WARNING: Tobacco smoke increases the risk of lung cancer and heart disease, even in nonsmokers.

WARNING: This story contains tobacco and cigar smoke. For those over 20, let me specify that I use the Urban Dictionary definition of smoke here: confrontation.

Addictive

Most tobacco users have a preferred method of imbibing. Whether it be pipe tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, chew or vape pen, the addictive chemical nicotine has been calling to smokers, dippers and vapists since the white man first corrupted the Native Americans’ ceremonial plant on the eastern shores of Virginia.

Along with chocolate, corn, turkeys, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, chilis and a host of other New World crops, tobacco took to the ever-expanding global markets. During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries it went from luxury to ubiquity just as coffee, tea and sugar had done before it.

Today, the global market for tobacco and its derivatives hovers just under $1 trillion, a mark it is projected to hit this decade despite the horrors it inflicts on the human body in all its forms.

I hold a personal vendetta against the industry that killed my paternal grandfather at 61, and I’ve never tried tobacco products in my lifetime. There are far less effective (and far more enjoyable) passive suicide attempts out there, and I choose pastries.

But one-quarter of the world’s population would disagree with me, according to the World Health Organization, which notes fully 22% of living humans use tobacco in some form.

Few substances on earth are more addictive than the driving force behind this trillion-dollar industry, but several activities offer just as many addictive properties, including, of course, fishing.

Imagine an activity that combined tobacco and fishing. The addictive nature of this habit-forming hobby would be almost irresistible. This scenario already exists in a roundabout way. Simply take a charter boat to bottom fish anywhere, and you’ll smell the miasma of diesel fumes and cigarette smoke vying for control of your stomach as you bounce in the waves.

But no, I speak not of smoking or vaping while fishing but rather fishing for tobacco.

Tobaccofish

Though most tobacco is grown in monocrop fields, some is grown on a much smaller scale in the warmwater reefs of the western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, lapping onto the shorelines where terrestrial tobacco plantations still persist.

The tobaccofish, Serranus tabacarius, is a small species of true sea bass that grows no larger than a comically oversized cigar. The orange-white-brown coloration of the fish is beautiful, adding to the appeal of this particular brand of tobacco.

As a white-meat fish, it likely wouldn’t be very good smoked — even if you somehow managed to light one end. As a sea bass, chewing it would likely be pleasurable, but given its small size, the tobaccofish is a great candidate for catch and release.

Once I saw a picture of this tobacco, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Though I was carrying the fishing rod, it was I who was hooked. It was an unexpected catch for me and my late friend Dominick Porcelli, who’d taken me out for a day of fishing from his boat. Fort Lauderdale sprawled in the distance, and I was careful not to contribute any tobacco smoke to its smog, but the small fish didn’t put up much of a fight.

I held it in my hand, celebrated with a brief picture and then turned it loose. With a family history of addiction, I’m extremely careful not to let addictive substances control me. I stopped with one and refocused on my next tobacco-themed fish, one I would have to travel all the way to a popular island to discover.

Cigars

Cuba would be a fitting home to the cigar wrasse, Cheilio inermis, but the fish is an Indo-Pacific species, ranging from the Red Sea to the Hawaiian Islands. It was on the Hawaiian island of Kauai where I first crossed paths with this long, cigar-shaped fish.

While fishing the jetty behind the home of my friends Josh and Alayna Cardwell, waiting for them to get off work, I caught and released a cigar wrasse without much ceremony. I celebrated by smoking it, of course. Urban Dictionary definition, though. I reeled it in, smoking it across the water to my perch on the slippery rocks.

What did it smell like? Weird question, but OK. Like a fish. It smelled like a fish.

Good thing it was humid or the cigar might have been damaged in my dry hands.

I let it go and set my eyes on the next tobacco-themed fish: a group of close relatives to the seahorse, a classy bunch of fishes that require you to speak in a British accent and wear a smoking jacket to even approach: the pipefish.