Fishermen Are Finding How Not to Get Hooked

To rush-hour commuters whizzing across the bridge on 7th Street in Long Beach, it’s just another flood control channel.

Yet on almost any day of the week, this barren stretch along the San Gabriel River attracts scores of fishermen willing to climb fences and ignore no-trespassing signs in order to catch their limit.

On a good day, they say they can catch more than 100 African perch here in a few hours. On an average day, there’s an almost guaranteed catch of 30 to 40 just for having a hook out.

“This is the kind of place you dream about finding,” said James Dillon, 40, a die-cutting pressman from Bell Gardens who, after two hours of effort on a recent Saturday morning, had about 20 fish in his bucket.

Hot Fishing Spot

Indeed, the freshwater drainage ditch with concrete and rock banks near the juncture of 7th Street and Studebaker Road has become one of the hot fishing spots in Southern California, despite the fact that fishing there is strictly illegal.

It is hot both literally and figuratively: figuratively because the sportsmen come from as far away as Pasadena and San Diego; literally because the water has a higher ambient temperature than surrounding waters due to the proximity of an electrical generating plant.

It is the outflow from the Southern California Edison plant a few hundred yards away, in fact, that experts believe attracts the extraordinary number of fish to the area.

Kevin Herbinson, a research scientist for Edison, said the water is warmed by its constant circulation at 300,000 gallons per minute through the plant’s gigantic condensers where it is used as a coolant. Returned to the river 15 to 20 degrees warmer than when it was sucked out, he said, the hot water raises the temperature of the river by about four degrees within 1,000 feet of the plant, resulting in the proliferation of warm-water fish.

For African perch--which average about six inches in length and are related to the African ciclid popular among local tropical aquarium enthusiasts--it is a perfect environment. Indigenous to certain warm rivers in Africa, the exotic fish were originally imported and planted in the county’s drainage system as part of an algae and mosquito abatement program in the early 1970s.

‘Think It’s Great’

Today, says Jim St. Amant, a fisheries supervisor for the state Department of Fish and Game, they are so plentiful that “we think it’s great” for people to catch them.

Not everyone is as tolerant.

Roslyn Robson of the Public Works Department, which maintains the county’s 470 miles of flood control channels including the San Gabriel River, said the department has posted prominent “No Fishing” signs in the area because it is not set up as a recreational fishing zone.

“Fishing is not what we are mandated to do,” Robson said. Before allowing recreational fishing, she said, the department would have to provide adequate bathrooms and trash barrels as well as regular patrols to protect itself from liability claims and to preserve the health and safety of those who use the facility.

“To open it up (to fishing) would take a major study and the budgeting of funds,” Robson said.

Three times a week, Robson said, department employees survey the area and ask fishermen to leave. “Our job is to make reasonable attempts to secure the area, and we feel we have done that,” she said.

Occasionally they are aided by Long Beach police officers who can enforce state laws calling for fines of up to $500 and prison terms of up to six months for people who trespass into the flood control channel.

But Mural Asbill, an officer in charge of community relations, said that arresting trespassers is not a high priority at the Police Department.

‘Respond to Calls’

“Mostly we respond to calls,” said Asbill, adding that not many calls come in regarding activities in the flood control channel. Although a police helicopter patrols the area regularly, he said, its occupants primarily concern themselves with spotting illegal swimmers rather than illegal fishermen.

So the fishermen stream in by the dozens. On a recent overcast Saturday, about 40 dangled hooks in the water. Most said they did not consider the fish they caught to be polluted, a claim supported by Edison officials who say their plant adds no pollutants to the water and by chemists at the state Department of Health Services who say they have never tested the fish caught in the channel because they have received no complaints about them.