Sometimes I like to let my blog post list (blog log?) get so far behind that my recollection of events gets a little fuzzy, that way I have plausible deniability if things get embellished, or blown out of proportion. This may or may not be the case with this post. I'll let you be the judge.
It was some time in 2023 when my buddy Bret (you probably know him from his YouTube channel Peeling Line) said he was planning a trip to San Diego and graciously invited me to come along. That area has many species that I've long drooled over so I packed up my sabikis and we headed south. I brushed up on my California fish species ID and watched many a YouTube video. Potential targets ranged from tiny gobies to giant sharks and everything in between. I had added 39 new species on a trip to Florida some years before and figured I was unlikely to top that mark on this trip, but it definitely had potential to be up there.
On our first night, we had a few hours free in the evening so we headed to the Oceanside Municipal Fishing Pier. I don't often post exact locations on here, but given that there were approximately 9,000 other people fishing there that night, I think the secret is out there. Fishing was crowded and pretty slow, but we both still caught some smaller fish and the first new species of the trip were added.
This Jacksmelt (Jack Silverside) kicked off the new-species-game for the trip and became species 203 for me.
Followed shortly thereafter by this Queenfish
Bret had arranged rental boats for several days later in the trip, but the first day would be spent exploring some of the shore fishing that San Diego has to offer. Bright and early the next morning we headed out and thankfully the crowds that we encountered were minimal, and the species count started ticking up almost immediately. Soaking baits in the bay might be one of my new favorite things to do. This was one of those magical times where the next bite was almost certain to be a new one, and the list of possible candidates was pretty long. And to make things even more interesting, the first few fish of the day were slightly more dangerous (venomous) than I was used to.
This Round Ray was my first stingray ever. It took some maneuvering, but we both managed to part ways mostly unharmed.
If he looks cranky, that's just because, well he was cranky!
I also caught several of these spiky fellows. Called sculpins by the locals, this California Scorpionfish was added to the list and was kind enough to keep his venomous spines to himself.
Not the kind of Mohawk you want to run your fingers through.
We continued to soak a variety of sizes of baits and the action was definitely fast enough to keep me very entertained. In the species hunting game, I like the weird looking fish the best and the next few to pop up definitely fell into that category. There are several Guitarfish species down there and I wore my lucky underpants hoping to encounter some of them. The Thornback Guitarfish was the first to rear its weird-shaped head.
This weirdo became species 208 if you're counting along at home.
While they do sort of look like stingrays and definitely have some spiky bits on their tails, these ones are not likely to result in an ER visit unless you try REALLY hard, which would be weird. Don't do that.
The business end of these critters is the stuff of nightmares though. Imagine meeting this derpy thing in a dark alley sometime.
Spotted Kelpfish. Number 210!
Opaleye, 211!
That evening I fished off a beach while Bret tried his hand off a small nearby rock jetty. I was hoping to tie into one of the various croaker species that prowl the surf. While I was wholly undisturbed by croakers, I did round out the day with a new surfperch species which are another favorite of mine.
The mighty Barred Surfperch, not to be confused with the nearly identical Redtail, or Calico Surfperch.
With such success from the shore on the first two days, day three anticipation was at an all-time high. We had a boat ready to go ply the depths with and great weather to boot. We hit the bait barge on the way out of the bay and loaded up on live sardines. The first part of our day was spent attempting to troll up a tuna or some other pelagic creature.
You can't catch em if your line isn't in the water. We still didn't catch em, but it was fun to try!
We kept fishing towards groups of birds and what looked to be large swaths of promising animal life. They all turned out to be giant pods of Short Beaked Common Dolphins (I think anyway, I'm a fish guy, not a dolphin guy). While it was really cool to see so many dolphins up close and personal, we never did find the tuna-laden bait ball we were searching for.
While it would have been cool to tie into some big tuna, that wasn't the only plan for the day. We were out deep, so down deep our baits went, and some fascinating creatures began hitting the deck. Rockfish are a very diverse family of fish, and they're one of my favorite things to fish for, and I added five new ones that morning.
This Greenstripe Rockfish was my first new thing of the day, and definitely a welcome addition to my rockfish collection. It seems more mottled than striped to me, but what do I know?
Greenspotted Rockfish, called that because of the green spots.
Speckled Rockfish, there are little black speckles if you look closely enough.
Swordspine Rockfish because of the large spine.
Chilipepper Rockfish because it's spicy.
After we thoroughly tired our arms out reeling things up from the deep, we decided to try our luck back inside the bay. This was when the aforementioned live sardines really put in some work. We tried what would become my favorite technique of the trip, to let the boat drift and pull live sardines along the bottom as we went. As it turns out, being a sardine in San Diego Bay is risky since everything wants to eat them.
The California Halibut was one of our main targets for the trip and we each got several keeper sized fish, and Bret even had a monster on that came off right at the boat. Plus I got to wear my really awesome hat that totally isn't dorky dad-apparel.
We both caught some respectably sized and picture worthy Barred Sand Bass
I do believe Bret's was bigger than mine, plus his has that cool orange eye shadow on.
And Spotted Bay Bass
And Kelp Bass
Maybe my favorite fish of the trip though, was this Banded Guitarfish.
The closer you look at it the weirder it gets.
And another freaky guitarfish mouth shot. This one is worse than the first one!
We fished from shore again that evening, which resulted in one additional new one for the day, another weirdo, the California Butterfly Ray. Nine new species in a day is epic in my book!
Much more friendly than the other stingrays.
Just a derpy little guy.
We got to the boat again bright and early the next morning and we again drifted sardines inside the bay until the morning sun burned off the fog offshore. This again resulted in some fast action and a new species of shark - the Gray Smooth Hound, a particularly harmless creature, but a fun addition nonetheless.
The mighty Gray Smooth Hound. Pretty friendly for a shark.
Though he did look a bit confused.
Bret also put together a video of our morning in the bay:
Once the fog burned off, we headed offshore to fish some kelp beds which had a variety of potential targets I was excited about catching. In a previous trip to these kelp beds, Bret had caught California Sheephead, which come in a couple different color phases depending on age and sex, and Treefish, one of the stranger looking rockfish species. Both of these were very high on my wish list. When we got out to the beds, we picked a likely looking patch, grabbed a couple strands of kelp, and tied our dock line to it so we could stay put.
Kelp Beds off the coast.
I could not find a Treefish in the forest of kelp, but I did manage two new species. The first was a type of wrasse simply called a Senorita. I also got a female California Sheephead, though I didn't get the big colorful male I was hoping for. Fun fact about the California Sheephead: they are what is called protogynous hermaphrodites, and are all born female, and then morph into males and change colors as they grow older and larger.
The mighty Senorita.
My California Sheephead. This one is a female.
Oh, and they have crazy teeth.
Bret got this nice example of a male on his previous trip.
After plying the kelp forest for a while, we did some exploring and tried a variety of spots offshore. Bret got a nice guitarfish drifting along a sandy bottom.
Bret displaying the proper technique to play the guitarfish. And yes his guitarfish was bigger than mine.
We anchored and tried soaking some bigger baits hoping for something large and toothy. We even tried chumming with some fresh caught mackerel. The sharks didn't cooperate but it was fun trying. I did get a screaming run on a smaller bait, but I had my drag a bit too tight for my leader (see also "rookie mistakes") and I promptly broke it off after 10 seconds of sheer panic. I caught my breath and changed my diaper, as Bret continued soaking his baits. He soon got a similarly screaming run and was smart enough to have a more reasonable drag setting and thicker leader, so he managed to hold onto his. The battle that ensued was nothing short of epic, including drag screaming runs, bulldog-like stubbornness by both the fish and fisherman, and a tangle in the anchor rope resulting in me hanging off the bow to untangle it. But after all that, the fish somehow stayed hooked and finally came into view. It was a big bat ray!
Step 1: hold on. Step 2: Don't get stabbed.
After it surfaced, we contemplated our options as neither of us were too interested in getting stung; fortunately the boat had a swim step on the back that worked nicely for a safe unhooking area. As luck would have it, through ginger inspection, we discovered that this particular individual had somehow lost its stinger, rendering it safe to handle, and resulting in a great photo op.
Bret with our first bat ray of the trip!
I don't remember just how many rays Bret caught that afternoon. I do however remember that it was more than one, and I also remember that I caught exactly zero. I couldn't buy a bite after that first crazy run. My chance would have to wait for the next day, our last day of fishing. I was very happy with the results so far, having added 22 new species, making this a trip for the record books in my opinion, but man that bat ray looked like a lot of fun. I of course did not panic and maintained a positive attitude.
We headed out the final morning and were greeting by the patriotic site of a pod of dolphins cruising around the bow of a navy warship exiting the bay.
If you zoom in, that's a dolphin porpoising off the bow. Or maybe a porpoise dolphining? Who's to say.
We wasted no time as this was our last day, and headed right for some promising looking bottom contours and dropped our bottomfishing rigs down. The results were fast and furious and the new species just kept on coming.
My first new one of the day was the mighty Longfin Sanddab, which look identical to the Pacific Sanddabs which we also caught, except for... you guessed it, the longer fin.
This Squarespot Rockfish was my first new rockfish of the day!
Followed by a beautiful Ocean Whitefish, which are actually a type of tilefish, for those of you interested in such things.
The tiny but mighty Halfbanded Rockfish. One of the cooler looking rockfish species if you ask me.
Pacific Jack Mackerel
Vermilion Rockfish. I'm pretty sure I caught one of these in Oregon years ago, but I can't prove it with a picture, so this one gets to make it official on the list.
After that flurry of bottomfish species, I was sitting at 28 new species. This was nothing short of incredible, but the OCD in me likes nice round numbers, so as we anchored up at the bat ray spot one last time, I put the rally cap on, hoping for two and only two more to make it an even 30.
Sabikis are a pretty reliable way to pull up something small and interesting, so we both played that game while waiting for bites on the bigger rods. Soon enough, we both pulled up diminutive pencil shaped fish and added California Lizardfish to our lists.
Yes it's tiny and unassuming, but a species is a species! This is actually one of the ones I was hoping for, so I was happy to get one.
As time was running out, I started to get nervous about getting a ray. We caught some nice bait size Chub Mackerel and sent them down. I had my big rod ready, and even had the right leader and my drag set appropriately. In the interest of not making an already long blog post even longer, I'll get right to the point. It took much longer than wanted it to, but I finally got my bite as I went to check my bait. The battle wasn't quite as exciting as I was using my heaviest rod; nevertheless, I can pretty confidently say that these fish fight harder pound-for-pound than pretty much anything else I've caught. But up it came, and we swung it up onto the step for a quick picture, then I gave it a couple thank you pats as I sent it back flapping into the deep.
My Bat Ray! This individual was in fact still armed and dangerous, so I didn't get the cool shot of me holding it like Bret did, but I'm definitely not going to complain.
And with that, I had 30 species, and my OCD would allow me to sleep at night. I am very grateful that Bret allowed me to tag along on what would be one of my favorite fishing trips ever. I believe he also ended the trip with 19 new ones, which is pretty fantastic considering he had already been there on a previous trip and caught a bunch of them already. I still need a Shovelnose Guitarfish, and a Treefish, and a Pacific Barracuda, not to mention all the croakers, and a.... so I will be back some day, but for now this trip will truly be tough to beat.
And there was even scenery to see too, but I'm terrible at documenting that.
There comes a time in every fisherman's life when they must decide how dedicated they want to be to their hobby. There also comes a time when the line between dedication and stupidity gets blurry. On a trip this past January, that dedication/stupidity line was nowhere to be seen anywhere in my rear-view mirror. Sometimes rolling with the punches pays off though and that was certainly the case with this particular trip.
In early December, my buddy Bret texted me about an upcoming trip he was taking to Florida, and he was looking for someone to go with him. That sounded like a great way to get a pile of new species, so we began working out details. The trip was in early January and as the dates drew closer we watched both the weather forecasts and the trends in flight departures. Covid was still heavily affecting airline staffing, so flight cancellations were still uncomfortably common. But what became a more immediate concern was the weather forecast.
Our flight was a direct one from Seattle to Florida, so all I had to do was get to Seattle on time. My plan was to leave after work on Wednesday, drive to Seattle that night, with plenty of time for some sleep before our 8:00 AM departure. That's a perfectly reasonable plan normally, as it's a 4 hour drive from my office to the Seattle airport, I figured it would maybe take 5 since it was winter after all. This time however, Mother Nature decided to throw what I can only describe as an absolute unmitigated temper tantrum. The forecasts got worse and worse as the time to leave came closer, and I began considering my options for getting to Seattle. Usually large well-maintained roads like I-90 are the most reliable way to get there, but no matter which way I went, I would have to cross the Cascade Mountains. That was going to be a problem. Snoqualmie Pass was my Plan A, with Steven's pass being Plan B, but both of those were expecting up to 36 inches of snow that evening.
Dark red on these kinds of maps is a bad thing when you have to travel through it.
Knowing that my two best options for getting to Seattle were definitely out the window, I considered what my Plan C would be. There was a third way to get there but it was a depressingly farther drive. I could head straight south to Oregon, then west to Portland, then north again to Seattle. The up-side to this plan was that this route didn't involve any high mountain passes, so the roads were more likely to stay open. The bad news (and this was a real kick to the shorts) was that it changed my 4 hour drive to a 9.5 hour drive, under good driving conditions, which were nowhere to be seen that day. There was probably still enough time to make my flight, but it was going to be tight.
How to turn a 4 hr drive into a 9.5 hr drive.
Out of other options, as both of the mountain passes involved in plans A
and B did in fact close as expected just as I was leaving, I put Plan C into action. I headed out into the storm and tried
to channel my inner Lieutenant Dan. My poor mother, a worrier as most mothers are, was also watching the forecast and knowing I was going to be on the road, texted me that evening.
There was more to this conversation, but this sums up my evening pretty accurately.
But wait there's more! About 4 hours into my drive I got a message that our flight was canceled. But I was already too far down the crazy train to back out now. Bret found another flight leaving a little later in the afternoon, that would still get us to Florida on time for our plans, just later in the evening. I panicked a little, but we both bought new tickets for the later flight, and I kept squinting down the road through the blizzard. There were cars and trucks in the ditches and off the road all night. All together I would pass 11 accidents before I got to Seattle. At one point somewhere in northern Oregon, some overconfident sedan passed me, then proceeded to spin off the road about 100 yards in front of me. I'm a pretty confident winter driver, but the dedication/stupidity line was long crossed by this point.
At about 1:00 AM, I made it to The Dalles, just east of Portland. I decided to get a hotel for what was left of the night. But with the Snow still coming down in buckets, I was back on the road at 5:00. And I'm glad I was, because later that morning that road would also be closed. Even the "safe route" was closed!
An update from our friends at Washington Department of Transportation. At this point I couldn't even call it off and get back home if I wanted to. All the routes were closed!
Finally, long story (not so) short, I made it through security at the airport by 10:00 AM, in plenty of time for our new flight. But actually glad that the original flight had been canceled, as I likely would have missed it.
We landed in Florida, checked out the rental car, and finally headed to the hotel. The final tally was 30 white-knuckled hours from the time I left my office to when we got to the hotel in Florida. In true Florida fashion, we were immediately met with a high speed car chase on the freeway before we even got to the hotel.
Welcome to Florida!
Friday morning dawned clear and sunny, and we had work to do. Bret had rented a boat for the day, and we headed out to do some reef fishing to kick off the first day of three straight days of fishing. At this point I had caught a total of 11 species in Florida during a work trip to Tampa (see this post for details), so most of the species we were likely to encounter would be new ones for me. This had definite potential to be a drinking from a fire hose kind of situation.
We got some general advice from a guy at the bait store, but didn't really have specific spots to hit once we got out of the harbor. We (and by "we" I mean Bret, as he was driving and navigating) just used the boat electronics to find interesting bottom topography, and watched for promising marks on the fish finder. Well it worked. We drifted over many spots that day, and I can't remember any of them that didn't produce at least some fish.
So began my most species rich day ever! The first fish over the rail became my species #151 and it just kept going from there. Sabikis tipped with shrimp were generally the most pruductive method of the day for me, but a few fish were also caught on jigs, and even just free-lined hooks with shrimp when the fish were schooling close to the boat. I won't describe all the fish that day, as this post is already too long (ten bonus points if you're still reading this!), but I'll let the pictures speak largely for themselves.
The Yellowhead Wrasse pictured at the top was the first fish of the day, my first wrasse species ever, and species #151 for me. Throughout the day, I also caught several others with slightly different color variations.
My favorite Yellowhead Wrasse of the day had these red highlights on its dorsal fin that looked just like fire!
Littlehead Porgy. #152!
A plain grey fish from a distance, but up close they have striking blue highlights.
#153! Doctorfish Tang. These were difficult to photograph as their skin discolored as soon as I touched it. I didn't touch this one at all.
#154! Bermuda Chub. A school of these came right up to the boat in about 70 feet of water. I was able to sight fish this one on a jig with shrimp on it.
#155! Tobacco Basslet, or just Tobaccofish. I love it when a fish pops up that I have no idea what it is. This little weirdo was definitely one of those.
#156! Graysby. My first grouper species ever.
A Graysby close-up. Ferocious, but in miniature.
#157! Blue Parrotfish. I'll give you two guesses why they're called that.
This was my first parrotfish species, and a strong contender for my favorite fish of the trip! The pictures don't do the blue justice.
Adorable.
Of course they couldn't all be new species, we caught some old favorites also (dominant pests) including White Grunts by the dozen, and plenty of Tomtate Grunts:
White Grunts like this one, while pretty, and with interesting orange mouths (see inset), became our dominant pest for the day. It seemed like nearly every drop produced at least one of these.
Tomtate Grunt. Not a new one, but a photo upgrade from the tiny ones I got in Tampa.
But weeding through the many grunts, plenty of other new ones were still coming over the rail:
#158! This Queen Triggerfish is another strong contender for my favorite fish of the day. I like the weird ones, and the ones that are weird AND pretty are even better!
That smirk looks like he just told a joke and is waiting for the punch line to hit.
#159! Bandtail Puffer. This one remained uninflated.
#160! Squirrelfish. I have handled many thousands of fish in my life, and this fish ranks up there among the most sharp fish I've caught, despite its lack of teeth. There were spikes, blades, and spines everywhere on this thing.
#161! Yellowtail Snapper. It's called that because of the yellow tail.
#162! Yellowcheek Wrasse. I was lucky enough to get two different color morphs of this one. Though the name doesn't really fit what should be called the "Greencheek Wrasse" on the right here.
#163! Redband Parrotfish. Many species of parrotfish change colors as they grow older and mature, Shown here are the initial (top) and terminal (bottom) color phases.
This one is just happy to be here!
#164! Butter Hamlet. These are actually pretty common in the aquarium trade.
#165! Scrawled Filefish. This weirdo is the other top contender for my favorite fish of the trip. This was one of my top wish-list species, and one of the species that got me so interested in Florida to begin with. It was very nerve wracking to see a school of them come up to our boat and watch them promptly bite off several of my hooks before I finally brought a few of them aboard for a picture.
Another school of fish that came right up to our boat looking for snacks.
This school was all Grey Triggerfish. #166! This is another one whose skin would discolor when touched, note the white blotch on its cheek from my thumb.
I like the texture in this picture.
After drinking from the species fire hose all day, we finally decided it was time to head back in to the dock, sunburned, dehydrated, but riding the high of so many species in one day. Bret had also added many new species to his list, and also got a few others that I didn't, including a Bluehead Wrasse, Atlantic Bigeye (which I'm still VERY jealous of), a Tatler, a Sand Tilefish, and even a Shoal flounder.
Bret has a YouTube channel called Peeling Line, which I highly recommend going and checking out if you haven't already. He put together an awesome video of our day:
After getting some dinner and re-hydrating a bit, we tried night fishing for a bit to see if we could get some of the marine catfish species, or any other random ones. We struck out on the catfish, but Bret had a pretty exciting encounter with a Barracuda, though it got away in the end, and I added one final species for the day, the French Grunt.
#167! It's little but it definitely counts!
And with that, we called it a day. We headed back to the hotel to rest up for our remaining two days of species hunting. My previous record for most species in a day was 7, which happened last year in Ohio. The final tally for this day smashed that record with 17 new species! And the trip was only 1/3 over! Sometimes pulling a Liutenant Dan pays off in the end, and this was definitely one of those times!
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