TALE OF THE TUNA . . . THREES COMPANY : Long Rangers Return With Big Yellowfin

SAN DIEGO — For 10 days, a tobacco-chewing LAPD traffic cop named Joe Beck wondered if his name would be going into fishing’s record book. On the sixth day of a 16-day long-range fishing trip to the Revillagigedo Islands off Mexico, Beck had caught a yellowfin tuna that everyone on board agreed was well over 300 pounds.

The question, though, was whether it exceeded 333 pounds.

If it did, Beck’s name would go into the International Game Fish Assn.’s record book for a yellowfin in the 130-pound test line category.

So there was some suspense in the air Friday morning, in front of Fisherman’s Landing in San Diego, when Tom Rothery, skipper of the Polaris Supreme, cranked Beck’s seven-foot tuna up on a scale. A crowd of a couple of hundred who’d gathered to watch chanted out the red numbers on the scale’s digital display:

“Two-seventy! Two-eighty! Two-ninety! Three hundred! Three-ten . . . “

The numbers stopped at 313.8 pounds.

“I don’t care,” Beck said, putting in a fresh chew. “I had a good time. This is the 15th long-range trip I’ve been on, and it may have been the best trip ever.”

There didn’t seem to be much doubt about that. Beck’s wasn’t the only 300-pounder brought back. Curt Wiesenhutter, who holds the all-tackle world yellowfin record of 388 pounds, caught two more 300-pounders. In yellowfin tuna parlance, they’re called threes. And five other fish broke 200 pounds at Friday’s weigh-in.

Said Bill Poole, a pioneer in long-range fishing and owner of the Polaris Supreme: “We had three 300-pounders on the old Polaris Deluxe in 1980. It doesn’t happen often, believe me. I don’t think there’s more than 20 people who’ve ever caught a 300-pound yellowfin on rod and reel. Thirty, at the outside.

“No one I know of keeps catch count records of every long-range trip, but I’d have to say the guys on this trip saw tuna fishing that was just about as good as it gets.”

The 90-foot boat returned Friday with its 16-ton capacity hold “plugged” with yellowfins and wahoo. Another 3,000 pounds of fillets were stowed in on-deck freezers. The top catches were by:

--Beck, San Pedro, 313.8 pounds.

--Wiesenhutter, Bellflower, 310.7 and 309.5.

--Tom Walker, Norwalk, 278.7 and 206.1.

--Nelson Inafuku, Los Angeles, 278.2 and 274.8.

--Herb Okada, Gardena, 207.8.

--Nick Grmolyes, Huntington Beach, 193.8.

Wiesenhutter is in a rut. It seems that he can only catch 300-pounders. His first 300-pounder was the 388, a world record that has remain unchallenged since 1977.

“Believe it or not, I’ve never caught a 200-pounder,” he said. “Other than my three 300-pounders, my biggest yellowfin is 165 pounds.

“These two nearly broke my back. It was an hour-and-a-half each, on successive nights. On the ’77 trip when I had that 388, the next-biggest fish on the boat for the whole trip was an 80-pound wahoo.”

Long rangers usually fish each of the four Revillagigedo Islands, about 500 miles south of the tip of Baja California. But on this recent voyage, fishing was so good at the first stop, Clarion Island, that the boat never went to nearby Soccoro and San Benedicto.

Said skipper Tommy Rothery: “We got into Clarion about 4 a.m., and I could see a lot of wahoo on the sonar. Then at daylight we started seeing schools of yellowfins on the sonar, 100 feet down. We got into them then and really, the bite never stopped. Two guys lost two fish I’m sure were over 300 pounds.

“Conditions were very good . . . we had great bait, some really big salamis (14- to 20-inch live mackerels). We filled the hold a day early. On the way back, we stopped at Roca Partida for an hour and a half and caught about 15 wahoo. After that, we dropped off most of the guys at Cabo San Lucas, so they could fly home.”

Poole himself skippered the Supreme on a trip to the Revillagigedos last month and said that sharks might have knocked one of his fishermen out of the record book.

“One of the guys had been on a big fish for about two hours,” Poole said. “He finally got the thing to the rail, and it was huge. And right when we gaffed it, two sharks took two big hunks out of him, maybe 30 or 40 pounds of flesh. It weighed 305 with two bites out of him.”

Beck, 49, a 24-year veteran of the LAPD, is also a veteran long ranger. He said he makes at least one trip a year, and last year caught a 276-pounder, his previous best. This time, he said the bite at Clarion was best at night.

“About a half-dozen of us would fish all night. We’d sack out after dinner, then start fishing around 1:30 a.m. My big one I caught at 4 a.m. He surfaced right after I hooked him, then took about half my spool on a real long run.

“Right about sunrise, he went real deep on me, and stayed there for maybe an hour. I was on him over two hours.”

Inafuku, a business consultant, was on only his third long range trip, but his two big ones put him right up there with veterans Beck and Wiesenhutter.

“I’m really a beginner, but I’m learning a lot very quickly from experienced guys like Ralph Mikkelsen and Herb Okada,” he said.

It was Mikkelsen’s 130-pound-test record of 333 pounds that Beck wanted to break with his yellowfin. Mikkelsen makes about a half a dozen trips a year chasing his goal, the first 400-pound yellowfin on rod and reel.

Anyone who was on the Polaris Supreme’s recent trip will tell him he’d best hurry up. Someone might beat him to it.