That's My Story

“Where I come from in Alaska, there’s nothing that fights like a 40 pound king salmon.”

“Pound for pound in Southern California, I”ll put my money on a yellowtail. They’ll eat your king salmon for lunch and bring you to your knees.”

“I landed a 200 pound halibut once and let me tell you, you ain’t been fishing until one of those busts you up!”

“You guys are crazy. Striped bass are studs. Hell, if they ever grew a 100 pound striper, your yellowtail and hal-eee-but would run for cover!”

“Oh right. You guys ever had a tuna on the end of your line? A hundred pound yellowfin or bluefin will rip you over an hour. It’s first run will tear over 100 yards of line. In fact, any member of the tuna family, even a 15 pound bonito will probably outfight any of those other weenie fish!”

And so the chest thumping and fist (fish?) pumping goes on. We’ve been doing it since the age when dirt was already old and and we “hunter gatherers” were hunkered around a campfire with our loincloths and our bushy single-eyebrow across our sloped foreheads. The controversy over which fish fights harder has raged.

Like football fans at tailgate party, pumped up for their hometown team, every “tribe” insisted it had bigger, badder, meaner, tougher…blah blah blah…fish. No one ever got to be chief or got his picture painted on cave wall claiming to have battled a guppie!

Well, given our age of technology and information, there aren’t too many subjects that haven’t been researched and I thought I’d actually see if there is one type of fish that fights harder or longer than another.

Turns out there is! Turns out someone has actually done the research and is an expert on the combative abilities of fish. And he’s a fisherman too!

Professor Dave Dorado (Iam not making this up. This is really his name!) teaches marine biology at Fullerton Junior College in Southern California. He has taught more than 20 year including more than a decade at his current post. He has done extensive field studies in Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and currently spend good portions of his year in Baja and the Sea of Cortez.

According to Professor Dorado, there are two basic types of sportfish. One is the open-water predator that chases and hunts its food. The second is the “sit-and-wait” predators that pounce on their food.

“The fast swimming, open-water, pursuit predators like the tuna or dorado have darker muscle or more dense blood vascularity within their musculature, therefore their meat is darker in color. These fish have high blood flow in them and also have a protein (Hemoglobin) in their red blood cells which specifically has a high affinity(magnetism) for oxygen.”

He adds,” So when they breathe water through their blood saturated gills, the hemoglobin sucks the oxygen out of the water and then carries it to the muscle where the muscle has another protein (Myoglobin) which even has a higher affinity for oxygen than hemoglobin does.
According to the professor, it’s the concentration of hemoglobin and myoglobin in the muscles that contribute to the darker meat of the predatory open-water fish and their corresponding strong taste.

It also affects their fighting ability.

“These fish are constantly moving around and need to breathe a lot, due to the large amount of muscle in their body. A large constant supply of oxygen is needed for these fish to stay alive. They are very unique in such a way that their body is very streamlined and their opercula are almost rigidly open.”

“ The muscles of the opercula (gills) are not that strong in opening and closing them in order to pump sufficient water through the gills to oxygenate the tissues. Therefore, these fish opt to use their muscular tails to push their body through the water with the mouth open while swimming fast, instead of pushing the water through the mouth while sitting still.”

Hence, they have to move and move fast to keep enough oxygen in their systems making them hard-chargers by nature!

Contrast these to the “sit-and-wait” predators who don’t necessarily chase their food.

“Sit and Wait Predators” or “regular” fish like Rockfish or Calico Bass would use their gills as a vehicle to pump the water through their gills instead. These fish obviously have blood in them with hemoglobin, but as predictable, their muscle contains less myoglobin; is on the whiter side, and has a lower oxygen requirement . They also have less fight in them as well. Their ability to pump their gills sufficiently for the acquisition of oxygen is what gives them the “sit and wait” predatory ability, “ explains the professor.

Bottom line, open water fish fight harder than inshore fish.

“The open water fish are constantly moving; inherently fast; streamlined, and provide excellent long battles for the sportfisherman. This type of fish lives its life ‘faster’, so it normally doesn’t live a very long comparative life to the sit-and-wait predator. “

They sit-and-wait predator can remain still for long times, (but) can still be fast for short distances. However, they usually seek cover instead of trying to outrun a fisherman, once the hook is set. “

There is one caveat according to Professor Dorado. “The last bit here is the mixture of these traits like in albacore, or wahoo. Both have white meat and usually have one or two good runs in them once hooked. . . then nothing. No myoglobin, (hence) no endurance to speak of.”

Even among say the dark meat tuna family, the fish with the darker meat are the strongest. As an example, he says if a 400 pound bonito existed it would tear apart a similar 400 pound yellowfin tuna. By that rationale he says that is also why the “the bluefin tuna is probably the hardest fighting gamefish on the planet” given the size they attain.

But there’s one other factor which leads to the conclusion that the warmer water fish of the Baja are tougher fighters simply because of their geographic location. Basically, he explains why two tuna…one taken in say, Cabo San Lucas where waters are warmer or on a San Diego Long Range boat fishing the Ridge would fight harder than the same sized tuna taken off San Clemente Island south of Los Angeles.

He says it has to do with the viscosity of the water and the amount of oxygen it holds. He says the warmer the water the less oxygen it contains. It also has less viscosity so it’s easier to swim through.

According to the professor, “When it comes to water quality, the hotter the water, the lower it’s viscosity and the lower the solubility of gases within it (Warm up a pot of water at home and watch the oxygen bubble out of it). Gases will diffuse less into warmer water than into colder water so there will be less oxygen in warmer water but the water is easier to swim through. “

“Colder water has more oxygen in it, but it also has a greater viscosity. The colder the water, the colder the body temperature of the fish./ This will undoubtedly contribute to the fish being more lethargic and less active. When we hook a large (warm blooded) pursuit predatory fish in warm water, hang on, they are fighting against you and for limited oxygen…struggling hard to breath efficiently.”