The tide was turning and I was becoming anxious. No matter the respect shown to the open ocean, she treats us with great indifference; the Moon’s gravitational pull her only master. Given the riveting scenery, I had taken my time hiking to the beach’s rocky point, without seeing another soul, a good long hour away. Northern California’s Tidelog noted a very early morning high tide and the warm winter sun was now almost directly overhead.
Most fishermen will tell you, ad nauseum and often with a non-pedigreed beer in hand, the best times to surf cast for dinner are the lower light hours after sunrise or before dusk. Fishing a steeper beach during an incoming tide is also ideal, as the rising waters dislodge sand crabs and other small vertebrates from their homes, depositing them into the troughs where the waves break, encouraging fish to feed.
An 11-foot surf rod and reel was split in half and tucked across a treasured L.L. Bean bag, sewn with nautical blue piping and boasting my initials in a blocky monogram, a long-ago gift from my mother during our better years. Lining the outside pocket were thick crackers from a nearby bakery’s wood-fired oven, and hunks of Gouda, aged half a decade and crunchy with salt crystals. Tucked inside were the day’s tools: garishly colored fishing lures, a handmade trout priest, chunky four-ounce pyramid sinker weights, a dozen small hooks, and a semi-frozen block of anchovies. The hooks are teeny tiny, designed to hold tightly onto the bait, making it difficult for the craftier fish to pinch. In cards, ‘fish’ refers to an incompetent player whose weaknesses can be easily exploited by the card ‘shark’. Surely a misnomer, as I’ve often found it’s the fish holding the good hand, sending me home sunburned and empty-handed.
At the local sporting shop in search of bait, an old man with crazed eyes and terribly weathered skin reported the rocky outcroppings at the beach’s south end to be covered in mussels. Bivalves and sand crabs are fine enticements on the end of a hook, and can also be chummed into the water’s edge to attract fish. He warned me to be mindful of the ocean, as sneaker waves are not uncommon, easily dragging off unsuspecting souls and their canine companions. It’s the dogs that survive, he cackled.
Armed with a flat stone for dislodging the mussels and an old carbon steel knife for prying them open, I darted between the waves, scouring the tide pools and combing through the wigs of seaweed concealing the rocks’ baldpates. Not one clam did I find.
Looking beyond the peaks of stone, woefully unadorned of mollusk, a winter society ball was in full swing. Dancing diamonds glittering as far as is the sea made it difficult to be annoyed by the old man’s misinformed clamming commentary. As a set of large waves began to crash against the rocks, I hiked back up the beach, stopping near a congregation of seabirds floating in gentler surf, their meeting ground a reliable indication of fish. Planting the surf spike deep into the soft sand far above the water’s edge, I reassembled the rod and reel and got busy tying the weights and hooks onto the line.
Surfperch are plentiful and hooked year round off Northern California’s coastline, as opposed to a more seasonal harvesting of the tastier halibut, the fish of my literal wet dreams. Surfperch are often found in the shallow waters that flow over sandy bottoms, rocky formations, or forests of kelp. Calico and Redtail surfperch feed along sandy beaches, while Rubberlip, Black, and Pile perch prefer dining in rockier outcroppings.
Within the family Embiotocidae, surfperch are Perciformes, meaning perch-like. Perciform is the largest order of the Earth’s vertebrates, which includes 41% of all bony fish. Surfperch are flatter fish with oblong bodies, measuring in length from five to eighteen inches. Instead of being notched, their dorsal fins are continuous, and their tail is forked. The colors and patterns vary, depending upon the species of surfperch and the time of year.
California’s daily fishing limit for surfperch is a-too-generous-in-this-day-and-age twenty, in any combination of all the species, with not more than ten fish from any one species. But at this late hour, I’d be lucky to get even a nibble.
Now warmish and slimy, I cut a few anchovies into smaller pieces, threading them onto the two-pronged hooks. Stripping to a tee shirt and pulling up my pant legs, I edged into the surf, the chilly waters immediately anesthetizing my feet. I cast into the troughs where the waves broke and then further out into the more placid holes of deeper water. Lost in reverie, I was transported to an east coast beach at sunset, my father and I hauling onto the sands a dizzying number of bluefish and stripers from the dark waters. As we cleaned the oily fish by the lighthouse’s strobe, he encouraged me to be methodical in my fishing: if the water’s current is moving to the right, cast to the left and the bait will be pushed along; hold the rod tip high so the line doesn’t drag on the waves; retrieve your bait slowly and steadily, bouncing it along the bottom, and reeling only to pick up slack.
Interrupting my thoughts were three fat seagulls hovering nearby, completely intent on a late January lunch of rotted anchovy. With frightful precision, they took turns furiously dive-bombing each carefully landed cast, gobbling my bait. With fists raised, I yelled and screamed into the afternoon winds, finally giving up and burying at sea the remaining putrid fish.
Returning to the quaint, drafty cabin, I read the instructions written by Connecticut outdoorsman Charlie Van Over, framed and set on the mantle, for lighting a proper fire. I quickly had a roaring blaze, warming my still-frozen toes and drying my pants, which hung from the arms of a corduroy upholstered couch, its cushions low to ground from years of fireside contemplations. Tucked into the red and white coals were phallic-looking fingerling potatoes, purchased from a 24-7, payment-on-your-honor farm stand in a neighboring town. Roasted until the flesh was creamy, the potatoes were smothered in French butter and gobs of thick sour cream. Instead of my anticipated dinner of fire-grilled fish, the tubers were paired with charred, stalky broccolini flecked with hot peppers, garlic, and a flaky salt eccentrically and obsessively carried in my bag. I managed through the better part of a bottle of Scavino’s Cannubi Barolo, still too young at twelve years of age, while plotting how to best land a perch on my plate for the next night’s supper.
