What Started as a Gamble Is Paying Off for Sportfishing Skippers in San Diego : A Fisherman Can Be Hooked, Too, on a Long Tuna Trip

Frank LoPreste knew the risks when he took a boatload of fishermen to a tiny, French-owned atoll in the eastern Pacific last spring.

The 25 anglers, each of whom had paid $4,000 in hopes of catching giant tuna, expected results. It was up to LoPreste, an adventurer who had been the skipper of sportboats for 20 years, to get them.

The gamble paid off. When the 23-day trip ended and LoPreste steered his Royal Polaris back into San Diego Bay, her 27-ton hold was full. It was the biggest haul in Southern California sportfishing history.

That trip to Clipperton Island was like a shot of adrenaline to San Diego’s long-range sportfishing industry. LoPreste immediately scheduled two more trips to the remote area for this spring. Danny Palm, another long-range skipper, will take his Red Rooster III to the island in April. Others are making Clipperton plans, too.

“Everybody’s listening now,” said Bill Poole, a pioneer of the long-range trips out of San Diego. “If (LoPreste) makes another successful run, there probably will be more pressure to go. There will be others going down.”

LoPreste, however, is not likely to face a whole lot of immediate competition. The distance to Clipperton Island, 800 miles south of the tip of Baja California, makes fuel capacity a governing factor. Only the Royal Polaris and Red Rooster III are now able to complete the voyage without refueling.

Poole is building a boat, that will be ready this spring, that will be able to reach not only Clipperton but even more distant destinations. He has a list of anglers ready to go. Long-range skipper Don Sansome is trying to sell his boat, the Qualifier 105, to finance construction of another with greater range.

The new push south is the first major expansion of sportfishing territory for San Diego-based boats since Poole and Lee Palm began exploring points south more than 20 years ago.

Competition and intense curiosity kept revealing new and better fishing areas. “I remember the first time we went to Alijos Rocks, 500 miles south of here, about 15 years ago,” Poole said. “No one had ever been there before. The passengers were all enthused, and I thought, ‘This is it. If we get there, it will be the ultimate.’ ”

Alijos Rocks is fished during 10-day trips. Like most of those early destinations, it is still popular and productive. Anglers return with enough fish to fill a commercial freezer, along with stories of back-straining fights at the rail with 200-pound yellowfin tuna.

In the early 1970s, it seemed that the ultimate tuna destination had been discovered--an island chain 500 miles southwest of the Baja tip, known as the Revillagigedos. The four islands and a submerged reef known as Hurricane Bank seemed to present unlimited possibilities.

There, anglers on 17-day trips found enormous tuna, including a 388-pound world-record fish taken aboard the Royal Polaris six years ago. They also found hard-fighting wahoo, dorado, rainbow runners and an occasional marlin.

“If we came back half-full of fish, seven or eight tons (for about 20 passengers), it would be a horrible trip,” Poole said. “On one trip to Clarion (southernmost island in the chain), we filled the hold in three days.

“We were filleting fish and putting them in the freezer as we ate up the food supplies. After a while, we wouldn’t keep anything under 100 pounds. Then it was 200 pounds. Believe me, it wasn’t easy to tell a guy with a 150-pound fish that he had to let it go.”

The superb fishing kept everyone happy, even hard-core types who make two or three long-range trips a year. Poole considered Clipperton, then decided to devote more time to another interest, big-game hunting. He sold his 113-foot Royal Polaris to LoPreste. In its place, he built the 78-foot Polaris Deluxe, which was not intended to explore more remote areas.

“Things were so good on the 17-day trips, there wasn’t a reason to go further,” said Maryann Grabowski, office manager of Lee Palm Sportfishing, now owned and operated by Palm’s son, Danny. “But after 10 years, you need another destination. Like everything else, there has to be changes.”

Enter LoPreste, a Daddy Warbucks look-alike with his shaved head and bulky figure. After hearing tales of giant tuna at Clipperton from commercial fishing friends, LoPreste began planning a Clipperton trip almost immediately after buying the Royal Polaris.

He carried 28 passengers to the atoll in March, 1983. Results were disappointing. Sharks, for which the island is famous, ate about half the tuna that were hooked. To save the trip, LoPreste made a run to Clarion Island, where anglers picked up a respectable number of tuna and wahoo.

Despite the dismal catch, LoPreste was convinced that Clipperton offered great potential. He scheduled another trip for 1984, slightly later in the season, and managed to fill all but three spots. This time, vindication.

“It was the most phenomenal fishing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “The sharks move in and out of all those southern islands, and there’s no telling when they’ll be around. They weren’t there on the last trip.”

The first afternoon’s fishing yielded more than 200 yellowfin tuna, most in the 30- to 40-pound range. During the week of fishing that followed, anglers became more selective, looking for larger game.

At trip’s end, the catch included 881 yellowfin tuna, 221 wahoo, half of which were taken on the return at San Benedicto in the Revillagigedos; 110 rainbow runners, 270 groupers, 76 blue-star jacks and a striped marlin.

At least 15 yellowfins weighed in at more than 200 pounds, including the jackpot fish, a 284-pounder. That’s short of the 400-pound tuna many long-rangers are hoping to find, but LoPreste expects the sizes to grow as he and other skippers get to know the area.

This spring, he plans to float wooden pallets near the boat to attract bait fish and, in turn, predators--such as 300-pound tuna. He will also encourage surf fishing from the island’s white sand and coral beaches, populated only by frigate birds, blue-footed boobies and orange land crabs.

Enthusiastic as he is about Clipperton’s possibilities, LoPreste is not stopping there. “I’ve got lots of new horizons,” he said.

Isla de Coco, an uninhabited island about 300 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, is on the 1985-86 schedule. Already, 24 passengers have signed up for the $6,000, 18-day trip, beginning and ending in San Jose, Costa Rica.

LoPreste also has his eye on Isla de Malpelo, off the coast of Colombia, and the Galapagos Islands, off Ecuador.

Poole, back in the explorer’s seat, may be right behind as his veteran clients press for more exotic destinations. “I think there will be trips in the future going to Galapagos and Cocos,” he said. “Everybody has a little explorer in them.”

As the range increases, so does the price tag, eliminating a large portion of the sportfishing market but opening a new one.

“Obviously, you’re not going to get the man who makes $8.50 an hour (on a $6,000 trip),” said LoPreste. “But a guy who’s making $40,000 a year can do it if he saves for it. And when you compare it to any other kind of vacation, skiing or salmon fishing in Alaska, I don’t think it’s excessive.”

Already, the market is changing, LoPreste said, with more worldly and affluent people among his clients. They expect more in accommodations, and the trend in boat building and refitting is to give it to them.

Things have changed since Poole took his first five-day trip to Guadalupe Island on the original 62-foot Polaris.

“We had open berthing, no staterooms,” Poole said. “For women, we hung a blanket up between berths so they could dress. We carried 90 gallons of fresh water on the trip, that was it.

“On the second boat, we put two saltwater showers in the heads, and thought that was a hell of a deal.”

Poole’s new boat, his seventh, will have 12 staterooms for a maximum of 24 passengers. Each room will have air conditioning, carpeting, cedar closet, and a sink with hot and cold water. Freshwater showers will be down the hall.

Passengers will be able to sunbathe on a top deck when the bite is off. “We thought about putting in a sauna or a hot tub, but we couldn’t find room,” he said.

The galley will have a commercial oven, a freezer with a separate compartment for ice cream, and room for two cooks to prepare fresh bread, pastries, roasts, lobsters and hot hors d’oeuvres. Videotape players with movie libraries are now standard, and some anglers bring equipment to record their catch. Entertainment during long days at sea ranges from wine tastings to costume parties.

Poole’s boat will have the latest in bridge hardware, including satellite navigation aids and a $12,000 fish finder that not only scans a 2,000-foot area around the boat but distinguishes between tuna and other species.

“Each time we build one, it gets a little more deluxe,” Poole said. “I think most of the people who take long-range trips would rather pay a little more money and have more room, more creature comforts.

“People get spoiled. We used to go for a week and charge $175. Now, you’re talking $1,000. But look at my costs. My first boat was worth $32,000. This one will cost me a million to build.”

Despite the costs, Poole said that demand for long-range trips is slowly growing, as anglers graduate from one-day to four-day to eight-day trips.

“It’s hard to get them out there sometimes. You don’t see as many young people as you used to. But once you get them on their first trip, they’re hooked. Then they can’t ever get enough.”