From The Table of Adam Guy – “Madako”, Japanese Octopus

I’ve been very busy these past few weeks traveling and working, but I’ve got some great content coming from my brief stay in Maui, and as soon as I can find the time I’ll get it all posted here. Meanwhile Adam Guy and I were chatting, he’s a great source for all things Japanese, and he told me that he had another food article ready to go. So back again, another installment in the growing “From The Table of Adam Guy” series, another mouth-watering meal.

And be sure to check out some of the other great contributions from Adam like, Japanese Cuttlefish, Japanese Flounder, and Fugu.

Adam writes:

Summer for Tokyo fishermen means octopus fishing by day, and night-fishing for Japanese conger eel. The octopus known in Japanese as “madako” (Octopus vulgaris, Common octopus) is cherished as a delicacy, eaten commonly as sashimi or served boiled as a celebratory dish for New Year’s.

To catch such octopus, one employs a special tackle comprising a hooked, weighted wooden board about eight inches in length, to which a crab is tied, upside-down. Octopi apparently have a great weakness for crab, particularly those with their vulnerable underbelly exposed to attack. The baited device is lowered into the water using a thick nylon/polyester line, and then jigged up-and-down by hand on the seafloor. Octopus usually feel the bait with their tentacles before launching themselves onto it, and this can be felt in one’s hands as a sort of ’sticking’ feeling. On feeling the ’stickiness’ on the line becoming much heavier, signalling the octopus actually attaching itself to the bait and starting to feed, a violent and large yank upwards on the line with both one’s hands sets the hooks into the creature and then it is a slow process of hauling in the line by hand to the surface.

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New Spinnerbait Designs

I’ve been busy trying to master the art of powder coating my lures. I have progressively been getting better each lure I paint. Here are some example of my most recent creations.

This lure measures a lengthy 19 inches.

London Ontario Pike and Carp Fishing

Its blistering hot here in London today, but I decided to head down to the river hoping it was cooler near the water – it wasn’t. I’m glad I headed down today though, the fishing was great. I saw fish in the shallows as soon as I got to the river. I had my trusty Mepps Aglia #4 tied on (the same one that caught a white bass and walleye last week) and started covering the faster moving water, working my way to the slower deeper water under the Queens Avenue bridge.

I was approaching my usual carp spot and decided to make a cast to the area I usually cover with corn. Within a few cranks of the reel something hit the lure hard. I knew it was not a bass, and it was most definitely not a walleye. Five seconds later, a nice big pike was flying through the air. Being the first river pike I have ever caught, I wasn’t sure what type of fight to expect and I wasn’t going to be disappointed. The fish thrashed and jumped several times thought the fight, a vast difference to the bull dogging cold water pike of Little Vermilion. I got her to shore as quickly as I could on my light gear, and quickly snapped a photo and got her back in the water.

After several more casts with no excitement, I decided it was time to catch some carp. I through a couple handfuls of corn in the water and baited my hook and casted it out about ten feet and sat back from the edge of the water. After about five minutes, I heard some heavy feet stomping down the opposite shore, and looked up to see a police officer heading down the water with a large German shepard. He looked a around a while, and then called in my description over his walkie talkie. For a moment I thought I had done something wrong, but HQ radioed back that I wasn’t the guy they were looking for. Just then my reel started to scream and a nice size carp was running up and down the current. By the time I got the fish in, the officer was gone, but I could hear several sirens in the distance. I struggled to snap a photo with the fat little carp, but finally got a photo after about four attempts. She swam away strong, and I decided to pack it in for the day. As I headed back I ran into some more policemen who approached me and asked me a few questions. They then proceeded to put together an inflatable boat. I wanted to tell them they would be better off just walking though the water, since a boat wasn’t going to make it very far (the water VERY shallow where they were planning to launch (the ducks and geese were standing in the area) Hopefully they were looking for a criminal and not a body…

Hopefully They Don’t Like Bananas

Great White shark approaching a kayak – via PaddlenRound Blog