Fat Boy's Outdoors Apology and Blog Resurrection

Every year on this day, I think about my Brother, Kyle, who passed away in 2007.  I can't believe it was 13 years ago today that this tragic event happened.  And when I think about him, I think about why I started this blog in the first place, to dedicate and document my outdoor experiences and share what I've learned over the years.  

The last time that I posted was a year ago today.  I've been negligent about keeping this blog up to date, and for that, I apologize to my brother to those of you that follow my blog.  I also vow to regularly post and keep this blog up to date.  I appreciate the following and hope to keep it up, not for my sake, but to honor my brother.

So, with tears in my eyes, I'm going to move on and write this next post.  Kyle, if you're reading this from heaven, this is for you.

My outdoors experiences have evolved once again.  I have many new topics to cover.  Probably the biggest direction with my fishing has been targeting rockfish (a.k.a. striped bass or stripers) and other fish species in the Chesapeake Bay.  

Kyle loved fishing the Chesapeake Bay from my Dad's sailboat.  He mostly trolled surgical eels for bluefish.  He caught quite a few "slammers and choppers" off that boat.  Slammers are medium sized bluefish in the five to ten pound range, while choppers are bigger bluefish in the ten to fifteen pound range.  

Kyle loved fishing the Chesapeake Bay out of my Dad's sailboat.  The area around the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (pictured above) was his stomping ground.  The Chesapeake Bay has become one of my favorite fishing spots too.  (photo by Captain Steve Kelley)

While trolling for bluefish, Kyle would occasionally catch a nice rockfish.  Back then, all rockfish had to be released, because there was a moratorium on them.  Since then, the striped bass fishery has rebounded nicely, and they are once again, the most prevalent predator in the Bay.  Blues still show up, but not in the numbers found back in Kyle's day.  Kyle would have loved fishing the Bay for rockfish.

I promise to post more about fishing the Chesapeake Bay, my experiences and other topics surrounding fishing for stripers and other Bay species.  I've learned so much and have so much to share.  But, for this post, I'm going to keep it to a few pictures of some of the rockfish that I caught this year and dedicate those fish to Kyle.   

I'll post more on how I caught these fish among other adventures on the Bay in future posts.  I'll keep the blabbering to a minimum, so I'm going to stop here.  After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

This was my biggest rockfish of 2020, a 41 inch fat brute of a striper, caught and released back in March.  It's not my personal best, but might be the fattest one that I've ever caught.  You can see my personal best pictured in a prior blog post about that day.

This is the same fish pictured above, a 41 inch rockfish.  This picture gives you a good idea of the girth of this fish.  Notice the large soft plastic lure used, a ten inch Bass Kandy Delight (BKD) on a 2 ounce jighead.  Big lures catch big fish!

We caught a good many keeper sized rockfish this year on topwater lures.  What a blast.  Kyle would have loved doing that.

Here's a nice rockfish that I jigged up using a skirted one ounce jig with a soft plastic fluke style lure. 

Here's another nice striper caught on a skirted jig/soft plastic combo.  I'll cover topics about jigging for rockfish with light tackle in future blog posts.

Another thick rockfish.  You can see why fishing for these can be addictive.  We caught quality fish like this throughout the year, but there is nothing like fishing for this species in the fall.

This was a summer time rockfish caught jigging bridge pilings.  As you can see, I've come to rely on sun protective clothing.  For fair skinned folks like me, these types of clothing are a must.

Catching fish like these are a blast on top.  I get pumped when I see schools of fish like this breaking.  Then, after tossing a topwater lure nearby and seeing fish like this blow up on it...what a thrill, let me tell you!

I owe a debt of gratitude to my good friend and fishing/hunting buddy, Steve Kelley (shown here with a nice rockfish that he jigged up), who put me on the fish pictured above.  In addition, I caught my personal best striper off of his boat.  Meet Captain Steve Kelley.  He's not a charter boat captain, but he's every bit as good as one...  I've mentioned him in past blog posts, but you'll read more about him in future blog posts.

My Introduction to North American Native Fishkeeping

Striped Blenny (Chasmodes bosquianus)

Part of my obsession with the outdoors includes creating a replica of it indoors.  And my largest obsession with the outdoors is with fish of all kinds.  I love to catch them, watch them, learn about them, and collect them.  So, this is where I bring them indoors, by collecting my fish locally and building aquariums for them that match their environment.  I've had various aquariums throughout my child and adult life, starting with freshwater guppies, tetras, angelfish and modern world cichlids, and during my transition from later high school years and into college, a move to saltwater fishkeeping.

After college, I moved away from saltwater fishkeeping to keeping native freshwater fish and set up my first native stream tank.  Why did I do this?  Simple.  Money.  Or, rather, lack of discretionary money, because just about everything I made at that time went to rent, food, bills, other hobbies and sports.  Native fish were free, and I already had all of the equipment that I needed.

I've never been a "reefer".  No, I'm not talking pot here, although I was never one of those either LOL, I'm speaking of keeping coral reef aquariums.  It's not that I wouldn't keep one, rather, I just haven't gone that route yet.  Maybe someday I will.  In fact, my move away from saltwater (or "Fish Only") aquariums was a financial decision that I had to make as a young adult when my saltwater fish tank had a massive fish kill after a power outage while I was away from home.

For those aquarists out there, how many times have we heard that horror story before?  It seems to happen to everyone.  It happened to me when I could least afford it.  I lost a medium sized blue angelfish, a flame angelfish, a potters angelfish, a heralds angelfish, a bluehead wrasse, a molly miller blenny, a red spotted hawkfish, and a yellow dottyback.  That's a lot of money for someone right out of college with an entry level type job!

So, what did I do?  I took all of the high flow equipment from my saltwater tank and converted the tank to freshwater.  I used stream gravel and rocks to set up a native stream tank.  After cycling the tank, I collected local minnows, dace, shiners, darters, and sculpins and had my high flow stream tank.  I absolutely loved that tank, and, I discovered that our local species are as colorful, and sometimes more colorful, than those that we pay money for at our local fish stores!

After that, I got engaged, then married, moved into a small condo, had a beautiful daughter, and stopped fishkeeping.  I didn't have money or time, for many reasons, mostly too many hobbies, to keep it going.  Instead, I kept salamanders and frogs, and set up a primitive paludarium.  I didn't get back into fishkeeping until recently.

One of my all time dreams was to keep local saltwater or brackish blennies.  A student teacher at my University was studying them, and got me hooked and fascinated with them.  I had kept a local blenny while in college in my fish only tank until another fish killed it.  I caught that fish during a class field trip out on a research vessel in a trawl net and they let me keep it.  That blenny was one of the coolest fish that I ever had in an aquarium.  After that, I had experience keeping various blenny species that I purchased at my local fish stores (like the molly miller mentioned above).

I became hooked on blennies!  I was obsessed with them.  But hey, why spend money at stores on them when I can collect them locally for free?  And, our local ones are just as interesting and as colorful as most of the store bought ones!

Local blennies, like this adult male striped blenny (Chasmodes bosquianus) captured my heart many years ago while in college.  Now, I can observe them in a close replica of their natural habitat right in my home.

So, when I moved to my house and had enough space to really get back into fishkeeping, that was my first goal, to set up a local blenny tank.  Only, I took it a step further.  I set up a Chesapeake Bay Oyster Reef Biotope Aquarium, to not only house my blennies, but to give them a home that feels like home to them.  My goal was to replicate their environment in every way possible, with hopes that they might breed.  I basically wanted a slice of a Bay oyster reef in my home.  I'll go into more detail on those projects soon in future posts.  But, for now, please note that everything that I hoped would happen, happened successfully (knock on wood) over the past couple years.  My blennies and other fish are breeding regularly.

This is a full tank shot of my current Chesapeake Bay Oyster Reef Biotope Aquarium.  This tank is a 20 gallon long.  My final build will be a 100 gallon cubish shaped aquarium.  It's my dream tank!

But, as if one major project wasn't enough, I started another one.  I am working on a local North American Native stream tank inspired by my past stream tank as well as tanks from my friends at the North American Native Fishes Association.  I'll post more on this build later as I make progress, so stay tuned.

This is the current state, almost, of my stream build.  It's a 75 gallon tank that I'll stock with local stream species.  I carved and painted the tank background out of pink polystyrene foam insulation board to look like a local shale cliff formation.  I'm currently working on faux sycamore tree roots as well.

So, that's where I am today with my North American Native Fish aquariums.  I'll document many topics about this journey detailing my builds, so stay tuned.  For now, here's a video of my oyster reef aquarium.  Hope you enjoy it!