Dojo loach. Amur weatherfish. Pond loach. Oriental weatherfish. Japanese weatherfish.

Luke’s nemefish.

Misgurnus anguillicaudatus, a resilient, eel-like fish, goes by many names. The latter is just what I call them. Well, called them until this month.

Native to east Asia, the fish has been introduced all over the world by aquarists desiring to send it “back to nature” after deciding it’s not the pet for them. As these fish can survive in heavily polluted waters, a wide array of temperatures and even barely oxygenated puddles until the next rain, they’ve taken a foothold — finhold? — almost everywhere they’ve been released. The name “weatherfish” allegedly comes from the fish’s increased feeding activity before storms, though I wouldn’t know because prior to this month, I’d never seen one in the wild.

They’re supposed to exist all over the place, and I’ve investigated almost a dozen locations purported to have populations, from marshlands of Astoria to sloughs of Portland to agricultural ditches in Ontario. The one thing all of these locations have in common? I couldn’t find weatherfish.

Last year, I expanded my search beyond Oregon and tried a pond outside of Salt Lake City where a friend had videotaped several of them feeding during the day. Nope. I tried a ditch in Florida purported to have them. Nada. I even checked the Weather app on my phone. Nothing. So, just as I’ve done with dating during the pandemic, I resigned myself to failure and hoped I’d get another shot sometime before I began to lose my hair.

Enter Peter Chang.

Peter

I met Peter in the old-fashioned way: when he shouted my name from a passing car as I walked down the side of a California road.

“Luke?”

“Luke!”

“Luke Ovgard!?”

The shock of someone five hours from home in a car I didn’t recognize shouting my name as I skirted the edge of a boujee Californian waterfront would’ve killed someone with a weaker heart. Fortunately, repeated heartbreak has made the beating scar tissue in my chest resilient.

Unsure who the guy (or the three others in his car) were, I followed him to the nearby parking lot. It was broad daylight, and there were people everywhere, so I figured at least there would be witnesses to my murder.

Out of the car popped some guy I’d never seen before in my life.

In the passenger seat, a woman (I’d later learn this was his wife, Julie) seemed a bit embarrassed and kept apologizing profusely. Figuring this wasn’t the typical behavior of a Bonnie and Clyde-type duo on a murderous rampage, I went up.

He introduced himself as Peter Chang, and told me he’d started reading my blog and then my column years before when he first got into fishing. I was floored.

It’s not uncommon for me to get recognized in my hometown by people I’ve never met who read my column, but I’ve been writing there for seven years. This seemed almost unreal.

I’m horrible with names but great with faces. Here, I was drawing a blank.

He told me as I tried not to visibly sigh in relief, “You wouldn’t know me, but I’m a fan of your writing!”

I was humbled to rare speechlessness for a moment.

We talked for a few minutes, grabbed a picture together, and we parted ways.

I followed him on Instagram that day, and a few months later, I saw he’d caught my nemefish …

Shame

As I planned this year’s summer trip, I arranged to meet up with Peter and try for these weatherfish on one of my first days on the road. We planned to visit a spot our mutual acquaintance, Ben Cantrell, had discovered. Peter and Julie graciously invited me to stay with them.

Peter and I met up in the early evening and walked to a remote creek on the outskirts of Los Angeles. After catching my first arroyo chub, another fish I’d tried and failed to catch a few times, I finally hooked my weatherfish — and promptly dropped it.

It’s OK, because I caught another one. And dropped it.

This repeated, comically, for at least half an hour. I lifted no fewer than eight Oriental weatherfish/dojo loach/Luke’s nemefish out of the water but failed to get one in hand for a picture. I touched several, even got one on land before seeing its snake-like movements propel it from the muddy shoreline into the stream and out of my life forever.

Peter was remarkably helpful, spotting the abundant fish for me and stifling most of his laughs as I dropped fish after fish.

Daylight faded with my patience, and he informed me we had about 15 minutes left before we had to move the cars out of the park.

In the wan light, I hooked my ninth? Tenth? Eleventh fish? I landed it, walked an unnecessary distance from the water and snapped a quick picture as Peter looked on approvingly.

I owed him so much; I could barely contain my joy. He helped me close a long, embarrassing chapter of failure in my fishing career, but the good news is that I was experimenting with my GoPro that night, so I immortalized 20 or 30 minutes of that repeated failure on film for future generations.

Though I hadn’t released the video, I’m pretty sure his adorable infant daughter, Hailey, must’ve heard about my failings because she seemed pretty uncertain about me when I met her the next morning. Eventually, I won her over the same way I won over the weatherfish: with Peter’s help. Grapes admittedly helped, too.

After years of repeated failure, Peter helped me solve that problem. So the next step, it would seem, is to have Peter take a look at my online dating profiles, right?