As I was looking through some pictures of strange and wonderful fish I’ve encountered, often at the end of my fishing line, an opah jumped off the page and reminded me of one that washed ashore in Santa Barbara some years ago.

It was a case of high adventure on the beach, after the strange and colorful pelagic fish washed ashore. It became an intrepid nighttime search along the beach below the cemetery.

My phone rang and Mike, a trusted fisherman, called to invite me to go on a search for a big opah that had washed ashore.

A surf fisher friend of Mike’s had called him just before dark to describe a strange and wonderful fish he had never before seen the likes of. He clicked a pic with his smartphone and sent it to Mike, who immediately recognized it as an opah.

I grabbed my grandson John, who was 9 years old at the time, and we took off for East Beach to meet up with Mike. I knew this would interest young John because he lives to fish and loves learning about fish, techniques and tackle.

It was full dark on a moonless night by the time we got down to water’s edge. We searched from East Beach down nearly to Butterfly Beach without sighting the critter.

There was a powerful incoming tide associated with a new moon phase, and that big fish, which I estimated to be 45 pounds based upon the photo and video, had probably washed back out to sea. Rats!

An opah is a wild-looking fish, quite bright and with vibrant orange fins and tail. It is shaped something like a giant perch, and doesn’t look very aquadynamic, although it swims quite well.

These fish are impressive pelagic predators. They travel well offshore, often with schools of tuna, eating finfish, such as anchovies, sardines and mackerel.

It is a complete mystery how this magnificent beast of a fish wound up washed ashore below the cemetery. They are not known to frequent inshore waters, preferring to remain well offshore.

I’ve been fortunate to have caught four of them in my lifetime, and in all my decades of fishing I have never seen one less than 20 miles offshore.

In our waters, they usually remain well outside the islands, but here was this one, in very good shape except for a bite out of its belly, and looking fairly fresh, washed up on the beach. It will remain a mystery and the stuff of campfire stories on dark nights.

I’ll share the picture snapped of the washed-up opah, plus a black and white photo of me in my 20s with an 80-pound opah I caught offshore from Morro Bay while fishing for albacore.