Outdoor Notes : Bellflower Man Lands a Second Fishing Record

Curt Wiesenhutter’s name is already in the International Game Fish Assn.’s record book. On April 1, 1977, he caught a 388-pound 12-ounce yellowfin tuna in the waters off San Benedicto Island in Mexico, setting an all-tackle record that still stands.

With that in mind, it is surprising to realize that 11 days ago, Wiesenhutter almost let another world record yellowfin get away. In fact, he almost gave it away.

Wiesenhutter, a landscape contractor from Bellflower, felt a tug on his 130-pound test line early the morning of Feb. 8. He and 15 other fishermen were in the eighth day of a 19-day trip on the Polaris Supreme out of Point Loma.

“When I started battling with it, I didn’t think the fish was that big,” said Wiesenhutter, 44, who returned to Point Loma Thursday. “This one guy had never caught a big one. I thought this one was all right in size, but not that big. So I almost gave it to him.”

But Wiesenhutter held on. For 2 1/2 hours, in fact. And what he came up with was a 357-pound yellowfin, a world record for 130-pound test line. His 1977 388-pound yellowfin had been caught on 80-pound test.

“All I can really say is that I’m lucky,” Wiesenhutter said. “This one was totally different from the other one (the all-tackle world record). I worked up a real sweat bringing this one in. The other world-record fish was easier because it kind of just leaped right on the boat.”

Wiesenhutter’s latest world-record fish was caught off the coast of Clarion Island, about 400 miles southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.

Remember El Zorro, the 95-foot luxury yacht that left San Diego last August on an around-the-world sportfishing expedition?

El Zorro is about halfway around the globe now and Sunday will begin the longest open-water leg of its journey, the 3,200 miles from Fremantle, Australia, to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Owner-skipper Jim Edmiston returned briefly to San Marcos for business recently and reported that fishermen didn’t do as well as was hoped in the Southern Pacific islands, but better than he’d hoped at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which has produced most of the world-record black marlins.

“We had 63 strikes on bait and got 37 fish to the boat,” Edmiston said. “Even the locals told us that was a good average. We got fish in spurts. Some days, nothing; other days, two or three. We fished off our 32-foot boat almost exclusively, but we also caught and tagged four black marlins on our 15-foot skiff, too.”

Fishermen, who join El Zorro at ports around the world, pay $600 a day to stay on and fish from the boat. It’s due to return to San Diego in August, 1988.

Eastern Sierra residents were making sure their dogs were secured this week after one was shot and killed by a Department of Fish and Game warden for chasing a deer.

Wardens are empowered to dispatch any dog seen harassing wildlife. The shooting occured in the Swall Meadows area, north of Bishop, when a warden shot an Alaskan malamute seen chasing a fawn.

Briefly

Volunteers from the Fallon Naval Air Station Rod and Gun Club found a good use recently for 500 discarded Christmas trees: They bundled them up and sank them in Lahontan Reservoir to provide cover for juvenile fish. . . . Santa Barbara County’s Park Dept. reports that 14 wintering pairs of bald eagles and 22 golden eagles have been counted at Lake Cachuma, along with about 3,000 Canada geese. . . . Mojave Desert historian Dennis Casebier will discuss the historic Mojave Road at a meeting of the Mt. Baldy Group of the Sierra Club Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., at La Fetra Hall, University of La Verne. . . . Charles Brooks, fly fisherman-author from West Yellowstone, Mont., died recently at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., following a long illness. . . . The Fish and Game Commission will listen to public comment on proposed Department of Fish and Game’s 1987 hunting regulations--including the controversial mountain lion hunt--at its March 6 meeting at Redding.