Skunked on Tomales Bay

(“Skunked” is a fisherman’s term for catching nada.) We trailered my boat up to the bay and when we  got there it was blowing hard. At the ramp, a National Park rescue boat (600 horsepower) was just pulling in, towing a boat the same size as mine, with 3 guys in it. The ranger said the fishermen were in trouble, with waves starting to break over the boat, and they were heading back out to check on 2 other boats that could be in trouble (above). He advised us against going out. so we scratched the plan. Below, Billy in a 1940s-style phone booth, and a deep sea diving rig at Nick’s Cove restaurant, which has a lot of vintage stuff on display. We got a bunch of bay mussels off the rocks on the way home.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

2 Responses to Skunked on Tomales Bay

  1. Mmm, mussels, so you weren't totally skunked. Actually, if you didn't drop a line in the water, you might not have been skunked at all because you weren't fishing yet.
    Your definition reminded me of my dad, who wrote outdoor stories for small magazines from Baja to British Columbia. (Small is good, right? LOL)
    K

  2. I hadn't heard of this application of 'skunked' before (unsurprisingly, because I'm a rare angler). Do you play cribbage? is there any connection between the two usages?

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