Sportfishing Job Got Her--Hook, Line and Sinker

Jodine Tyson was majoring in business administration, marketing and business management at the University of Southern California when, three years before she graduated in 1976, she got a summertime job in Dana Point.

“The trouble was,” she says with a laugh, “USC didn’t have any courses telling you how to manage a fleet of sportfishing boats.”

And that was her summer job, helping owner Don Hansen operate the Dana Wharf Sportfishing fleet.

But by the time three summers had passed and Tyson had graduated, she had managed to correlate what she had learned at school with what had to be done around the docks in Dana Point Harbor, and Hansen took her on full time.

Now her title is general manager, and “she practically runs the place,” Hansen said.

When Tyson, 32, of San Juan Capistrano, began her part-time job in 1973, Hansen’s fleet of only three boats had just moved into the newly completed facilities at Dana Point. For years before the harbor was built, the boats had moored off the end of the San Clemente Pier.

Now the sportfishing firm owns four boats, mostly twin-diesel 65-footers and handles charters and other facets of the business for six other vessels, including the schooner Kelpie, which takes charters for weddings, moonlight cocktail cruises, and, during the winter, whale-watching.

“We’ve got six full-time skippers on the payroll, plus a number of first deckhands, all on the regular payroll, and some people in the office,” Tyson said. “In the summer, we take on anywhere from 50 to 60 school kids as second deckhands.”

Her duties include making up the payrolls for all those people, scheduling their working hours, taking care of boat maintenance and fueling problems and many other desk-bound chores.

During the summer fishing season, her days start at 4 a.m. During this time of year, when most of the activity has to do with whale-watching cruises, she doesn’t have to check in until 5:30 a.m.

“Sounds awful early, but believe it or not, 5:30 is a luxury compared to 4 a.m.,” she said, “and this certainly is not like any other office job.”

To begin with, her desk faces a picture window that frames the fishing fleet and all the activities that go on just a few feet away. She can hear the rumble of the big diesels, watch the vessels come and go, watch the sea birds swoop down for handouts, see the sportfishing customers walk up the dock with their gunnysacks of fish.

And when the paper work gets too heavy, “I can just walk out along the wharf, smell the air, kid with the crews and relax,” she said.

During most of the year, Tyson has one day off a week, usually a Saturday, but she manages to squeeze in some fishing, and she is also varsity softball coach at Dana Hills High School.

“I remember when I first started, just a summertime employee, I was too trusting of everybody, and it didn’t take long for the skippers to find this out and play jokes on me,” she said. “They’d give me expanded counts on the numbers of fish caught that day, and I’d give those figures to the newspapers when they called.

“It didn’t take long for the reporters to realize something was wrong, and it was very embarrassing for a kid, but it all worked out, and now my dealings with the crews are just a lot of fun. They’re a very stable bunch. It’s more or less like one big family.”