Fishing for Starry Flounder

Warm summer days, particularly clear and smoke-free days like today, are a limited and precious resource which must not be wasted. People ask me how I have the time to go crabbing so often and then write about it, and the answer is that I actually don’t. I have other seemingly more important things which must be attended to and aren’t. However, in the future when I look back at my life I am confident that I will consider today to be well lived nonetheless. These are the days I dreamed of while in the hospital last March, and I’m going to enjoy them.

Wanting to share the bounty, I contacted a half dozen of my friends this week to invite them to go crabbing. Sadly, they all have relationships and responsibilities, and sent their regrets. My young coworker Todd got the call. He’s a free agent; he just moved here a few months ago, has few responsibilities, and hardly knows anybody. He is always available to go fishing on short notice. We met up at 8:00 and dropped our first crab pot before 9:00. I decided to do something different this time and try the well-fished area near the wood chip barge in front of the Everett Naval Station. There is always a forest of crab pots there, and today was no exception. It was an absolutely gorgeous day to be on the water; the sea was calm and Mount Baker was clear as a bell on the horizon.

Since neither of us wanted to clean a dozen fish today, we decided to catch and release them while the pots soaked. Part of my motivation for trying this spot was that I heard we could find other types of bottom fish other than the boring and plentiful sand dabs. In particular, I was looking for starry flounder just to see if they were there. Our first crab pot pull yielded two keeper-size males, but they were both soft shells so we threw them back. Todd was lucky enough to catch a fabled starry flounder! It looks and tastes very similar to sand dab. They’re both cod-like white bottom fish that are born with an eye on either side of their head, and then over time one eye actually moves to the other side and they start swimming along the bottom. The flounder has distinctive stripes, can grow larger, and has eyes on the opposite side of its head than the sand dab. One thing I love about boating and fishing is that I’m learning so much about nature.

We decided we’d had enough of that experiment, so we crossed Possession Sound and went out to my favorite spot near Langley. I go there on an almost weekly basis during the summer, and Todd has already become quite enamored with it as well. Anymore, I don’t wait in line at restaurants and prefer to eat a sack lunch at the park by the marina. We found a seal occupying our assigned slip, but it swam away as we slowly approached. After lunch, we pulled our second round of crab pots, dropped our third, and we zipped across Saratoga Passage to nearby Camano Head. It’s a beautiful spot with very few crabs, but we decided to bottom fish there. We found the fish to be quite abundant, and Todd kept one sand dab to compare to his flounder. The rest we threw back. In the water, Todd saw what was probably a chinook salmon who was eyeing his sand dab, but he didn’t try to take a bite.

We did four pulls on each pot for 16 total. We came home with three Dungeness and two red rock crabs, the two fish, a slight suntan, and some great memories. One of the red rocks was the size of a Dungeness; the biggest one I’d ever seen. I kept that one. On the way home I caught a glimpse of a porpoise, my first one this year. I reflected on my nearly two years of boat ownership. Honestly, it’s been everything I’d hoped for and more. Two years ago I had never fished before; now I really enjoy it. I’ve found my Whaler to be far more capable and versatile than I dreamt it would be. It’s already taken me to so many beautiful places, and to so many days well lived.