Bloop Bloop

     The year 2021 kind of ran together in a blur. It wasn't quite as weird as 2020, but definitely still not back to normal pre-pandemic life either. I did manage several trips over to the West side of the state to chase some species both new and old. My ladies accompanied me on a few of them. Beaches were explored, hikes were taken, and perfectly nice sunsets shots were ruthlessly photobombed. 

Driftwood bridge over a small creek near Westport, WA.

Weirdly strait rock formations on the beach.

 

We were disappointed to find no bears at all in this hollowed out log.

Mushroom-covered logs are always fun.

 

Two of my favorite people. Crazy that they're both teenagers now.

Shenanigans. I just wanted a nice scenery shot showing the sunset. But nooooo.

On one such excursion, I had my first encounter with a European Green Crab.

While quite colorful, these little crabs are an unwanted invasive species in Washington.

 

      And of course no childhood is complete without at least one trip to the Olympic Game Farm. My kids didn't believe me when I said we were going to "go get licked by a buffalo", but no lies were told there!

Elk Kisses, 9/10, enthusiastic but a bit sloppy.

Yak kisses, 1/10, this dude was way to into it. Just no.

Bison kisses, 7/10, good enthusiasm but a bison-size tic-tac would have done wonders for this guy.

 

Bring wet wipes if you go. Bison drool does have a certain unfortunate aroma to it.

 

      As for the fishing portion of the post: West Coast bottom fishing is one of my all time favorite things to do. I tried out a few different charters and caught mostly the standard stuff, mostly Black Rockfish and Lingcod.

Black Rockfish, by far the most common catch on virtually all bottom fishing trips in Washington and Oregon.

I got a photo upgrade for Brown Rockfish with this decent sized specimen. I've caught many of these, but almost all of them have been juveniles.

 

Quilback Rockfish. Another photo upgrade.

 

      One technique I've always wanted to try was catching flatfish then using them for Lingcod bait. On a trip in April out of Westport, I got to try it. We motored out to the fishing grounds and first started fishing for the bait. Being a species guy, this was just as fun for me as the "actual" fishing.

Most of the "bait" we pulled up were Pacific Sanddabs like this one. Not a new one, but definitely a photo upgrade here.

 

I also pulled up a few of these. Butter Sole, species 138!

      Once we had enough flatfish for everyone to use, we hooked them up and held on tight. The Lingcod (my all time favorite species) were large and cooperative.

The coolest fish out there if you ask me.

 

     At this point in the blog, I should introduce my friend Bret. He's another species hunting guy who lives near the Puget Sound, so we fish for a lot of the same stuff. We've compared notes a few times and shared spots and tips for a few species. Go check out Bret's YouTube channel "Peeling Line". He's got cool stuff on there. Bret will be making appearances in a few upcoming blog posts, so you two faithful readers, stay tuned!

     Anyway, Bret gave me a particularly exciting hot tip in May about a Tubesnout spot in the Seattle area. If you're not a species hunter, I'm sure I just lost you there when I said hot tip and Tubesnout in the same sentence; but if you're still reading, you're my kind of people! These tiny fish with even tinier mouths are not particularly hard to find at many of the piers in Puget Sound, but I had not been able to trick one into biting, despite numerous attempts. So when he posted a picture of one he had actually caught, I was definitely intrigued. After getting the details and some tips, I realized I was pretty time-limited that weekend, and only had one day free. I didn't want to miss out on the "hot bite" though so it would have to be a looong day trip. Four hours in the car each way makes for a long day even if you don't stop to fish much. I won't pretend there was some epic battle, or that I had trouble harpooning the beast and hauling it over the rail. Basically I spent most of the morning not catching anything, then on one of the last casts before I had to leave, I reeled in a fish I didn't realize was on the line. Luckily, this totally counts! Definitely worth the 8+ hrs in the car that day for a cool new species.

Species 139! Tiny yes, but this was actually one of my favorite catches of the year. They look just like stretched out stickleback.

    

I mean, just look at that smile.

The front view of the beast. I promise there's a fish there.

      On another weekend, Mrs Bryanlikestofish and I had to go back to Seattle to pick up our kids from the airport on their way back from their extended stay with grandparents in Ohio. There was an afternoon free to fish, so I met Bret at a spot where I hoped to catch more Starry Flounder (see this post for my first Starry Flounder). He had caught both right eye and left eye specimens, so I wanted to do the same. And sure enough, it didn't take long this time to catch several examples of both kinds. My daughter astutely pointed out that this is not unlike catching the Alolan version of a pokemon. She's not wrong. Gotta catch em all!

Puget Sound is fun because it contains a population of both left eyed (top) and right eyed (bottom) Starry Flounder. The distinction is based on the side of their face where their eyes are positioned. Most species of flatfish are either right or left eyed, but not usually both.

 

      The trip was going pretty well up till this point. Fish were caught and the weather was nice. But things were about to take a turn for the worse, hard. I'm a pretty curious fellow, so I like to try and get a closer look at interesting things in the water when I can. On the end of the pier, there were quite a few tubeworms and various kinds of seaweed etc. visible just below the surface. So I bent over to check it out. A perfectly normal thing to do right? What I failed to take into account (see also: dumbest thing I've ever done) was the fact that I was wearing a t-shirt with a breast pocket, and in that breast pocket were my AirPods and (more importantly) the key fob to my car.

     Just as I spotted a particularly interesting anemone, I apparently bent just a hair too far over, and I heard the most ominous "bloop, bloop" sound I have ever heard. I of course immediately spotted the cause of the sound, and went strait to a 10 on the "oh crap" scale. If anyone is wondering if AirPods or key fobs float at all, I'm here to tell you that they do not. They both sink, quickly and without hesitation. They had both simultaneously fallen out of my pocket and had gone very quickly to the bottom of Puget Sound.

      For the first two seconds, I was just mad because both items were not cheap to replace. But as the third second ticked by, my stomach sank and it dawned on me that I was very much stuck here. After some choice expletives and rapidly trying to figure out how I would even be able to get my car home, I weighed my options. It was too late in the day to get to a car dealership to buy a new key fob. Would I have to tow the car to a dealership in the morning? Would they be open on a Sunday? Would my kids just decide to stay in Ohio where nobody throws their car keys in the ocean?? 

     Brittany was about an hour away in the hotel, but I didn't know if she had even brought her set of car keys on the trip; and this was not a phone call I was looking forward to. Something along the lines of "hi honey, I just dropped $500 in the ocean and now I'm stuck here with a car that I can't start". Finally I bit the bullet, tucked my tail between my legs, and called her. Thankfully she did in fact have her keys with her, so there was hope; they were just an hour away, without traffic. 

     We formulated a plan, but then Bret, in an amazing display of generosity, offered to drive me to the hotel to get the spare key and back to pick up my car that night. There was even a pier near my hotel that he wanted to fish while we were over there, so we could kill two birds with one stone, sort of. After stopping by the hotel for the key and apologizing to my wife for the first of many times, we went to Des Moines Pier for an evening of fishing and he even caught hist first Spotted Ratfish there, so at least there was something in it for him, other than the obvious heaps of good karma of course.

     It's almost a year later as I'm typing this, and it's almost to the point where I can laugh about the whole thing, but if I'm honest, my pride still stings from this one. I'm just glad Brittany and her spare key were only an hour away, and Bret was there and willing to help out. Bret if you ever throw your keys in the ocean, call me. I owe you one!

The replacement of the one that's still sitting in Puget Sound somewhere. Is this what the panic button is for??

A Dumpster Fire Yes, But a There Were Fish Involved

     I'm not going to pretend that the year 2020 was anything less than a raging dumpster fire for the most part, and I certainly don't want downplay at all any of the hardships that millions of people worldwide have gone through this year. My sincere condolences go out to all those that lost loved ones this year due to the pandemic. My intent here is merely to share some of the events that helped me get through this crazy year. "Focus on the positive" is an easy thing to say, if not always an easy thing to do. BUT, the social distancing and restrictions in place meant that some of the best places to be were alone on a lake, or alone on a mountain, or alone on a pier. As it turns out, these are some of my favorite places anyway!

My wife takes great care each year to select the perfect Christmas tree ornament to represent the year. This year she outdid herself. I present you the most appropriate ornament in the history of ornaments.

      My home lakes put out some nice fish this summer, which was helped by the fact that 2020 was the year I bought my first real boat! It's just a tiny thing, but perfect for social distance fishing, and it has an outboard big enough to get up on plane with, a decent foot controlled electric motor on the bow, a fish finder, and even a down-rigger (which I haven't yet had occasion to use).

Big panfish are hard to beat in my opinion.

     Foraging for wild edible things has become another socially distant favorite pastime of mine. I spent a good portion of the year hiking around various trails, mountains, and shorelines picking berries, mushrooms, and whatever else my book said was edible. It wasn't always delicious, but it was always fun! 

Amanita muscaria is one of my favorite mushrooms, and certainly one of the prettiest. These were not foraged however as they are too psychoactive for me.

     Berries were often the focus, and huckleberries are and will always be my favorite, so I spent more time filling the freezer with those than anything else. 

Huckleberry-Purplefinger is the best kind of skin condition to have.

Plus huckleberries are found in the prettiest of places!

      However, this year I decided to branch out and see what the other berry varieties had to offer. I believe I encountered 12 different kinds of berries all together and made eight of them into jelly, which has become one of my favorite hobbies.

The OCD in me is very bothered by the fact that the order of the berries in the bowls doesn't match the order of the jars, but I tried my best here. Berry varieties shown (jar order...) include huckleberry, mountain blueberry, Oregon grape, elderberry, chokecherry, wax currant, red elderberry, and salmonberry.

 

     Generally though just being outside in nature is my coping mechanism. As long as I can get out into the woods, or by some water periodically, I'll get by. It's even more fun when I can drag the kids along. 

This may be my favorite hiking picture ever. This was about 4 miles up the mountain.

We eventually made it to the top though and she added a rock to the top to make the mountain a few inches taller, "just like Moana did".

She's usually much more agreeable when hiking.

We did our best to break in the 'new' boat.

The new boat helped me get my personal best tiger trout

It helped us see this 40+ inch tiger musky right at the boat launch, but we couldn't get it to bite unfortunately.

Turtle hunting is always a favorite summertime activity. This is our smallest one to date.

A first for me, we discovered these snail case caddis flies. That's family Helicopsychidae for you entomology buffs out there.

 

     Other quarantine activities in our house included such shenanigans as custom mask making, giant Jenga, and my wife's favorite, adopting new kittens. 

If you have long hair, and you have to wear a mask, why not kill two birds with one stone?

She's getting into woodworking, so giant Jenga was a fun afternoon activity. Calculating, measuring, cutting, sanding, then knocking it all down!

This was the first kitten of the summer. I can't complain too much though. I have WAY more tarantulas than she has cats.

     The highlights of the year for me though were a couple fishing trips over to the west side of the state. The pandemic made this kind of thing harder to do safely, but I'm not exactly social when I fish, so I felt pretty safe just keeping to myself and getting some long sought after new species. I managed to knock off my two most wanted Puget Sound residents, and a few bonus ones as well.

     My first arch nemesis to bite the dust was the striped surfperch. I can't count the times I've gone somewhere specifically to try and catch one of these. Because it was a lot. I even went scuba diving at one of my fishing spots, and saw hundreds of them swimming around down there, but I can never get them to bite. I have sight fished to dozens of them. Nothing. My arch nemesis.

     Backing up to December 2019, one of my friends, Luke who is an amazing angler and species hunter (see https://caughtovgard.com/), was going to be in the Puget Sound area, so we exchanged some spots. I told him where I had caught a few species, hoping he could catch some of the same too. His trip came and went, and he caught (as he does) a LOT of fish. He sent me the list of species that he had encountered, and lo and behold he had found SOME (as in >1) striped surfperch, AND to add insult to injury he'd also caught some kelp perch. I had never even seen a kelp perch! Well played Luke. Well played. He of course shared how he had encountered these species, so I had a new game plan. 

     When I finally made the trip over there, I headed strait to the spot Luke had indicated. And proceeded to catch.. nothing on my old stand-by baits. But there was an older grandmotherly-type lady just down the pier from me pulling out small fish hand over fist. After some investigation and navigating a language barrier, I figured out that raw shrimp was the ticket. And soon I began to catch fish as well. I mostly caught the always ubiquitous shiner perch, which are common throughout the pacific northwest, but then a different colored one popped up! Species 133, the mighty kelp perch!

The first kelp perch I had ever seen!

These are not large fish, this is about as big as they get, but they have strikingly bold blue highlights mixed in with the orange if you look closely enough.

     I was excited to have caught my first target species of the trip, but still couldn't get the striped surfperch quest done, though the nice lady with the shrimp caught a few as I watched. I did add another sculpin species to the list (the padded sculpin), but I lost patience with the perch and went and hit some of my other favorite spots in the hopes of lucking into a starry flounder. 

#134 the padded sculpin!

These weird fish wouldn't bite anything I threw at them either.

Spiny dogfish closeup. Their skin feels like sandpaper.

This is one of the spines that gives them their name. Gotta watch out or they'll stick ya.

I even went and hit a surfperch beach and caught some nice redtail surfperch.

And of course, no trip to the Puget Sound would be complete without catching a few squid. This was one of my doubles. I still haven't got a triple yet, and I've only seen pictures of quadruples.

Whitespotted greenling continue to be one of my more common catches in the Sound. This one wasn't particularly large, but had nice coloration.

Ratfish are also quite common. Still one of the coolest fish out there.

This big female is probably one of my biggest ones yet.

This was only my second ever painted greenling. Another beautifully colored fish. They fight surprisingly hard for their size.

I like to pick through the seaweed when I bring it up. I couldn't decide who was cuter the seabug on the left, or the tiniest shrimp ever on the right.  Just kidding, the seabug is the clear winner.

  

     The next chance I got to hit the perch spot, I decided to just put in a day of sorting through as many shiner perch as it took. This was likely to get old pretty fast, but I needed to catch one! About an hour into this process, I pulled up what could have been another kelp perch, but I swung it over the rail gingerly just in case. After closer inspection, it was a striped surfperch! A very small one, but it still counted as a species!

I've never been so excited to catch such a tiny example of a species.

     With still plenty of the day left, I put on some bigger baits to see if I could get one of the bigger ones that I had seen caught. Yes I had caught the species, and yes it counted, but it would be nice to have something north of tiny to show for my efforts. It took a while but I eventaully found a spot with some larger specimens willing to play.

This one, I was more excited about. It's still not a big one, but it's starting to show some of the vibrant blue coloration and striping that this species is known for.

     Having caught what I decided was a respectible enough specimen, I decided to go hit one of my old favorite spots again. The spot where I had previously seen (and not caught) hundreds of striped surfperch both while scuba diving and while fishing.

      I of course saw plenty of striped surfperch there, but they of course wanted nothing to do with my offerings as usual. I did catch plenty of the normal stuff there though, just enjoying the day, until I decided it was time to go. I began cleaning up my things, packing up my rods, and I had a few extra pieces of shrimp left over, so I dropped them into the water for the crabs to eat. I gathered all my things and was heading back to the car. Before I did though, I decided to take one last glance over the edge at the surfperch. They were still there of course, and in fact there were more of them than there had been, and as I watched them, I realized that they were eating the shrimp! Well, not being one to miss an oportunity, I got out some more shrimp and re-baited my hooks and sent them down. To my great astonishment, I actually got a bite! And of course missed it, but that was the most action from those fish I had ever seen there! There were some real brutes swimming around, but I tried not to get my hopes up. I sent my hooks back down again, and waited. Just then, the largest fish of the bunch started swimming eratically and it took me a half second to realize that my rod was also bouncing! I had just hooked the best fish of the bunch! I had to stear it away from the barnacle covered pilons, and a ladder on the edge of the pier, but I managed to get him safely to the surface. I held my breath as I swung it over the railing. THIS was a striped surfperch! The electric blue splotches on its face, and stripes on its flanks. This was obviously one of the most beautiful fish I had ever held!

This will go down as my favorite catch of 2020.

Easily one of the most striking fish I've ever seen.

They really are that colorful.

     One arch nemesis was down, which left only the starry flounder. These are another fairly common one, that I for the life of me could not catch. For years. I have seen a couple of them swimming near the surface while squid fishing at night, but could never catch them. I think they get fished out from the piers pretty readilly as they're apparently quite tasty. Easier to catch from a boat, but tougher for a shore-bound fellow like myself. 

     A day or two after my striped surfperch adventure, I was daydreaming my way through YouTube as one does, and I came across a video on there showing exactly where and how to catch starry flounder, and it looked very promising. I have taken trips on much weaker leads than that, so on my next free day, off I went. The spot was just as good as it was in the video for me, with one exception; the starry flounder were absent. I enjoyed the day and did very well catching flat fish after flat fish all on plastic swim baits on drop shot rigs. It was great fishing, and I caught what I'm sure is my personal best rock sole, but again, no starry flounders.

This is a beast of a rock sole. I've caught a bunch of them, and this is by far the biggest.

It's tail reminded me of a big bear paw.

     Also of note, in Puget Sound, there are actually two species of rock sole; the southern rock sole (Lepidsetta bilineata) and the northern rock sole (Lepidopsetta polyxystra). They are very hard to tell apart visually. I've been told that really the only reliable way to tell them apart is by counting the gill rakers. However, in order to count the gill rakers, you have to kill the fish. I don't like eating fish from Puget Sound becasue of the polution, so I've never actually done gill raker counts on them. However, since both species are present in good numbers, statistically speaking, I'm all but positive I've caught both species, as I've caught several hundred rock soles over the years. But I've never been able to prove it, or been confident enough to count a fish as a northern rock sole. That was until on this day while searching for a starry flounder, I pulled up a fish that just looked different. They all pretty much look the same, but this one was off just enough that I took note. My fish ID books say that the space between the eyes is wider in northern rock soles, and that they also lack the creamy white highlights on the blind side that are present in southern rock soles. So I took a good look at this particular fish, and to make a long story short, I'm pretty sure that I'm almost positive that I think it was a northern rock sole, making it species number 135! 

     I do include the foot note on this one, that although I didn't count the gill rakers, the other characteristics look pretty convincing to me. I THINK I'm correct. But, even if I did manage to be wrong about this particular fish; statistically I have caught both species, so I can live with this being the token northern rock sole for my list. I would rather do it that way than kill a fish that I won't eat just to count it's gill rakers.

Here's what I'm calling a southern rock sole (left) and a northern rock sole (right). Note that the coloration is quite different between these two individuals, but that's not what I'm trying to point out. Coloration isn't actually a very good indicator here, as the coloration and paterning can vary quite a bit.

The space between the eyes (interorbital space) is narrower in southern rock soles (left) than northern rock soles (right).

On the blind side (the side of these fish with no eyes) southern rock soles (left) have creamy highlights, seen here as the ligher white patterns that almost looke like flattened out "W" shape. The northern rock soles (right) lack those highlights as seen here.

     Well that was surely more information than you've ever wanted on the differences between two virtually identical fish species, but there you have it. So anyway, I continued to be thoroughly entertained throughout the day catching nice rock sole (whatever species) after rock sole. But still the starry flounders were nowhere in sight. I was bummed, but not surprized. As sunset drew nearer I needed to start the long drive home, so I set an alarm on my phone for when I needed to for sure pack things up. 

     I got a hit on what was to be one of my last few casts of the day and set the hook into a fish just as I had done so many times that day. It fought just the same as all the other flat fish I had caught. I didn't think anything of it until I finally caught a glimpse of it and made out the signature spotting on the fins of a starry flounder! I pulled it over the rail and let out a yell of triumph, just as the alarm on my phone went off. Talk about botom of the ninth! But I had done it. I caught my other arch nemesis.

It may not be much of a looker, but this is a beautiful face to me!

#137! Now that I've caught one, I'm sure they'll show up everywhere but I'm sure glad I don't have to chase these things anymore.

Their fins looked like someone colored them with a sharpie and didn't stay in the lines.

     What do you do if you run out of arch nemeses?? I had to do some serious thinking on that one. I still have two freshwater nemeses, the longnose sucker and longnose dace. But these were my last two big ones for saltwater. There is always the chance of something random coming up when you fish in the ocean, but I'm running out of the targetable stuff. Maybe it's time to move. I have some ideas, though. I have some plans to try for a blue shark next summer, there's flathead catfish to catch not too far away in Idaho, warmouth scattered around somewhere, sand rollers near my old hometown. There's possibilities, they're just becoming fewer and farther between, but I suppose if it were too easy it wouldn't be much fun would it!