Two weeks. A work trip and family travel stretched across the US and Japan, and somewhere in the planning I set myself a side quest: collect the signature species of the US East Coast and the Tokyo area before I flew home.
The target list split cleanly by geography.
US East Coast
- Fluke — the summer flounder of the Atlantic. A left-eyed flatfish that ambushes from sand and mud bottom, not structure. You work a lure or a bait slow and low, and the take is often a soft weight rather than a hit.
- Bluefish — fast, toothy, and indiscriminate when they switch on. The chopper of the Northeast surf and inshore.
- Striped Bass — the East Coast icon. Estuary and surf, tide-driven, the fish that defines a season up there.
- Largemouth Bass — the freshwater anchor of the list. A different world entirely from the salt: ponds, lakes, structure.
Tokyo
- Rainbow Trout — a wild-stream rainbow, the freshwater target on the Japan side.
- Seabass — Japanese seabass, an estuary and harbour fish and the gateway lure species across the country.
The Atlantic flats and the surf line on one side; a Japanese mountain stream and Tokyo’s brackish water on the other. Fluke off sand bottom and largemouth in still water ask for opposite reads — then you fly fourteen hours and reset with a stream rainbow and a tidal seabass. Not every target landed, but the list was run. That’s enough.