Mark Spitzer - In Search of Monster Fish: Angling for a More Sustainable Planet

From heaving seas off the coast of Gambia to the sublime shorelines of Italys Lake Como, In Search of Monster Fish is an anglers odyssey in pursuit of strange and wonderful fish and a quest to find a higher truth about conservation and the future of wild nature on our planet.

Stephen Sautner, author of Fish On, Fish Off

The writing often soars to extraordinary, lyrical heights.... Like the barracuda, Spitzer has the huevos to take on anything and anyone.

Henry Hughes, author of Back Seat with Fish

Praise for Mark Spitzers Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West

A certified angling addict, [Mark Spitzer] travels the [world] seeking the kinds of experiences that youre unlikely to find valorized in the pages of Field & Stream.... [His] shtick is to love the unlovely, to venerate the homely stalwarts that make up in resilience what they lack in conventional beauty.... Its about embracing the nature we have, whatever it looks like, wherever it swims.

Ben Goldfarb, High Country News

This is a book that beautifully navigates the space between entertainment and information. Moments will stick with readers, and will make them look at the fish and fisheries with new eyes.

Erin H. Turner, Big Sky Journal

Spitzer, like many of us, is looking for utility and finding it in the wildness of underappreciated fish. The beautifully grotesque fish represent possibilities for us in our ever-changing world.

Donald J. Orth, Pacific Northwest Quarterly

Reading this book is a little like sipping on an old, rich whiskeyits smooth, interesting, and exactly what you need after a long day on the water.

Joshua Peterson, Casper Star Tribune

A powerful, beautiful, and ultimately kind book. Were lucky to have it.

Max Wilson, Lesser Places

[Spitzers] a hard-core fisherman.

Daryl Bauer, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission Fisheries Outreach Program manager

Here is a book that captures that rhythm. Every page. The fish-obsessed will smile knowingly and follow Spitzer as he encounters everything from endangered razorback suckers to burbot on ice. And along the way, youll realize youre enjoying a lot of science and conservation as well.

Matt Miller, Cool Green Science

A wild foray into fishing the industrial edge, and a marvelous read about the fish few of us will ever know.

Kevin Mattson, avid fisherman and Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History at Ohio University

Mark Spitzer fishes his way across the West, stalking unique, maligned, and ugly species while enlightening readers on their ecological roles and conservation statuses.... A fun and, at times, hilarious adventure. Creative and unassuming, this is a wonderful addition to fishing literature.

Jennifer Corrinne Brown, author of Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West

Mark Spitzer manages to capture all our favorite grotesque fish in his latest frenetic adventures while making you feel like youre right there with him in the boat! He also delivers a genuine message of conservation to benefit fish and people.

Solomon R. David, postdoctoral research associate at the John G. Shedd Aquarium

Mark Spitzer

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

2019 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

Chapter 6 was originally published as Monster Carp in Manmade Reservoirs: In Pursuit of French Fish without Borders in Spank the Carp, no. 32 (September 2017).

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover photo courtesy of Jrmy Fournier, Lake Iktus.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Spitzer, Mark, 1965 author.

Title: In search of monster fish: angling for a more sustainable planet / Mark Spitzer.

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018026901

ISBN 9781496211880 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 9781496214294 (epub)

ISBN 9781496214300 (mobi)

ISBN 9781496214317 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : FishingAnecdotes. | FishesSize.

Classification: LCC SH 441 . S 748 2019 | DDC 639.2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026901.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Fighting for the protection of our oceans is very much about fighting for our own survival. Paul [Watson] always says, If the oceans die, we die. And for me, fighting to protect the ocean and its inhabitants is very much a matter of self-defense.

Captain Peter Hammarstedt, Whale Wars, season 7, episode 1

In response to stress, biological survival requires genetic change; it necessitates a turning away from doomed replication. And what of history?

William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways

In addition to thanking the literary journal Spank the Carp, who published an early incarnation of the monster-carp chapter, Id like to thank everyone involved in this monsterquestfrom the editors, board members, and staff at the University of Nebraska Press (particularly Matt Bokovoy, Heather Stauffer, Rosemary Sekora, Sara Springsteen, and Kyle Simonsen) to the guides and specialists I worked with in the field (especially Drew Price, Captain John Krol, Fabrizio Terenghi, and Luca De Prezzi) to all the suppliers of images who provided permissions. Im grateful as well to the University of Central Arkansas for a research-based leave of absence that allowed for some relief from the monstrosities of academia, as well as the Marist College Florence campus, whose staff, administrators, teachers, and students provided lodging and fine company while I realized the last half of this book. None of this would have been possible, however, without support from the Estate of Nancy MacKenzie, whose foresight and fighting spirit will always serve as an example of how to live a life with purpose.

Thanks also to the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society, who awarded an earlier version of this manuscript the honor of shortlist finalist in their 2017 William FaulknerWilliam Wisdom Narrative Nonfiction Competition.

Special acknowledgments to Scotty Goggle Eye Lewis for assistance with gar on the fly, Bill Wilmert for gar-fly-fishing guidance, Rob Watts for an insider look at Euro carp culture, Lee Merritt for helping a brother out, and Dr. Robert Turkey Buzzard Mauldin for translating the language of carbon calculations into laymans terms. Thanks also to my nephew River Rasmussen for being just as excited as me to reel in a dogfish, and ber-angler Henry Hughes for invaluable fish knowledge and top-shelf editing advice. Special thanks as well to Thomas McGuane for inspiring a necessary, terrifying, and sobering introspection.

But mostly, Id like to thank poet-scholar Lea Graham, who accompanied me on many of these expeditions, for being there and being who she is: an extremely fun traveling companion whose encouragement and perspective have added profound depths to the quality of this fishermans existence. Im lucky to have her in my life and as my wife, and I dedicate this book to her in the hope that this effort will create some converts to help preserve what weve got left.