C6
OUTSIDE
East Oregonian
Saturday, May 18, 2019
CAUGHT OVGARD
Bluefi n tuna fi shing is staggering
(if you can get a line in the water)
of shock.
A 500-pound class tuna breaking the
surface 10 feet off the bow snapped me
back to reality.
I asked for the topwater rod, and Marc
reached for it, only to ﬁ nd it hadn’t been
set up.
By LUKE OVGARD
For the East Oregonian
VRSAR, Croatia — My reel screams
as line peels off at 50 miles per hour. I
arch my back, ﬂ ex my arms, legs and
chest as every muscle in my body make
itself known.
Sweat beads on my forehead, and the
surge of the boat sloshes salty water onto
my face.
A ﬁ sh 10 feet long and weighing half
a ton — though capable of growing twice
that size — thrums and battles at the end
of my line as I jockey and strain to get the
rod butt into my ﬁ ghting belt.
Hands shaking, I lock in the rod and
set my eyes on the ﬁ nned torpedo some
200 yards distant now.
This ﬁ sh is the culmination of my
entire life’s work. I steel myself for what
will likely be an hour or more of intensity.
Then, as soon as it began, it is over. I
awake, breathing hard.
A dream, but one that would soon
become either a reality or a nightmare.
Breaking
In a classic tough decision: ﬁ x the
feeder or rig up a rod.
I would’ve happily done one of the
two, but I had no idea how to ﬁ x the
feeder nor where any of the topwater
plugs were stored.
Marc opted to ﬁ x the feeder instead of
showing me where the topwaters were.
By the time the feeder was operating
again, the school had moved.
We spent the better part of the day
ﬁ shing live baits, but we never got close
enough to try ﬁ shing topwaters the size
of 20-ounce soda bottles again.
The trip was heartbreaking, frustrat-
ing and infuriating all at once.
Backup plan
Booking
In the weeks leading up to my win-
ter trip to Europe, the dream increases
in frequency and intensity, afﬁ rming my
decision to buy a boat with Marc Inou of
Ohana Fishing Charters and Lodge in
Vrsar, Croatia.
For more money than I’d spent on any
three charters combined before, I had
the chance to see how that dream ended
in the blue waters of the Adriatic Sea,
between Croatia and Italy.
Numerous emails found me and my
dad, the only member of my family will-
ing to trade a day in beautiful Ljubljana,
Slovenia, for a day on the water, driving
down to the coast.
A snafu with a missing passport pre-
vented us from crossing into Croatia
and cost us a few hours, but we made it
to our destination later that night after a
lot of profanity I pray the border security
couldn’t understand.
With that much money and hope on
the line, what followed was not my ﬁ n-
est hour, and I feel awful for how I acted.
Dad, I’m sorry.
Though I’d had every intention of ﬁ sh-
ing the Vrsar Marina that night for all
manner of smaller ﬁ sh in my never end-
ing #SpeciesQuest, it was much too late.
Pro tip: when traveling abroad, always
make sure your passport is handy.
Embarking
We got up, ate breakfast and drank
coffee with Marc and his wife and ador-
able newborn son before loading the boat.
We dinked around in the marina while
Photos contributed by Luke Ovgard
CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: The tub gurnard, a searobin, was one of the most beau-
tiful ﬁ sh I’ve ever caught. When the feeder stopped working, guide Marc Inoue had to
spend some time ﬁ xing it. This was the beginning of the end for our tuna hopes. Dad
wasn’t feeling very well on this trip, and I acted like a petulant child when we hit ev-
ery hardship on this trip, so that didn’t help. Still, we had fun catching lots of small
ﬁ sh. The lesser smallspotted catshark was weirdly adorable. It covered its light-sensi-
tive eyes with its tail.
Marc fueled the boat, and we landed sev-
eral species of goby and some big-scale
sand smelt, a new species for me but both
a literal and ﬁ gurative small fry in the
face of blueﬁ n tuna.
It took a few hours to locate the tuna,
but when we did, they were even more
impressive than I’d dreamed.
Imagine the same feeding frenzy
you’ve seen with trout or salmon. Fish
skimming under the surface, jumping,
splashing and leaving a pool of blood
in their wake. Except instead of ﬁ sh the
size of small dogs, the ﬁ sh are the size of
small cars and moving 50, 60 or even 70
miles per hour.
Sufﬁ ce to say, it’s absolutely
staggering.
As we tried getting closer to the ram-
paging tuna, Marc began working the
automatic bait feeder, a device that
hooked to the gunwale and started a
chumline.
Less than ﬁ ve minutes after we started,
we heard a grunt, and the machine wound
to a stop. The cord had proven to be a
tripping hazard. Awesome.
I was in shock from the ﬁ sh, but it was
a good shock. The realization the ﬁ sh-
ing was killed ﬂ ipped me to a bad sort
Fortunately, Marc was sympathetic
and helped us target all manner of other
species once the tuna proved fruitless.
On lighter gear, we began targeting
smaller ﬁ sh on sabikis and bottom rigs.
The bite was consistent, and we boated
brown comber and greater weever (a
highly venomous ﬁ sh) left and right on
squid and shrimp.
On another rod, I tied a bottom rig
with a chunk of cutbait. I was pleasantly
surprised when I pulled in a small shark.
It’s semi-opaque, solid color pupil-less
eyes were hauntingly beautiful.
Since it was a deepwater, primarily
nocturnal species, it used its tail to cover
its eyes — a fascinating development.
I quickly photographed and released
what I would later discover was a lesser
smallspotted catshark.
To makeup for the tuna debacle, Marc
stayed out much later than we’d planned,
allowing us to target several species of
seabream over thermal vents in the dark-
ness. We got several, and it was a bit of a
consolation for a trip I’d overhyped.
It could’ve been a nightmare, and it
was far from that, but it certainly wasn’t
what I’d been dreaming of for so long.
Still, it won’t stop me from dreaming
big in the future. After all, as one televi-
sion character put it: “Never stop dream-
ing because once you do, you’re just
sleeping.”
———
Read more at caughtovgard.com; Fol-
low on Instagram and Fishbrain @luke-
ovgard; Contact luke.ovgard@gmail.
com.
BOOK REVIEW
Natural history book an ode to the
geology of the Blue Mountains
By RENEE STRUTHERS
East Oregonian
Photo contributed by Bruce Barnes
Taxus brevifolia, Paciﬁ c Yew.
Paciﬁ c yew poisonous,
but useful plant
By BRUCE BARNES
For the East Oregonian
Name: Paciﬁ c Yew
Scientiﬁ c
Name:
Taxus
brevifolia
OK, I know this plant doesn’t
bloom. It is selected for this col-
umn because it is a native plant
that few people are familiar with,
or they don’t know it grows in
the Blue Mountains. There aren’t
many still here. It is found from
British Columbia to central Cal-
ifornia, and east to southern
Alberta, northern Idaho, northwest
Montana, and in northeast Oregon.
Taxus is the Latin name for the
European yew tree, and Taxos is
the Greek name for it. Brevifolia is
Latin for short leaf.
The tree is a “conifer.” But with-
out a cone. It has what is called an
aril, which looks like a small, red-
dish-orange, smooth berry with an
open tip and a single seed inside.
Imagine a small stuffed olive with
the hole at the end, but with the
pimento removed and the seed
exposed down in the middle.
The needles on the branches
look much like regular pine nee-
dles, but are shorter than those of
other conifers in the Blues, and the
branches are spreading or droop-
ing. The bark has broad, ﬂ at,
irregular, thin plates that shred
and peel off with time. The older
bark plates are grayish and the
plates underneath are reddish or
reddish-purple.
The Paciﬁ c Yew as well as the
European Yew have been used in
the past to make bows, and the
Greek word taxon means bow. The
hard and durable wood has proba-
bly had other uses over millennia.
More recently the Paciﬁ c Yew was
a source for the cancer drug Taxol,
which is now made synthetically.
BEWARE: almost every part of
the tree is deadly poisonous. Very
small amounts of bark, needles,
seeds, or even the sap are said to be
enough to kill a person. It’s proba-
bly best to wash your hands after
handling it.
Where to ﬁ nd: There are a few
examples of yew trees at the Uma-
tilla Forks Campground.
To say Robert J. Carson loves
the Blue Mountains would be
an understatement. His new-
est book “The Blues: Natural
history of the Blue Mountains
of northeastern Oregon and
southeastern
Washington”
gives a comprehensive look
at the geology of the moun-
tain range that dominates the
viewshed in our corner of
the Northwest.
Carson, a geologist and
Whitman College profes-
sor emeritus, takes read-
ers through the history of
our beloved Blues with a
detailed discussion of how
and when the Blue Moun-
tains, stretching from Clarno,
Oregon, to Clarkston, Wash-
ington, were formed and what
makes them different from other
mountain ranges.
In order to illustrate his sci-
entiﬁ c explanations of the struc-
ture of the mountains and how
that inﬂ uences everything from
the soils to the watersheds to
the animals and plants that live
there, Carson invited more than
a dozen photographers to pro-
vide stunning visuals. Poetry
works and excerpts from other
writings, including diaries and
scholarly works, provide addi-
tional context.
Even lifelong residents of the
range’s vast sweep will discover
plenty of reasons to venture into
the Blues to discover new cor-
ners they didn’t know existed in
their own backyard. And adven-
Cover photo courtesy Keokee Books
A new book by Robert C. Carson tells the geological story of our own
Blue Mountains.
To illustrate his scientiﬁ c
explanations, Carson invited
more than a dozen photog-
raphers to provide stunning
visuals.
Poetry works and excerpts
from other writings, including
diaries and scholarly works,
provide additional context.
turesome visitors will have
another reason to visit Eastern
Oregon and southeast Washing-
ton state for ample hiking and
outdoors opportunities.
And while “The Blues” is
chock full of hard science, it’s
also a beautiful coffee table
book that will have readers
opening it again and again.
“The Blues” is Carson’s
fourth book published in col-
laboration with Keokee Books.
His other works include “Many
Waters”; “Where the Great
River Bends: A Natural and
Human History of the Colum-
bia at Wallula”; “East of Yellow-
stone: Geology of Clarks Fork
Valley and the nearby Beartooth
and Absaroka Mountains”; and
“Hiking Guide to Washington
Geology.”