In Complete Denial

The fishing season isn't over. I don't care what anyone says. Across this great state that is Oregon, there are still fish to be caught. Allow me to demonstrate.

I sent this to a friend who claimed that there weren't any big carp in this lake. So far I haven't gotten a reply. 

The noble carp. Although the usage of the word "noble" in reference to a fish is usually done so sarcastically, I believe that the great common carp is a personification of this stately word. Sure, carp are kind of disgusting to look at. They're big, ugly bottom feeders that eat detritus and other unmentionables. They've got these giant sucker mouths that look like the wrong end of a human vacuum cleaner. Most people in Oregon consider carp fishing to be a huge waste of time. I disagree with this. I can tell you that in the last week alone I have put in fifteen hours of carp fishing, and not regretted it at all! In the fifteen hours of fishing spread across four days, I caught three carp. You can do the math from there, and then tell me who's wasting his time.

For the dedicated, carp fishing is the greatest challenge of all. For those willing to risk blood, sweat, tears, and public humiliation, carp are the ultimate prize. There are few other fish that can reach such ridiculous sizes in lakes as small as Bethany Pond, and in that heavily pressured environment they aren't easy to catch. It's worth noting that in the last fifteen hours I fished for carp, I only caught fish in a two hour period on day one. The next three days were horrendous skunkings whose stenches took multiple showers to wash out. Sure, I caught four my first time I gave it a serious try, and I saw some kid that got SEVEN, but the vast majority of the time these fish are tricky little bastards. You'll see the bubbles of feeding carp rise everywhere around you, but you won't get any bites. Instead, you'll get those annoying little taps at the end of your rod tip that are indicators of carp just messing with your bait for their own personal amusement. You can hear the gleeful laughter of the carp as they swim away from your offering to go eat dirt or animal feces or whatever is the main part of their diet.

I wouldn't be smiling if I knew that I wouldn't catch another carp in weeks. 

When one ugly bottom feeder isn't biting, you can always count on another! As the sun sets on Bethany Pond at 5:00 as it does at this time of year, the carp go to bed to enjoy a good night's sleep reminiscing on all the fishermen they aggravated that day. In their stead come the hordes of a different sort of aggravating scavenger, the humble Brown Bullhead catfish. Instead of irritating anglers with their uncatchability and difficulty, they do so with their unflinching eagerness and gluttonous appetites. Any bait that smells even remotely like a health code violation will be pounced on by these aggressive little suckers, and you can count on them completely swallowing it, along with the hook, the sinker, and the first few inches of the rod tip. Trying to extract your precious terminal tackle from the greedy maws of these ravenous little monsters is futile, unless you want to end up with blood and guts everywhere and a catfish spine wedged under your fingernail. They also bite.

I've heard from a friend that these guys taste good if you let them swim around in your bathtub for a few days to soak all the dirt out. I'll take his word for it. 

The most astounding thing about these nocturnal fish is how varied their diet is. They are extremely hungry little gluttons whose appetites have seemingly no end. Sure, carp have a varied diet as well, but the difference between them and catfish is that carp can eat about anything, while catfish will eat about anything. Baits that will catch these muddy critters include worms, pieces of any kind of fish, doughballs, chicken livers, raw meat, canned corn, hot dogs, bologna, marshmallows, and balls of cotton soaked in pro cure bait scent. Watch me say all this and never be able to catch a catfish again.

Wouldn't that be heartbreaking. 

Why do I even night fish anymore? I go all the time, and either don't realize or openly ignore how miserable it is. The weather's extremely cold for most of the year, there's all sorts of creeps that hang around that area at night, it's eerily quiet when there aren't police sirens going off, the fish I catch are unpleasant, and it's "frowned upon" in the place where I do it. I always return to my home at the early hours of the morning, so exhausted that I don't even wash the catfish slime from my hands before collapsing into bed. When I wake up the next morning, all I remember are foggy memories of sitting semi-conscious in a lawn chair next to a rod and a bucket of worms while my bite alarm beeps on and off like a dying heart. I vow never to go again and end up finding myself back there a week from then.

Hurry up, you stupid sunset! I have catfish to catch! 

So there's carp and catfish to fish for in the dog days of early November. Sure, I know that there's salmon and steelhead fishing during this time of year, but I'm talking about the underdog fish, ones that I normally fish for and are the stars of Spooled. If you want a picture of a salmon, go to fisherman's marine and throw a dart at the first billboard you see. If you haven't speared a picture of a mildly overweight guy with a baseball cap and a goatee holding a salmon, you're probably in a Macy's instead. This blog is about the fish that nobody else cares about, and we're gonna continue with another fish that can be easily targeted through the dark days of November.

We meet again!

A year ago, I would have gone on and on about how the surfperch is my "archnemesis" and the ridiculous lengths I'd go through to catch one, but that is all in the past. Amphisticus rhodoterus and I are buddies now, along with his silver friend with the Latin name I don't remember off the top of my head and am too lazy to look up on Google. I think what's more disturbing is that I know the Latin name of a surfperch species off the top of my head in the first place.

I'm actually pretty sure this is a Walleye Surfperch but I'm not positive. 

I headed out to Cannon Beach earlier today and could not keep these little suckers off my line, just as I have grown to expect when I hit the surfperch fishery during the right conditions. I know I'm probably playing with fire with my newfound overconfidence in surfperch, and I can assure you that I'm knocking on wood as we speak (in a non-sexual way). However, I have found that surfperch will almost always bite when targeted in the right conditions. 

Wave coming in 3...2...1...

I've found that the greatest thrill of surfperch fishing is in the waves. Well, not really. It's definitely the fish themselves, and you wouldn't catch me dead wading up to my waist in frigid dangerous water if I wasn't fulfilling a promise my younger self made to exact revenge on the fish that once drove me to the brink of insanity. However, it's nice standing in the chilly water, jumping out of the waves, casting out and feeling the distinct scrappy tugging of a perch as the waves crash all around me. It seems I get all poetic about surf fishing in every post where I mention it.

The point is, fishing never ends. Regardless of your age, or health, or social status, or the time of year, or the weather, or whatever, there can always be some sort of fish willing to tug your line and remind you why you got in this sport in the first place. It might be a shiny salmon or steelhead, or a rugged largemouth bass, or an acrobatic rainbow trout. However, it could also be a sagacious common carp, or an aggressive bullhead catfish, or perhaps even one of the mysterious silvery nomads of the wild surf that call themselves surfperch. 

Kamran Walsh