As I was looking through some pictures of strange and wonderful fish I’ve encountered, often at the end of my fishing line, an opah jumped off the page and reminded me of one that washed ashore in Santa Barbara some years ago.
It was a case of high adventure on the beach, after the strange and colorful pelagic fish washed ashore. It became an intrepid nighttime search along the beach below the cemetery.
My phone rang and Mike, a trusted fisherman, called to invite me to go on a search for a big opah that had washed ashore.
A surf fisher friend of Mike’s had called him just before dark to describe a strange and wonderful fish he had never before seen the likes of. He clicked a pic with his smartphone and sent it to Mike, who immediately recognized it as an opah…