For Many in San Diego, the Ocean Is a True Fountain of Life : The Tricky Task of Finding Fish on a Deadline

“Pah! The Cattle Boat,” sniffs an early-morning fisherman as he climbs aboard his own personal Hatteras 35. He glances across two piers to where a clump of running-shoed, coffee-slopping, day-tripping landlubbers bottleneck a gangplank to Fisherman III, H & M Landing’s half-day fisher for today.

Their voices refract across the steely dawn waters.

“Mind your step, mind your step!”

“Mom! Watch my rod! You’re almost poking my eye out!”

“Do we wear life-jackets . . . Captain?”

A little old lady is helped aboard by two teen-agers. They are trying to steady her and carry their rods and tackle at the same time. A couple follows, balancing plastic cups of coffee with bags, yellow yachting jackets and fishing poles already twitching like giant scissors.

It’s 6:15 a.m. The Fisherman III is almost ready for another “half-day,” the trip for the uninitiated. Experts would take four-day, eight-day, even the 26-day fishing expedition down to Costa Rica--at the very least the 24-hour trip out to blue waters where you might expect to find some of the more, uh, man-size, intelligent fish. Bluefin. Yellowtail. Marlin. Something to challenge a man. To demonstrate the difference between a mere fisherman and a true angler . But this one’s for the self-confessed greenhorn. The families trying to do something together. The landlubbers who just want to have a little adventure away from it all that they’ll be able to share with the kids. Truly, the cruise of a lifetime, for some. And all for $17 plus pole rental.

The boat’s captain for the day, Pete Fagon, launches into his “good morning” routine over the scratchy speaker system as he guides the 53-footer out through the tangle of masts and hulls of the pleasure-fishing fleet, past names like Mascot VI, Cherokee Geisha and Fish’n Fool.

In the galley-stateroom, the more blase are already swapping experiences and comparing hometowns.

“Oregon? They don’t tan up there, they rust ,” says someone in a black jacket with “Monster Fishing” sewn in gold across the back.

“Now, folks,” Fagon says on the loudspeaker, “we’d like to remind you there are plenty of us aboard, and once we get to fishing, there are some rules we’re going to have to observe. The main one is no overhead casting. We could lose all sorts of pretty eyes if we try that one. We’ll catch plenty of fish just dropping the hook right overboard.”

Outside, things are already different from the normal world. Big brown pelicans defy gravity, slicking across the water, flipping, diving. And there, leaning on his elbow on a buoy, eyeing the boat nonchalantly as it slides by, is a seal.

“No, not seal. Sea lion. Know why? Seals just have holes in their heads. Sea lions have ear flaps like us. See? Plus they’re a lot cooler. Less shy. Come right up to you. Steal your fish. Bite him off right behind the head,” says Paul Horvat, who’s out for the first time since he sold his outboard runabout. He, at least, is no novice.

“Before my runabout I had a 641-foot vessel with 1,500 crew, and we fished the Pacific, Tasman Sea, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia, the Indian Ocean . . . “

“Ah, you were in the Navy, too, were you?” says an old salt next to him.

“Now folks,” says the loudspeaker, “if you’d care to record your names on the ship’s register, those of you that want to can place $2 down, and we’ll put that into a jackpot kitty for the one who hooks the top catch of the day. OK? Don’t put your poles out to starboard--that’s the right-hand side--because we’ll be pulling in for live bait in just a minute.”

In a moment, the boat is bumping alongside a series of pontoons tied together. Right out there in the middle of the harbor, like a midstream log-jam. “Everingham Brothers Live Bait,” says the sign.

“Stand clear, ladies and gentlemen, stand clear.” The crew has jumped down onto the nearest pontoon. They take a great net and troll it through oblong pools between the pontoons. Then they scoop up nets full of little fish with green eyes. Anchovies.

But the smell isn’t anchovies. In the crisp gray morning air, the waft of bacon drifting out of the main cabin. At this time, it’s like heaven.

“Do you realize how old sardines can grow?” says someone, taking a slurp at a cup of coffee in the galley. “Twelve or 13. Years! They don’t have kids till they’re 4! And the older they get, the further they go. The ones that get to a decent age, they swim to Canada because the grub’s good up there. Rich!”

The tanks on the stern are full of furiously swimming anchovies. These are the tough ones. They have been left in the pontoon tanks for a few days, time enough for the weaker ones to die off. These guys are going to be lively bait, and that’s guaranteed in the profit-sharing deal between H & M and Everingham Bros.

Everingham is the only live bait company in San Diego. The brothers have been at it for 35 years, almost as long as H & M, the oldest sportfishing company hereabouts. Most of today’s skippers don’t know what H & M stands for, (it should be HH & MM, short for the four founders’ names, Bill and Tony Hoss, and Barney Miller and Howard Minor) but they know they have to live up to a reputation for knowledge built up over 51 years. Today H & M has as many as 24 boats in high season, out of the 70-75 operated by the six companies in San Diego.

These boats do a disproportionate amount of Southern California’s sportfishing business: 25% of the region’s total party and charter fishing vessels sail out of here. San Diego has a daily carrying capacity of 3,000 fishermen for trips ranging up to 2,000 miles, mostly in Mexican waters. The quarry are marlin, giant sea bass, wahoo, yellowtail, yellowfin tuna and albacore. San Diego’s fleet is the most modern and farthest-ranging in the country, the San Diego Oceans Foundation says.

But the single most popular trips are still the full-day trips--boats that leave at 11 at night and return at 10 the next night.

Except this year. According to a neighboring fishing fleet owner, Bill Poole, this is the worst season in 40 years, because the region’s “star” fish--the albacore tuna--hasn’t showed nor, for the first time, have any of its replacements: yellowfin tuna, yellowtail, or dolphin (not the mammal, but a swift fish). Only the four-day trips can reach what albacore have been sighted, up north near San Francisco.

“Day boats business is off 75%. It’s a hell of a year,” Poole said.

This makes success with the half-days that much more important. It puts pressure on people like Fagon to find fish and bring in customers.

Point Loma slides by to starboard. The open sea spreads out before the boat. Already it feels like the boat is being tossed slow-motion in a blanket.

“OK, boys, we’re ready to fish!” says Al Knopp from New York. He looks pleased. He’s with his four sons, snapping on hooks with a new shiny, fancy line-grip that eliminates all that finicky hook-eye threading and knot-tying.

“Uh-oh.” The matter-of-fact voice of Adrianne Mirsky comes up. This is her third day as deck hand. She’s one of the few female deck hands in the sportfishing fleet. She worked her way up from cooking to get to it, learning fishing as she went. She looks at those shiny hook attachers. “You’re not going to catch fish with those things on.”

“What? They’re supposed to attract them! I’ve just paid . . . “

“Just imagine you’re the fish. He sees the bait, right? Concealing the hook. He’s about to bite when he sees all this shiny metal. They’re not stupid. Really. You’re trying to fool them. Get rid of them. Here. Do you want me to show you how to tie the hooks straight on?”

Knopp’s 12-year-old son, Ryan, starts following her instructions.

In the little wheelhouse, Fagon looks anxiously at the horizon, at the blue matte of the ocean, at the craggy outlines of the Coronado Islands. Then down at the orange and gray screen of his Furuno Fathometer. The bottom’s about 100 feet down.

“We’ll know there are fish around when little cloudy globs start appearing on the screen,” says Fagon, “but, really, this thing isn’t much use when it comes to finding them. Birds. That’s the best guide we have. See them circling round, or swimming in a patch out there, you know you’re onto a meatball.”

“Meatball?”

“Sure. A feeding frenzy. All the little bait fish, anchovies probably, are being chased from underneath by the big fish. Bass most likely around here. So they surround them and trap them into a tight circle, like Indians around the wagon ring. So that’s ideal for the sea gulls and pelicans. They’ve got a ready-made breakfast. They just dive in and take as much bait fish as they want. They ain’t goin’ nowhere. Big fish see to that. A meatball.”

Right now, the nearest thing he has to that are three lonely pelicans sitting in the water not looking very interested in anything. The compressed-air gear-changers hiss under his buttons as he presses neutral.

“Ah, folks,” he says through the intercom, “these birds must be here for a reason. I suggest you put your lines down here, see if we can’t pick up what they were picking up.”

The Fathometer shows 111 feet, and no blobs. The pelicans look slightly offended and waft into the air.

“This is the difficult part. Finding fish when you’ve only got an hour to locate them, with 50 people who’ve paid their money and want their money’s worth. Two-day trip, it’s not the same problem.”

He scans the horizon as he talks. Shafts of sun start piercing the morning clouds. “Aha. Sun dogs,” he says, giving them the fisherman’s name, as though they’re a good portent. Far off on the port bow, toward the islands, a launch from another company is moving toward some jumble over the water.

“Hey!”

Fagon grabs the microphone.

“Watch your lines everybody--that means haul them in! We’re going to much better hunting grounds!”

The gears puff and wheeze, and soon the whirling of the birds and the ferment in the sea grow larger and clearer. Like a small undersea eruption.

“Meatballs! Meatballs! A fisherman’s dream!” he yells as he steams down on the little boil on the smooth skin of the ocean.

Fagon cuts the engine.

“See?”

He points to the small screen. Now under the surface line, orange clouds wax and wane, like smoke.

“Hundreds of them. Thousands of them!” He grabs the mike. “OK, everybody! The competition’s on! Let’s haul ‘em in!”

From the stern tanks, Wayne Salzman starts flinging nets full of anchovy bait, to attract the big fish outside the meatball.

Down on the port side, Irene Goetz, whose grandsons Courtland and Jason persuaded her to come, is fiddling with a rod.

“Which way up? Let’s see, how do you let the line go out?” There’s an important-looking button on the reel. “I feel I should be doing something with this cute little thing.”

“I got one!”

Duane Gillette from Phoenix is the first to get a strike. Crewman Biff Jones takes the hook out of Gillette’s sand bass with a pair of pliers, guesses it at about four pounds, and throws it into Duane’s gunnysack.

“Would someone tell me what I push to let this thing out?” calls Irene Goetz. She looks far too small for her rod. Mirsky comes over. She turns it up the other way so the reel is uppermost, presses the silver button and out whirs the line.

“Hey, Dad!” says Chris Knopp. “You want to help me here?” For the rest of the morning, Al Knopp won’t have time to fish. He’ll be too busy baiting anchovies, unhooking bass and untangling his kids’ lines.

The gunnysacks that line the white bait tanks are all twitching now. Spatters of blood line the rail. The seething mass of the meatball feeding frenzy has almost come upon the Fisherman III. The blue sea is frothing. Fifty-two people are yelling, deck crew are dashing from one rod to the next, trying to get the fish off the hooks and into the correct sacks. Atop the bait tanks, Wayne Salzman carries on his backhand tennis shot, heaving anchovies out, giving them one more chance to get away.

It’s 9:33 a.m., and already Duane Gillette has caught 18 fish. He’s going to have to share them with his wife, because he’s only allowed 10.

“How you doing, Grandma?” yells Courtland.

“Well, I’m on my second anchovy,” Irene Goetz says, still holding the pole upside down. “Ooh! Ooh! I think I’ve got one. Which way should I . . . he’s swimming under the boat . . . “

Fagon is suddenly with her, pulling on the U-curved rod.

“OK. Just start gradually winding. Don’t panic. You’ve got a beauty!”

On the other side, the shady starboard side, things are a little less frantic, for some reason. People don’t seem to be catching them. Anna Gray and her son, Michael, are standing in the eye of the hurricane, and nothing’s happening.

“Maybe if you try strip-bait,” suggests Jerry Isom, the cook, from the galley entrance. Some of the first fish caught have been sliced into strips as alternatives to anchovies. Michael hauls in his line.

“Yes, Michael, he’s dead, that anchovy of yours,” says his mother.

“No. He twitched. I’ll give him one more chance,” says Michael. And he throws in the line to give his bait one more opportunity to justify the last moments of its life.

In the excitement nobody has noticed the rumpled swell that has set the boat into yawing heaves. Except some of the children. Two of Al Knopp’s four sons, Ryan and Douglas, are down in the lower cabin, stretched out on bunks with a faraway stare, trying desperately to keep down the hurricane storming in their stomachs.

On deck the frenzy continues.

“Leave his head in the water!” yells Biff Jones to Goetz, who’s hooped over the rail on her second fish, yelling for help. All around, people are catching sand bass, barred sand bass, bonito and mackerel. The crew is hopping, the gunnysacks dancing. “I’d go back to the anchovies if I were you,” says a hurrying well-wisher to young Michael, whose change to strip-bait hasn’t brought a nibble. With a sigh, Michael starts hauling in his line again.

Over on the sunny frantic port side, the Gillette family seems to be the all-time champions: Duane and his wife, Ruth, and his parents, Helen and Ira. One of them is always shouting to the crew. “Can someone take this fish for me?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to have to stop.” The voice comes over the intercom. “We’ve reached our legal limits and we’ve run out of bait. So would you gather on the stern as we see who has hauled in the morning’s biggest?”

Everyone gathers while people bring out their best, still flipping in their hands. In the end it’s a contest between Carol Willard and Ira Gillette. A rough hanging by the gills on some hand-held scales declares 70-year-old Ira Gillette the winner, and he proudly holds his bass high for some photos. The Gillette family will be eating bass for months.

It has been a good day. A terrific day. The 52 aboard have together caught 300 fish. That’s an average of six each. And this in a season when the area’s staple, albacore tuna, has completely failed to appear.

For the one-day boats this year is a disaster. For the humble half-days, for Fagon, a day like today makes it all worthwhile.

“That’s the great thing about half-days,” he says. “People aren’t too deadly serious. I learned that lesson a long time ago. If you go out determined to catch fish, you’ll go crazy with frustration. If you go out to have fun, the fish’ll come as a bonus. But this has to be one of our best. The fish were there, and they were biting. Everybody’s happy.”

In the galley, Ira Gillette sits back, drinking coffee. His jackpot of $70 is still in his hand. He notices young Michael coming in from his last desperate attempt to catch a fish: Jerry the cook had told Michael there were always fish sheltering under the live bait pontoons. He dropped his hook down between the planks and waited, until pontoon man Tony Barber of Everingham Brothers came up and murmured that there was so much food around that the bigger fish had all got fat and disappeared five days ago out to the ocean.

Michael sits on a stool, thinking of the last fish he caught, back in a lake in Utah.

“No luck?”

Michael shakes his head.

“Well, don’t worry about it, Michael.”

Gillette holds up his $70.

“This is the first jackpot I have won in 40 years. Last time was at the end of the war off Newport, Calif. You won’t have to wait that long.”

“Besides,” says someone else, as Fisherman III sets off for the last leg back to Shelter Island, “think of how many fish there still are down there swimming thanks to you. They owe you their lives.”

Michael is not sure that makes him feel good inside.