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back on the water

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Today we went back out on the sea with Hosoda-san for what became the Day of the Snapper.

our catch

The day started with the tilefish (or "sweet snapper" as it's known in Japan) on the left in the photo above, which I landed at around 08:30. My father-in-law later weighed it at 1.8kg.

wrestling with a tilefish

whew!

Landing the fish was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, we were right on the edge of the weather abruptly changing, and when the thing hooked itself the boat was rolling in some 1.5m - 2m waves and a steady wind. For another, it was in 80m of water, which is about as deep as we went on any of the five trips we took out on the sea during this visit to Kyushu. It may not sound like a lot, but it's a grueling job hauling a fish out of that depth. As it turned out, after I'd pulled it up through about 10m of water it was likely suffering from too much change in pressure and lost a good deal of its fight. It's not a huge fish but it was large enough that by the time it was all over the conditions on the water had indeed changed - the last of the clouds had burned off and the water had settled down.

Things went back to being a bit quiet until about 12:30, when we started catching most of the rest of the fish in the photo above. Akio caught a damn nice "Tai" (Red Snapper).

I caught one of about 2/3 the size shortly after. The two silver fish in the pic above are mackerel, and the red and purple ones are rockfish. Akio also landed a fair-sized "Fugu" (puffer fish) that I think we released.

my red snapper

Some of the pics on this page are courtesy of journal of Hosoda-san, our guide.