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Outside Magazine December 2002

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Out There
Gettin' Jiggy (Cont.)

A BASIC JIGGING SETUP involves a standard light rod and reel, a portable floodlight, and a handful of lures known as squid jigs.

Squid-jigging success rests on the jig itself, a five- or six-dollar contraption engineered for cold-blooded simplicity. If you've ever watched a jig bob up and down in the water, you know why its name was derived from the word for a lively dance. The top end of a jig is shaped like a pinkie finger and decorated like a small, flashy fish. The bottom end of a jig sports a profusion of J-shaped needles. A squid doesn't bite the jig and get lip-hooked in the conventional way that fish do. Instead, a squid seizes the jig with its tentacles. The jigger must detect the squid's presence through the rod, then yank on the line to impale the squid on the needles. In winter, when large numbers of squid congregate to spawn, they feed voraciously in the shallow waters at night, gobbling up anything that's smaller than they are. The jig simply has to look alive.

If you ask around on the docks about where to buy a jig, you will wind up with directions to Linc's Tackle. This dusty but well-organized fishing shop lies east of the waterfront, in the International District. The shop's founder, Lincoln Beppu, was born in the United States to Japanese parents in 1912 and died in 1992. He opened the corner-store business on Rainier Avenue South and King Street in 1950, about five years after he and his brothers, Monroe, Taft, and Grant, were released from a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans.

Lincoln Beppu recognized that his neighborhood clientele of Asian immigrants did not have much in the way of disposable income, so he encouraged squid jigging on the grounds that it was cheap and close by, and that you could get a good meal out of it. Lincoln imported many of his jigs from Japan. People have been catching squid in Asia and the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and many centuries ago the Japanese began whittling, from deer antlers, intricate and decorative jigs that look almost exactly like the ones used today. These ancient jiggers lured their quarry with torches instead of halogen lights.

Linc's Tackle is now owned by Lincoln's son, Jerry Beppu, a 57-year-old man who wears his graying hair slicked back in a way that accidentally appears hip. Jerry's wife, Maria, the daughter of a French-Canadian mother and a Filipino father, helps run the shop. In the window of Linc's Tackle is an old, yellowing sign that says LET'S GO SQUID JIGGING: COME IN FOR ADVICE AND TACKLE.

Matt and I caught Jerry and Maria during their evening rush, which coincides with the setting of the sun. Jerry was peeling a tangerine and Maria was pantomiming back and forth with a man who spoke neither English nor Japanese. She pointed to each available size of jig, which vary in length from a ballpoint pen to a pen's cap, and waited for the customer to nod yes or no. He picked his size. Then she went through the colors, which range widely. Some are plain neon yellow and others are obviously inspired by an appreciation for the psychedelic.

I gazed over the man's shoulder and spotted the squid jig of all squid jigs. It was a beauty: a glow-in-the-dark jobby with a translucent top revealing an internal swirled cat's-eye design. Based on zero experience, I knew this jig would work. It cost me $3.25. I also forked over $23.90 for a one-year out-of-state shellfish license ($8.67 for Washington residents). Matt picked out a handful of trusted jig designs, and we headed for the door. As we stepped outside, Jerry Beppu yelled, "Patience and luck!"

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