Spooled: A Fishing Blog

One of my favorite things about living in San Diego is the accessibility of the fishing. In Oregon, getting to productive waters often involves long drives, multiple days off, and a considerable amount of planning. When you're driving five hours each way to get to a spot, it makes it difficult to really learn the area and get the most out of the fishing. You're usually happy to just catch anything. Even closer locales, such as those available along the northern Oregon Coast and even in downtown Portland, required you to at least make a day out of it. The only place that was close enough to my house to fish for only a few hours was the notorious Bethany Pond, a place that I will never, ever return to (but the reason for that is a different story). In addition, most fisheries were heavily seasonal and constrained by Oregon's unpredictable weather and even more unpredictable department of fish and wildlife. San Diego is different, with fish available 24/7, 365 days a year. Thi...

One of my favorite things about fishing is hearing about all the goofy lingo that people use to describe various facets of the sport, inlcuding but not limited to the fishes themselves, the bait, the weather, the conditions, certain types of people you encounter on the water, and the sensation of getting a bite. Oregon's lingo was no-nonsense, direct, and pragmatic. Alaska's remote disconnectedness, not only between the Alaska and the lower 48 but between different parts of Alaska, led it to be highly variable and often transplanted from different regions that many Alaskan fishermen originally hailed from. Southern California, on the other hand, has an exhausting amount of lingo. Some of the nicknames used for fishes are silly ("Turd Roller," "Ronkie," "Laguna Tuna," "Snot Rocket," "Seabiscuit," "Chucklehead," the list goes on), but others definitely make sense. When I think of a nickname that perfectly encapsulates th...

I don't particularly believe in karma, at least not when it applies to fishing. Just look at all of the terrible human beings (or at the very least, ones that are unpleasant to be around for more than a couple hours or less) that are immensely successful fishermen. For instance, some commercial fishermen are notorious for shooting sea lions. While I don't like sea lions and they pose some ecological issues, I don't think it's right to just go around killing them vigilante-style and it certainly isn't our right as fishermen to be the ones doing that. Are the unscrupulous characters that go around doing this punished by mother nature with empty fish boxes, broken lines, and long, fishless trips home? Nope. They're commercial fishermen, and that title alone denotes an individual who is consistently successful at locating and capturing fish. However, the thought of karma is something I do think about when on the water. Getting punished by whatever unseen force that ...