters) dungeness crab in one of the shallow hoops. It looked like it had recently molted and was too small to keep, but it was a good sign.
We also snared a decent sized and very ornery scorpionfish, which we tried to extract with Isaac's brand new pliers. That sparkling tool disappeared into the sea before we could properly engage its services and so we left the fish in the hoop to shelter in place until it could extract itself after we sent it back down.
It was past ten pm and our rate of catch was pretty meager. We had not caught a legal lobster in more pulls than we would consider promising to achieve our limit of 21. Skipper, who was used to being back in his bed early this season, then boldly predicted that we were about to start hitting hoops that would be holding more than one legal. This wizard-like prophecy came true and what became our last set started producing in what was now a glassy ocean. Skipper made the decision to start recovering and breaking down our gear before we had limits, which I consider a risky insult to the vindictive attention of the Gods of the Sea. Apparently, the Gods of the Sea really did not give a shit about our attitude. We made our triple limit in that set and ended up throwing back four legals as we enthusiastically harvested the final banzai charge these delicious marine lemmings would make against us this season.
We were done pulling and had all of our gear stowed by 11 pm. The ride home on a dead flat ocean was like butter. We cleaned up the boat, aided by a much flatter ramp in the high tide, snapped a picture of the unfortunate occupants of our ice chest and then divided up our catch for the parties we would get to host one more time this year.
We were home by 2:35 am, which is still earlier than we generally achieve in other years when we often come home with fewer lobster. I had been up nearly 24 hours, so sleep was pretty easy to achieve, although I knew when my head hit the pillow that we were going to have to get up and leave for Raahagues gun club by 8:15 am with all our gear and two dogs for the NAVHDA Rattlesnake training and shotgun shooting we had signed up for earlier this year.
As for that experience, I just wish that they had allowed us to take pictures, as it is a fascinating process where the dogs are essentially taken on a walk with a trained handler to encounter several rattlesnakes, which my dogs now believe are capable of jolting them with electricity after they get a chance to see, smell, hear and get way too close, as puppies will do. It was clear that our instructor was a big fan of rattlesnakes and held them in high regard. I decided to pretend that I did too, or at least refrain from pissing him off by telling him how many I had killed in my own neighborhood (none in the last year).
In any event, both of my 11 month old dogs were appropriately rattled by the experience and we decided to just skip the shotgun shooting part of our plans and head back to Dana for a big fat breakfasty lunch and a nap that would prepare us for the live band reggae party our neighbors were throwing Saturday night. We advised our hosts that we would not be bringing any of our lobster to their party, but would instead selfishly invite them over the following evening for a more exclusive dining experience.
I had an all too wonderful time at the party and woke up a bit furry in the mouth and sore from lobstering and dancing about, but Sunday night was the positive payback for getting up off the deck and cooking up our last steak and lobster pigfest of the season.
Your narrator managed to snap the mandatory Lobster-years photo of Tommy and David, clean and prep these bugs and start putting together another surf and turf experience befitting a Resident of the United States.
Our hosts of the prior evening, Stacy and John, are seasoned veterans of our family's eat-what-we-kill lifestyle They arrived with beverages, their daughter Zoe and her two fellow students from Marquette University, Tessa and Sarah. One of these girls claimed to have never tasted lobster, so we had a mission.
John, who is a form restaurant guy (See Plato's theory of the forms) and a culinary raconteur, is a great friend and always a most enthusiastic participant in these carnivorous gatherings.
Suffice it to say, that there was plenty to eat and even to take home for later consumption, as left-over lobster is one of the mightiest badges of pure luxury, in the same way as a donut side dish is regarded by some as a necessary passenger on any plate of surf and turf.
Well, things are certainly different now as real sequestration seems to have overtaken our carefree criminal lifestyle of consumption and interaction with one another.
By the way - Happy St. Paddy's Day even if this year's parade is more intimate than we would prefer.
Here's hoping that all of you are sheltering in place with something good to read after you get through this drivel, that you have more than the exoskeletons of lobsters with which to wipe your bums and that you never forget to remember that
On February 7th I got another invite from Secret Skipper, who has been totally on fire this year at the Island of Romance. We had to go on a Friday, which meant playing some hooky, but that would hopefully beat the crowds and Skipper has been running the table on rapid limits every time this year. I tried to recruit Tommy, David or Sarah to go with us, as they are licensed up, but Sarah had to work and the boys could not miss an afternoon of high school.
Your narrator got into work early, made some lawyer-like noises and then escaped the office to arrive at San Pedro by 12:45. There was a deep low tide that was just short of bottoming out, which made for a steep ramp from the parking lot down to the docks.We loaded up the boat in short order and headed over to San Pedro bait to buy sixty bucks worth of live bait to add to the salmon carcasses Skipper had bought at the fish market. The concept of live bait for cutting up and cramming into lobster bait cages might seem bit odd, but fresh is generally better than frozen and that is how they sell it. There is no discount for the dead stuff and the bait always seems to stay lively in the winter.
The Wizard at his station .
The weather had been very cold all week and we packed warm clothes to wear beneath our "deadliest catch" slickers. Conditions were brisk as we headed across the channel. We were set for a big full moon on Saturday and it would be up before the sun went down Friday night. This meant a lot of light and the likelihood of the lobster being more active in deeper water during a night of fishing that would barely supply darkness.
It was nearly the opposite of the lunar conditions from my last report, which documented quick limits.
When we arrived at our point of attack, we anchored up in pretty deep water to go through the important and disgusting task of taking a meat cleaver to the now moribund sardines and frozen salmon carcasses and cramming them into the upgraded bait cages that Skipper introduced as part of his technological warfare against these delicious insects of the sea.
We then put out each hoop and paid out all the line to make sure it was not tangled before we hauled everything back aboard and decided we were ready to start scouting for structure.
We were patient in finding some big stones and kelp, even in the water that was over 200 feet deep. We began a careful deployment of our deepest rigs (300 feet) in a ripping current that rushed underneath a sea surface that was rapidly calming down from its afternoon tantrum. We scoured the boat clean from all of the bait gore as soon as we made our set. This made the final cleanup at the dock a much quicker and less crust-infested task. We had all of our gear deployed by 5:15 and then it was time to mow down a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and wait for darkness, or at least less sunlight.
We began hauling gear in our two 300 foot hoops in very calm conditions. Each one had two big keepers and we were off to the races.
The mid-range sets also produced, including one which contained five legals and another three-plus pounder.
When we got to the shallows (under 100 feet) we continued to collect and had 11 legals, mostly pretty big ones, at the end of eight-pulls, Given that we were three away from our limit, we decided to start recovering gear and not send it back down while we were still on the first set, which is something I have never done. We had a few that only held shorts and one which held nothing but a very angry angel shark that somehow managed to get its entire self into the hoop, but the remaining hoops kept producing to the point where we got our 14 bug quota and again threw back a full limit in the next eight pulls. All legals were females.
We had all of the gear cleaned up and stowed away for the ride back by 7:15. The ride home was smooth and we were tied up and cleaning the boat by 8:35 pm. Clean up was swift and easy, in part because we pre-cleaned and also because we were back so soon that we did not experience the cranky fatigue that usually accompanies cleaning up and hauling the gear back up to the parking lot at 3 am. Even the tide cooperated with us by supplying a major high that leveled out the ramp for our off-load. This was the quickest and easiest lobster trip I have ever experienced.
I would have been home by 10:30 if the 405 was not reduced to one lane at several points on my path. As it was, my road time was forty minutes longer than it should have been, but I was home just a little after 11 pm. instead of staggering in at sunrise. I stashed a limit in the garage.
I had the boys stand in for the mandatory "Lobster Life" photo by which I have charted their development since they were toddlers.
We invited my kid-brother Charlie and his wife Shelby, along with their pointer Milo, who is brother to our Tashtego, to come over Saturday afternoon to plunder our catch.
These lobster invites are always a short notice event and we were lucky to catch them without plans, although their kids lost out on mass consumption by making plans for a Saturday night that did not involve wasting their time with the elderly.
This has been one of the most consistent seasons in more than a decade and we have been bringing home a nice grade of roaches. We are heading off to a Drug Lord vacation in Mexico, so this story will have to do for now. This lobster season still has legs and these creatures have been crawling. Eat them while you can can catch them, because
These are the Days
On the afternoon of December 27, secret Skipper took David and I out to the island of Romance for the last trip of the decade. It had been raining hard for two days and there was a one percent moon, so atmospheric and celestial conditions were aligned.
The ocean was still grumpy from the storms, but we hardnosed through the chop and figured it would be less crowded because of it. We baited with salmon carcasses and sardines. We made our initial set under the gaze of a bison that came grazing down the trail leading to a rocky overlook above us. It was really cool to see, even though this photo was taken in diminishing light. He had no idea.
We made our sets in three different bands of water, figuring that the bugs would be most active in the shallows in the aftermath of the runoff. We put five shallow (under 100 feet); two medium (140 to 180) and three in deeper water beyond the 200 foot level, looking for structure and kelp at every location.
All the sets were made as the bison slowly meandered toward where we drifted close to shore, waiting for darkness to engulf us and get the critters crawling. In the early twilight, a thin crescent moon eased up low in the southwest horizon and went back down before we even noticed it was gone.
Our first pull in the deep set produced a great lobster that did not require measuring. Getting started that way provided an optimistic vibe, for sure. Most of the rest of the hoops produced bugs, some of which were shorts, while others easily made the grade. We got 8 in the first set of ten and were really stoked.
We moved a couple of the shallow hoops out into deeper water when we reset and then began a second run of collecting. We had several pulls with more than one legal and threw back several that were right at the gauge line. They seemed to be crawling almost everywhere but we had two hoops that were producing the majority of our biggest ones. After the second pass we had 17 and reset to just go right back to pulling the first one again. Three pulls in, we had limits of seven each and began to recover gear to break down, stack and head back to San Pedro. Once again these bugs were everywhere and we threw back at least a limit just getting our equipment back on board for the ride home.
We got the last shallow one over the rail and into the stack when our attention was drawn to a blinding searchlight sweeping the escarpment above us. We turned around to see what it was, but we were sightless looking back into it. We then saw the beam hover over a spot and our bison was completely lit up. It was right at the edge of column of rock that plunged vertically into the sea, which is exactly what that bison did as we heard a deafening crack from the direction of the searchlight source. The bison's left rear leg collapse and it began clopping the rock with its forelegs and turning to the left. This movement caused it to cantilever over the edge and rebound from a barnacled boiler rock into the quiet water of the cove like a calving glacier.
We heard a high-pitched outboard whine approaching us and then the light was on us. Again, we were blinded. Almost instantly, a rigid inflatable boat (RIB) with three wardens was bumping up to our port side and throwing ropes over our cleats.
The first warden hurdled onto our deck and announced their authority to inspect our licenses and the live bait tank full of big lobster. Our California lobster cards, which are three feet long, were uncoiled like rolls of toilet paper for inspection of what we had recorded as our harvest.
" I see that you have not used New Times Roman text in your inscription for your lobster harvest. You need to be aware of that your printing looks like Italics. I could give you a ticket, or even confiscate your boat right now for that violation alone, so those bugs in your tank better be legal."
As they peered into the tank with their headlamps, I could see that they were impressed by the size of the members of our limit. I couldn't help myself and decided to speak. "Hey officers, did you just shoot a buffalo off that cliff with a rifle?"
"Who are you, Dick Tracy? We'll do the questioning around here. Give us your camera phones for now. We will return them to you if you check out." Skipper, David and I exchanged confused glances.
"Where did you get those lobsters?
"Right out there, in deeper water." Skipper pointed toward the lights of the mainland.
"Are they still crawling?"
"Well, yeah, I guess so. In fact I've never seen them crawl so consistently", was Skippers careful response.
We then heard the sound of a diesel engine as this weird barge pulled up from where the zodiac boat had come. It was manned by three more wardens and had a hydraulic crane mounted in the center.
"This is the Wildlife Therapy Float, or WTF, which is paid for not only by your fishing license fee, but also through a special lobster card fee duplication program we have to fine your for not turning in your lobster card, even if you actually turn it in and send us proof that you did."
I exclaimed back "Hey, that is exactly what happened to me! I got fined when I bought my new card this year for not reporting my harvest. I sent a copy of the the thank you email from DFW and the confirmation number for my timely reporting of last season's harvest, but they sent me an email saying that they were just keeping the money, because they had achieved possession of my payment and there is a specific Finders/Keepers provision in the code which makes it conclusively presumed to be DFW property."
The guy who seemed to be in command looked right at me and pointed his finger. "That is exactly how this program is intended to work and our WTF vessel is part of that program."
"I am still not sure I understand how this program is supposed to work," I responded.
"Okay, I am about to show you. First of all, Skipper, can you redeploy another set?"
Skipper answered "I guess so, but we already have our limit."
"My wardens don't, so here is what you are going to do. I am going to take your two passengers hostage on our barge and you are going to take two of my wardens out for another set because we prefer not to have to eat this bison without lobster."
"What?"
"Just do what I say and you will understand. I am a sworn officer of the law and a protector of wildlife. Do you guys have a couple of gaffs we could use to maneuver that buffalo into the sling we have on the crane?"
Skipper said yes and David and I jumped onto the WTF with the gaffs. Skipper motored way with the two wardens and began resetting our gear. We had already discarded our bait, so the wardens replenished our bait cages with some chunks of bloody seal meat from a cooler they off loaded from the WTF barge.
David and I stood by with our gaffs as we idled up to the carcass, which was slowly drifting with the tide into deeper water. We gaffed each end of it and the wardens guided it rather expertly into the sling. The winch on the crane groaned a bit as this animal that must have weighed close to a ton was strapped into a spreader bar and inverted above the water immediately adjacent to the rail.
As they were engaging in what seemed like a very practiced routine, I asked them what it was that they were doing.
"This is part of a new program whereby Fish and Game wants to personally share the experience of its constituents by engaging with them."
"I mean with the bison."
He looked at me as he momentarily backed away from the spots in the hide he had been carefully notching with a Kukri knife. "Oh, we are allowed to shoot one bison a week, to take measurements and stuff....but then we get to eat it and then mail our feces into the DFW lab where they document it."
"Document it for what?"
"For evidence of human feces of course."
One of the wardens inserted the end of an air pressure hose into the notch which had been cut into the hide and then turned on the compressor, which fired up in a startling grind. He inserted the nozzle into the notch in the hide and squeezed the lever. The hide began inflating and separating from the carcass. They pulled it completely off in a flurry of pneumatic tearing. They spread the hide out on the deck and then pulled a heavy duty SAWZ-ALL from a coffin-sized tool chest. It had a 14 inch stainles steel reciprocating blade. The warden handling the saw put on goggles and a Grunden rubber overall-and-jacket combination. He began butchering off slabs of prime bison meat that the other wardens helped peel off with the gaffs like the crew of the Pequod harvesting blubber under Ahab's watchful eye. They worked with unbelievable precision and purpose.
Our attention was drawn to the leeward. Skipper and the two wardens tied up alongside with twenty more lobster and got off the boat.
The head warden then addressed me again. " I ran your GO ID on our DFW database. Your story about the bogus fine checks out. Because of our mistake in assessing a fine against you when you had done nothing to deserve it, we are awarding you guys thirty-five pounds of delicious buffalo steaks to take home with you. In addition, I want to also say that the Skipper of this boat is, without a doubt, the finest lobster skipper I have ever met in 47 years of writing tickets and protecting wildlife for this remarkable state agency, as evidenced by his harvest of twenty lobster for my two men in just one set. We will all get to celebrate the end of the year with locally caught surf and turf. Now, please get away from here and speak to no one about this." He handed back our cell phones.
We remained puzzled, but decided to do as we were instructed. It had been both a confusing and educational experience.
We cleaned up in San Pedro and divided up our catch. All of the bugs we caught were females.
I invited a bunch of our pals to come over for a pre-New years eve get-together.
Tommy and David stood in for the obligatory "Lobster Life" documentation.
After prepping all day, your narrator shook up and assisted in consuming a Liquidity of Manhattans.
I dared anyone to not eat all of the bison steak and lobster that they could possibly ram into their digestive systems.
The food all came out pretty well and our diehard Packer neighbors were able to celebrate their team's victory in style, rather than coming over and inflicting buzz kill.
This was the the most consistent crawl I have ever seen in decades of lobstering. We met a bunch of righteous guys from the Department of Fish and Game who proved to us how much this agency cares about wildlife and legal justice. Once again, we learned a lot more about the constant innovation the Department is injecting into its experimental programs to improve the experience of their license buying constituents.
I realize that I was told not to talk about this program, but it is really too peculiar to keep secret and nobody is really going to read this post anyway. If you do, don't tell.
There, I think that counts as confidentiality.
Wishing all of you a great start to a New Year and a new set of experiences, or at least more of your favorite ones.
These Are the Days.
A couple of weeks ago I went over to our offshore spot with Secret Skipper to chase lobster. It was raining on the front end of an approaching storm, so we had the island to ourselves. We kept at it through the weather, nabbing limits evenly distributed between deep and shallow sets.
We played a lot of name that tune with the radio on, but I could not get Skipper to stop singing his own version of Neil Sedaka's "Ooh, I Hear Lobster in the Rain."
We had our usual follow-up foody gathering at home, as well as the obligatory growth chart photo of the boys with this season's first bugs. It was a good start and a hopeful harbinger for good rainfall this year.
On December 21, to celebrate the Winter Solstice, which is always a particularly meaningful waypoint in the seasonal calendar for me, I took our bastard barbarian pointer Tashtego and joined Robert and Todd at 4 am on a hunt near Mount Palomar for the opening day of a week-long band tail pigeon season. The altitude and uphill hiking in the darkness was a bit of a challenge for me, but Robert and Todd are experienced outdoorsmen and they showed the way.
The weather was windy and cold, with the advanced guard of the front that now has us all in its grip. This type of pursuit involves full camo forest hunting in pines and oaks. Hunters find a hidden spot in the trees with a decent field of fire, or put a stalk on birds that had settled in among nearby branches. We were using #4 shot and full chokes.
The birds were pretty sparce where I was. I never got a shot off, but Robert filled out his two bird limit and Tash was relentless in his retrieves, recovering both birds in the steep tangle. Tash eventually decided to mostly follow Robert around instead of me.
Even though he is only eight months old, he has tremendous hunting drive and already knows how to sort out and associate himself with the most talented hunter in the group. We also hit the area around Julian for some productive glassing for deer. Both the hiking and driving featured beautiful scenery. The trip was a great way to mark the shortest day of the year before this big weather drove us all inside toward the fire, the food and the fellowship that calls us home this time of year.
As we look back on another year, it is important to remember the opportunities we have made to celebrate
and to toast our blessings
The Solstice is that darkest of days which gives us pause to roll back through the year of memories and look forward to brighter days to come.
We added a couple of new family members
and caught a glimpse of adventures to come
We savored the occasions to walk together
and apart
Once again, the longest of nights has passed and we are in the realm of expanding light as we begin another round of chances to hang out and cash in our time with one another.
Neptune has issued the biggest tides of the year and Apollo has regained celestial primacy. May memory always allow me to celebrate this seasonal turning point with my favorite song from the Optimistic Land of OZ.
"We're out of the Woods,
We're out of the Dark,
We're out of the Night.
Step into the Sun,
Step into the light.
Winter's big weather is surely on the way, but we have once again rounded the horn on the battle between light and darkness.
May the advancing light of a newborn year show us a path to make more memories, a better world, and never let us forget that
THESE ARE THE DAYS
We had Thanksgiving week set aside from work and school, so we dialed up Mendel Woodland and set up a hunt for Tuesday of that week. The hunting crowd would be light and the big rain was not set to hit until the next day.
Our companions on this walkabout were Ryan Stewart and his son Alec. We were joined by expert breeder/handler David Awbrey and his son Gabriel, who came out to help us with the dogs we got from David's Mudbone Kennels six months ago.
Tommy, David and I got the dogs and gear into the car late Monday afternoon and pointed the truck toward El Centro around 4:45 pm, which is the wrong time to start a trip down that way. We hit some traffic and decided to stop in the cool altitude of Alpine, where we were seated at the dog friendly patio at the Alpine Tavern.
Our jackets came in handy and the burgers were really good. We forgot our dog food, so we had to splurge on multiple grilled chicken breasts for Dersu and Tashtego.
The delay allowed Alec and Ryan to catch up and arrive first at our overnight destination at the Quality Inn in El Centro. We purchased emergency dog food at the CVS across the street.
We got up early and made it to the motel's captive Denny's for a big fat breakfast and then took the 20 minute drive to Mendel's place. Mendel was waiting for us when we got there and we all headed out to the fields after Mendel awarded us cool hats.
Dave joined us with his muscular Vizsla Vince, who relentlessly swept the field that held both rooster pheasant and chukar partridge.
Our pups were both stoked to be out there, but Dersu soon let us know that he was more interested in getting back to our base camp of trucks and chairs. We substituted Tashtego soon thereafter and Dersu passed on his second rotation when we tried to work him into the line up.
David added a headless bonus hen that flew right at and directly above him as he torched off a round. Ryan and Alec also got in decap shots, which makes for a clean presentation at the dinner table and a spectacularly disturbing separation in the moment of impact.
Vince was relentless in his pursuit, as he began pointing on birds as we worked Tash into the point on the end of a 30 foot lead, as Tash is not to be trusted to stay close in a field full of birds and bird scent.
Although we had a few get away from our gunfire and also the pursuit of the dogs, we hit most of our targets, including several multi-chukar flushes that startled out of the dense alfalfa in a panic of percussive wing bursts.
Everyone got in on the action and made some really nice shots. My phone battery died, so I did not get any photos in the field.
Just like last time, we were treated to a great military display from the nearby Naval Air Station. We watched as helicopter gunships made strafing runs with rockets and cannons that produced flaming gunfire and staccato thumps of ground impact.
Dave, Gabriel and their cool dogs had to leave us after we had done most of our damage, but Tash kept hunting the strays that escaped us earlier and we eventually tallied up 16 pheasant and 9 chukar for the day. Tash was not perfect and left a couple downed birds we could not find (without a dog) to chase after new prospects when we let him off the leash, but he still got us four birds in a final pass from which perfect gundogmanship would have produced six.
David, as usual, got in a few solo gunslinger photos as Tommy chased Tashtego into the horizon. He totally ran off after a stray bird when we came back and started to set out the dead birds for the photo session that he avoided, along with Tommy, who came back for one last picture.
Upon his return, Tash also availed himself of the opportunity to run loose through the camp and catch my mirror-finish 25 year-old Weatherby on his long lead before taking it on a gun-bashing sleigh ride through the gravel of an irrigation ditch. The gun is likely to outlive both dog and master, so Tash has carved his own love note on a classic double gun that had survived scores of hunts without blemish.
Ryan and Alec gather behind the Plank of Plenty. Note the Weatherby's last place of rest in the photo of the two hunters, before Tashtego tore through camp in Tommy's fleeting grasp.
Victor and his boy came to the cleaning shack after our hunt to help us clean and bag our bounty, as we had seriously dawdled in the pursuit of our indefatigable Chocolate German.
With Tash escaping like Major Shears from the camp on the River Kwai, Dersu trolled Colonel Saito beneath a bridge of birds he could not build himself.
After we said our goodbyes to Victor, we headed back hungry for a dinner stop at Montana Jane's in Alpine. This time, we left our dirty, exhausted dogs resting in their kennels inside the truck as we had a really great dinner beneath a moose antler chandelier in the perfect atmosphere of their dining room. Alpine is the most logical and picturesque midway stop on this trip from southern Orange County.
We managed to hit a bit of traffic, finding that taking the 15 north instead of the 805 west offered no secret Northwest passage away from lengthy stretches of brake lights. Both dogs and humans submitted to a thorough bathing process upon our return.
Once again, we found room for improvement in our own experience and what we can expect from our dogs. At this stage of our team's hunting development, Dersu is chasing a more polite and ornamental identity. Tash needs restraint from his Ahab-like pursuit, up with which we cannot keep.
In recognizing our reality, the e-collars have been ordered, but both of these dogs are already smarter and more loyal to America than Devin Nunes will ever live to be.
Ryan planned what sounded like a great Pheasant-featured Thanksgiving dinner. We jumped the gun and had a bunch over for a pre-Thanksgiving game bird feast with many side dishes and sobriety-quenching beverages. We slow-cooked the pheasant leg/thigh sections in a hoison/citrus vinegrette. We roasted the chukars in little bags after marinating them in lemon-pepper-garlic dressing and rubbed and roasted the pheasant fore-sections in bacon jackets.
Utilizing these culinary variations, we were able to stretch out our stomachs in an exercise from the Book of Yoga for Gluttons, allowing us to digestively limber-up for the eat-to-win contest with our relatives the next day.
Later, the carcasses were used for my traditional cauldron of pheasant soup that is a recipe straight out of MacBeth's Book of Primitive Hospitality. We hope that you all enjoyed good company in whatever celebration you arranged as we roll into what sure looks like winter weather. The longest tides of darkness are now upon us, but the fires are out, the mornings are crisper and
These Are The Days
