Football coach George Allen, once said, “People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit.” George, we’re with you!

We are two mediocre fishermen who set out on a quest in 2011 to catch and eat every kind of freshwater fish in New Hampshire. We thought we would be done in a year, but the fish had other ideas. Call it a lesson in humility, or just evidence that we undertook a formidable challenge, but our quest remains unfulfilled. Luckily, we don’t know when to quit.  

In 2012, we decided to continue until we finished—like a pair of wheezing old dudes crossing the finish line after everyone else has gone home. To our wives’ dismay, we plan to keep fishing until success is ours.

It won’t be easy. The seven fish remaining on the list are obscure and difficult to catch on hook and line. We have four fish that don’t grow more than three inches long. The finescale dace, redbelly dace, swamp darter and tessellated darter look more at home in a bait bucket than on a dinner plate. The other three fish live in extreme habitats that would make Bear Grylls cringe. The creek chubsucker haunts shallow bogs filled with deadly West Nile carrying mosquitoes. The longnose sucker is happiest in wild rapids, and we have a better chance of running into J.D. Salinger in Stop-N-Shop than finding a lake whitefish that lives at the bottom of only a handful of deep New Hampshire lakes.

But one rare fish that did succumb to the Quest in 2012 was the banded sunfish (Enneacanthus obesus). It is a rare little sunfish found in swampy areas choked with vegetation and filled with warm water that is too acidic for most fish.

N.H. Fish and Game fisheries biologist Matt Carpenter wrote, “little is known about the ecology or distribution of the banded sunfish in New Hampshire. Most records are from the southeastern part of the state where human populations are rapidly increasing. Of 37 known records, 16 were collected in a statewide biological inventory conducted in the late 1930s by NHFG.”

Listed as a “Species of Special Concern,” the fish is one step removed from being labeled as threatened in New Hampshire. It is illegal to use the banded sunfish as bait, but the rules say nothing about eating them. So, for us, it was game on!

We researched likely banded sunfish habitats and decided that the Taylor River in Hampton Falls was a good place to find the state’s smallest native member of the sunfish family. Maybe we could get lucky and catch a trophy exceeding three inches!

We arrived at a small bridge on Route 88 that crosses the boggy headwaters of the river. For these small fish, we use 10-foot cane poles (no reel or line guides) with two-pound test fishing line and a number 22 hook tipped with a tiny bit of worm. The great thing about this setup is that we didn’t need to mess around with casting or reeling, just put the bait where we wanted it and pull in the fish.

Clay first tried the middle of the river, in about four feet of water. Immediately, the bait was hammered and he lifted a silvery four-inch fish skyward. We knew right away it was a golden shiner. These common minnows school in open water like packs of wild dogs on the African plains. They attack any morsel that lands in the water.

Clay returned the shiner to its watery hunting grounds while Dave dropped his ultra-light rig near a sunken branch. Wham! Another fish put a good bend in the willowy cane pole. This time it was a pumpkinseed, a spunky big brother of the banded sunfish that can grow to 10 inches. This one was about five inches long, too big to be a banded sunfish.

We had caught both of these fish many times during the Quest. We knew we needed to do something different if we expected to catch a different fish. Clay then remembered reading that banded sunfish stick very close to vegetation.

With this knowledge, Dave dropped his worm in ridiculously shallow water in between two pickerel weed stems. A tap, tap, tap on the line made Dave jerk the pole straight up. There, rising in the air like an ascending angel, was a fish that had eluded us for a year and a half. It was the right size and in our hands we could see it had a rounded tail and vertical black stripes. We cheered and danced a little jig on the side of the road as fish number 38 of the Quest, the banded sunfish, was finally in the bucket.  

We needed a special recipe for such a special fish. Anyone willing to eat a banded sunfish would have to be a rough and ready hombre on the trail who was not big on table manners but on good terms with hard liquor. So we invented bandito-style banded sunfish. Our recipe calls for one banded sunfish, two teaspoons of salt, a slice of lime and a shot of tequila. Clean the sunfish and cover it with salt. Roast the fish for about two minutes over an open fire.  Once cooled, take a bite of the fish, then bite the lime, and follow with a stiff shot of tequila. Mmmmm, good!

Note to reader: Please do not attempt this recipe! Even though we ate it, that doesn’t mean you should. In fact, pretend you never read this. If you do make it and something bad happens, leave a note saying you read about it in a Betty Crocker cookbook and Clay and Dave had nothing to do with it!

Follow our fishing adventures on Facebook or at www.catch-m-all.com. We are also working on a book about our adventures, and our company, Catch-M-All LLC, sells fishing hats and other cool stuff.