When I was a kid, bonito were the big inshore gamefish. (When you’re fishing for 2-pound bass and hook into a 6-pound bonito that pulls like a tuna, you’ve got some excitement.) But the bonito population dropped in the late 1970’s, and never really recovered, and I didn’t get many pictures of the ones I did catch. As a result, I don’t have many recent photos of bonito. These are scans of three ancient, faded snapshots, and one Polaroid.
Peter holding up two bonito Here I am with a couple of 6-pounders taken off the Lenbrooke (Malibu Pier 1/2-day boat) in 1974.
 
close-up of a bonito on the boat's deck
One of those 1974 bonito, moments after being decked.
 
Small bonito lying on a pier
Since then, bonito over about 18 inches have been scarce. Here’s one of about that size taken off a pier in King Harbor.
 
Peter holdin a big bonito
In 1990, while on a bottom-fishng trip out of Morro Bay, this monster bonito ate my lingcod jig as it sank. The rusty scale on the boat said it weighed 17 pounds; my guess is it was more like 13 or 14, but either way it’s by far the biggest bonito I ever caught.
 

[ Previous | Next ]
[ Fishing Photo Index | Back to Fishing ]