NOTHING GETS HEADLINES LIKE A WORLD RECORD

I'm not a fisherman myself, so I don't fish the Lake, but for decades now there have been ecological alarms and an overall negative view of the largemouth bass 'infestation' of Lake Biwa, with signs everywhere saying "DO NOT THROW BASS BACK!" beside boxes where you can put the bass you've caught if you don't want them (likely because of all the negative press, bass are not yet considered good eating by the Japanese, but we enjoy their deliciousness when Keech visits and goes fishing), while bass tackle shops are sprouting all along the shores. Things will likely change bigtime, now.

All that negative 'local problem' stuff never made world headlines; but a world record that lasted for 77 years, now that's another fish story. Like I always say as of a minute ago, if life gives you a largemouth bass, fire up the grill (btw, I live on those mountains in the background).

"Lake Biwa catch for native species has dropped from more than 8000 tons in 1972 to 2174 tons in 2000 while experts estimate catch of exotic species (black bass and bluegill exceed 3000 tons (Ref. 45327). Social and ecological problems have been experienced recently pertaining to the 'black bass problem.' (Ref. 55372). Considered to be one of the most damaging alien species in Japan"

GONE FISHIN'
Part 2

So there we were, our fishermen's heads for a time filled with mental snakes, watching our steps, edging along the shore, long dark shadows of bass sliding calmly through the golden light reflecting from the bottom of the pond...

Unfortunately there were many more of the fast bluegills (they too were bigger than they ever manage to get in the Lake-- a couple of pounds or more). When at last Keech chose his first spot and had baited his hook and thrown it into the water, he assigned me the role he'd had in mind all along: he handed me his camera and said you can do the video. Instant Kubrick.

Then as we continued moving around in quest of better spots - where there would be all big bass and no irritating blue gills - Keech carrying pole and bait, I carrying my rucksack, the fishing box, the fishing net, the mosquito coils, the big bucket to hold the catch in and, in my other hand, the camera with which I was creating this taut handheld thriller that has always lain just beyond the reach of Hollywood.

As we moved, me lagging, Keech now and then yelling “Get outta there! Go away!” I in the distance saying “What? What?” Keech answering “Just yelling at the blue gills.” Because every time he dropped the hook into the clear water the bluegills beat the basses to the worm by a mile; it looked like a wily old bass was saying: go ahead, you bluegilled punks, try out that suspicious-looking worm for me, let's see what happens; and now and then of course one of blues would be faster than Keech's reflexes and get hooked, disappear abruptly into that mysterious upperworld and the bass would turn slowly away with a deepening, big-lipped frown, as if to say Yeah, I thought it was a scam...

Meanwhile the other big old basses were just gliding along, swimming slowly back and forth right out there in plain sight, taunting us, because as we soon realized they could see us clearly, we'd worn the wrong clothes too; looming up there in the late afternoon we must have looked to them like Las Vegas at night.

So at one new spot, as it was getting late we figured we should hide as best we could and use the biggest worms first, with a weight to drop the baited hook right down in front of the basses' noses, and while this was being tried I happened to be 20 yards away gathering up the stuff to move to the new spot, when I heard: “Got 'im!” and scrambled over there, stumbling over vines and twigs and rocks, pushing through slapping branches and ignoring mental snakes while filming my whole run and the big catch of a 7-pound largemouth, all in a Wellesian one-cut of streaming footage, but more like a late afternoon Japanese mountain version of The Blair Witch Project. We may get some stills out of it to post here later, but don't hold your breath.

Keech cleaned the bass and sliced it into two thick fillets that he rubbed with salt and lemon thyme, then broiled slowly over the still-hot embers of a logpile fire we'd started in the morning for ash fertilizer on the land where I'm planning to put the new garden...

Eat your heart out, Four Seasons.

GONE FISHIN'
Part 1

Playing catch was peanuts: two gloves, a baseball tossed back and forth for an hour or so in a vacant lot on a Sunday afternoon, who knows where these things can lead? (Keech had a helluva good arm at the age of 12, though, which made the activity a bit formidable, but I was younger then.) Time does interesting things to parent-child relationships; when dealing with your growing child you tend to deal in the past, with the way the child was - one, five, ten years ago - the ratio varies with the parent. Treating them fully in and from the here and now is a challenge.

For example, when Keech was younger (before he went off to senior high school in the US) and wanted to go fishing, I'd take him to one of the many shores we have hereabouts and then sandbag while he fished; that was cool, and that was what I thought I was in for this time, when he said "Let's go fishing": a welcome break from our rock-moving, log-sawing and weed-whacking day; instead, some good sandbagging time for the Big B on a somewhere shore gazing up at a blue sky, chewing on a blade of grass, peacefully tending gentle herds of thoughts...

But now that time finds me at the age of 68 (in November anyway), Keech - a ripe old 26 in October - wants to go fishing in an advanced sort of way. He's always loved fishing, I don't know where he got that from, no one in my family ever went fishing much, except me for a time when I was a boy, but seeing as how I never liked fish as a food, eventually I lived up to and through the dichotomy. Now I don't like fish so I like don't fish. But sandbagging is always welcome.

Anyway, as I was saying, 68, 26: big diff. Keech (arrived here from the US on July 11) got over jetlag in a day; I (returned here July 7) am only recently fully returned. (Age has its priorities, and immediate arrival isn't one of them.) So, after girding myself with a good night's sleep, an energy breakfast and a stiff cup of coffee to make my hair stand up and give me something to emulate, Keech and I set off for the secret mountain pond that few fishermen know about and none come to anymore, since the authorities put the forbidding gate up (but we know the terrain). It's just a couple hundred meters from our house, a deep 4-acre tarn wherein unfished and therefore inexperienced fish are growing to great size in a piscene paradise of clear mountain water.

After we'd detoured to the opposite side of the pond, we plunged a good way into the hilly dense woods that line the shore, me stumbling along in the wrong shoes. I'd worn the slip-ons just for digging up some backup worms, and unthinkingly (another prerog of elderhood) kept on wearing them, even unto the rocky, slopy, rocky, viney, saplingy woods, where the first living creature we saw was a mamushi, Japan's only poisonous snake, rarely seen in the daytime - and even then practically invisible - but Keech had immediately spotted the serpent there among the fallen leaves at the base of a tree, and said is that a mamushi?

Is what a mamushi? I looked, I asked, peering, focusing, putting on my glasses, but I couldn't see anything resembling a snake. Keech pointed it out with the handle of the fishnet he was carrying, then nudged it. It moved. I saw it: yes, it was indeed a mamushi, a teenager about 40 cm long, a beautiful creature in his brown-patterned silvery gray, sort of glowing there in the dim light of the forest floor, elegant in his movement steadfastly away, in the confident hauteur that deadly venom affords... But how many more invisible vipers might there be around here? To fishermen, such thoughts bear no thinking about, when further steps are required...

[To be continued...]

ABOUT YOUR CHLDRENS' OCEANS...

There are folks that say global warming is a hoax, no danger of overfishing, plenty of whales, same for the dodo, passenger pigeon, buffalo, polar bear who really gives a shit, but here you can see just a single day's worth of what is being done to YOUR oceans, to say nothing of the oceans of your children and theirs... and theirs...

These are just the shallow scourings, the ones you can see, the ones visible from space... The sight you have is nowhere near the netting, the trawling, the pollution and other aspects of blindness. Imagine a year's worth of everything invisible that's done to the oceans.

Enjoy that tuna sandwich.

source: Treehugger, via neatorama

"Arguably the single most destructive human action for the world's oceans, bottom trawling, a practice commonly used to dredge up deep water fish, leaves behind a trail of destruction that can clearly be seen from space. The above image of the Gulf of Mexico, captured by the Landsat satellite in late 1999, shows the sediment trails left behind by individual ships (the bright spots) - a testament to the utter devastation the practice exerts on vast seafloor ecosystems.

Les Watling, a zoologist at the University of Hawaii who was interviewed by LiveScience's Andrea Thompson, said that bottom trawling drags the equivalent of an area twice the size of the combined lower 48 states each year. The sediment plumes arise as ships drag their nets across the ocean floor, moving rocks, crushing reefs and stirring up various marine organisms.

Watling described these plumes as just the "tip of the iceberg," explaining that most trawling takes place in waters deep enough to mask the plumes from sight. He presented the results of his work at the AAAS meeting in Boston alongside John Amos of SkyTruth, the West Virginia-based remote sensing and digital mapping non-profit group that tracked the plumes."

BASSO PROFUNDO

Have I mentioned the rain? It's raining right now, has been all day, same rain that flooded China last week, but yesterday afternoon there was an extremely odd turn in the weather and the sun came out, so Keech said he was going fishing over at our secret mountain pond, we dug some really plump, very talented worms and I figured Keech would be gone for quite a while, you know how long fishing can take, so I got busy finishing up some overdue work of my own, and a half hour later was just getting into the groove when he returned lugging his fishing bucket filled with just one largemouth bass. At nearly half a meter long (48 cm) and 3-4 kilos, it yielded some fine pure white fillets, grown naturally in clean cool mountain water. Not bad for a half hour of fun by the shores of a pristine pond. An additional advantage is that my work is still overdue.

SCENES FROM A QUIET MORNING

In the mist, cherry blossoms
Deeper in the mist
cherry blossoms

What pleasure it is, what delicate pleasure, to stand out at dawn beneath the blooming cherries and see in the distance more and more blooming cherries, the mountain green also dotted here and there by a demure peach or brash apricot...

The quiet morning cherry-scented mountain air is worth more than all the assets in the world.
And out on the Lake the ayu boats trawl here and there, trailing golden shavings that curl and fade along the wakes in the slant of misted sunrise, the sharp-eyed fishermen seeking the fishes I hope manage to elude them.

Last night's frog chorale has drawn to a close, though the croaky choir is clearly here in force, unlike elsewhere in the world where experts say the hoppy songsters are disappearing; soon there may be more experts than frogs.

Apart from the alarming increase in experts, this change bodes ill for our species, for frogs live (as anyone knows who has conversed with frogs) at the frontier of existence. They are our environmental pioneers, as it were, and the responsibility weighs upon them deeply. Nevertheless, they go on singing. May we all take a lesson from our amphibian friends.

WATCHING IT GET DARK

And Sunday night, sitting in a little chair on the big beach at the very tip of Matsunoura while Keech fished his way up and down the coastline, I did nothing but watch it get dark.

No having a beer, no talking with a friend, no swimming, no barbecueing or eating or fishing, no nothing, just sitting there watching it get dark, watching the sky and the water meet and join in one color, the nightly union that begets each tomorrow and it was splendid, being alone and un-aimed in that vast unpeopled space, not a trace of self-consciousness in sitting there, boots in the water not even fishing and who cares, one needn't do something to do nothing, and as the night came, a big cloudy hand caressed the mountains and wrapped me in the chill of fogged-over stars and rumors of a half moon like a lovely woman peeking through a doorway, and I sank into a dream of the dream of the fish and the worms as I rose into the rain and whirled through forever on a speck of dust worth all the weight of gold with eyes wide open, staring far, far into the dark.

What need of spiritual guidance, when there is the night?