A dispatch from TFFJ‘s SoCal Blog office and the great Ben Marcus, World’s Greatest Surfwriter™ and a couple of LA Times vintage fishing reports from Malibu Creek, Ventura and beyond. And clearly there was bitterness towards the “salmon-eggers” crowd by steelie fly enthusiasts, even in 1904. As well, a report on what would have likely been a California state record steelhead at 32 inches out of Malibu Creek… had said piscador not caught it shortly after being advised by California Fish and Game he should buy a license. Now you’d just get tasered by Sean Penn/Tom Hanks/Mel Gibson’s security detail.

Watch for a future TTFJ piece by Ben on Malibu’s Golden Age and the trout that lived (and died) in it.
Kids
I did a search for “malibu steelhead” and this is the earliest hit I got.

Nothing about Malibu steelhead actually, but the illustrations for this are pretty good.

And it’s also funny thinking about fishing the San Gabriel River.

It kills me to think that it was a great steelhead river at one time.

Now it’s all overgrown and mossy and mostly dead.

Few things pain me more than a killed river.

Malibu was pristine in 1916 and it doesn’t take much to kill habitat.

Attached is the piece from the LA Times that is pretty intriguing, about a guy catching a 33″ inch steelhead illegally and going to jail.

And also the public ridicule of salmon eggers, going back to 1916.

The BenM

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