A Madman Across the Water : Ralph Mikkelsen Takes Game Fishing To Excess in His Fanatical Pursuit of Trophy Yellowfin Tuna
Ralph Mikkelsen recently purchased a fishing reel. It cost $800. No, not a fishing boat , a fishing reel. And it looked remarkably like the other 11 fishing reels he recently had bought for $800 each. Now why, you might wonder, would a man spend nearly $10,000 on a dozen fishing reels for himself?
Well, part of the answer concerns the fish that Mikkelsen is after. Here, let’s give you an example:
Get out your rod and reel. Carry your refrigerator onto the roof of your house and bring your fishing equipment with you. OK, now tie the line to the refrigerator, reel up the slack, hold onto your rod and push the refrigerator off the roof.
The line broke, didn’t it?
Mikkelsen catches fish as large and as heavy as refrigerators. And the drag system on his $800 reels allows a load that big to pull line off the reel just before reaching the line’s breaking point. Consistently. Without fail. Until this year, Mikkelsen held the world record for yellowfin tuna with a 333-pound fish. And he gets very disappointed when, after fighting one of the giants for several hours, an equipment malfunction allows such a fish to get away. So he buys the best equipment. And lots of it.
“When you’re serious about fishing, you should have the best equipment and a lot of backup equipment,” Mikkelsen said. “It so happens that I have backup equipment for my backup equipment. And I have backup equipment for that equipment.”
If you’re getting the idea that Mikkelsen is just a tad more than serious about fishing, come along on a tour of his Northridge home.
This is the garage. Well, it used to be the garage until he put some of his fishing tackle in it. On this side you will see a dozen stacks of plastic milk crates, each stack reaching nearly to the ceiling and all of them filled with lures. No hooks, no reels. Just lures. Let’s say, perhaps, 3,000 lures. Here, in the gray, metal filing cabinets, are his hooks. If you believe that there are not at least 10,000 hooks here, you probably also think the Dodgers will win the World Series this year.
Over there, under the workbench, are nearly 80 World War II ammunition boxes. Those are his tackle boxes. At the back are five or six rod and reel outfits. They cost about $1,000 each, but you haven’t seen anything yet.
Enter the basement. The row of fishing rods begins immediately to your right. With the rods stacked two inches apart, the row continues down that wall, around the corner and down the other wall. In another corner are half a dozen more, leaning against each other. There was no more room on the walls for them. Roughly 50 rods, all custom-made, all nearly identical, all costing a few hundred dollars each. They are short, with foam grips covering nearly three-fourths of the stick from the butt end up. They are short to provide greater leverage during a fight with a huge fish. All the better to pull their heads off with.
OK, careful now, step over the rods near the doorway and enter the studio. Look at the size of that yellowfin tuna hanging on the wall. No, not that one. That’s just a 238-pounder Mikkelsen caught 20 years ago at the Alijos Rocks off the coast of Baja. The other one, over there, the 333-pounder that stamped Ralph’s name in the International Game Fish Assn. record books for 130-pound test line. Isn’t it a beauty?
And the 388-pound blue marlin or the matching pair of 120-pound sailfish are nothing to sneeze at, either. But if you still aren’t impressed, take another step backward. When your rear end hits that mounted jawbone and teeth from the 750-pound tiger shark, that should make quite an impression.
And finally, to conclude our tour, meet Ralph Mikkelsen.
For nearly two decades, Mikkelsen has pursued big game fish like big game fish pursue a live mackerel--often and with a vengeance. Kelp has spent less time floating on the ocean than Mikkelsen.
He is 56 years old, stands about 5-10 and weighs 165 pounds, but don’t let that fool you. If you doubt the condition it takes to battle the giant fishes of the sea on a weekly basis, shake hands with Mikkelsen. No, you are not stepping on a bag of potato chips. Those cracking noises you hear are the bones in your hand being crushed. In addition to a routine of normal exercises like cycling and swimming and lifting weights and constantly squeezing one of those metal hand-exercisers, Mikkelsen has devised a workout that you probably don’t see at the local health club.
He takes his stoutest fishing rod and one of those $800 reels, ties the 130-pound test line to a 110-pound lead bar in his driveway and begins pumping away, pulling back on the line until his arms and chest and legs can take no more and then reeling, repeating the process until you can almost hear the lead bar pleading for a rest.
“When you’re on a 300-pound yellowfin tuna,” Mikkelsen said, “that is no time to get tired.”
If it has gills, Mikkelsen has probably caught it. But the fish that really gets his attention, the fish that sends the adrenaline rushing through his body, is the yellowfin, a swift and powerful beast that can keep an angler pinned to the railing of a boat for many hours. He has caught four yellowfins weighing more than 300 pounds, several in the 290s, dozens exceeding 200 pounds and he estimates he has boated about 2,000 tuna in his life.
For Mikkelsen, there is no feeling in the world like holding tight to a 300-pound yellowfin tuna and feeling its energy transmitted up the taut monofilament line. And so he does it at an alarming rate. For the past several years, he has averaged 200 days a year on the sea, riding the finest San Diego-based long-range sportfishing boats deep into Pacific waters off Mexico, to the Revillagigedo islands of Cedros, Alijos Rocks, Clarion, Socorro and Benedicto, and even farther south to Clipperton Island, which is about 1,800 miles from the southernmost tip of Baja California. The average daily cost for these trips is $200. Now, if spending $40,000 a year in fishing boat fares doesn’t exactly sound like something a normal person would do, well, you’re beginning to get the picture.
“There are degrees for each of us as far as our madness,” Mikkelsen said. “I believe everybody is mad, but some of us are just a bit madder than the others. Ralph Mikkelsen? Well, on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d have to say he’s a 20, to be honest with you.”
And if he rates himself a 20 on the madness scale, Mikkelsen knows he must rate himself even higher on the fortune scale. For not only does he have a wife who doesn’t mind that he goes fishing all the time, he has a wife who pays for the trips. Jo Ann has been a San Fernando Valley real estate wizard for 25 years, buying property when it was cheap and just recently starting to liquidate. The Mikkelsens have no money worries.
“I’m blessed to be able to do this,” he said. “I know that without my charming lady I’d be just a regular once-a-month fisherman. She’s made all of this possible.”
Married for 33 years, Ralph and Jo Ann have worked their unusual deal for more than a decade. Ralph says he’d like nothing better than to have his wife along on his trips. She says thanks, but no thanks.
“I get seasick in the harbor,” Jo Ann said.
“Also, I think I would restrict him. I wouldn’t want him along when I’m trying to close out a major real estate deal, and he wouldn’t want me along when he’s fishing. He’s a serious fisherman, as serious about what he does as I am about what I do. I know how Ralph feels about fishing. He enjoys it so much and I’m really glad he loves it that much. I miss him when he’s away, but I’m really happy for him.
“But all my friends think I’m crazy for letting him go fishing so often.”
Those who know Mikkelsen best would not disagree with the angler’s self-assessment. Bill Poole, builder and skipper of several luxurious long-range fishing boats in San Diego, has been observing Mikkelsen in action for years.
“Ralph’s a strange guy,” Poole said. “He’ll fish around the clock sometimes, doesn’t have all that much to say, eats granola, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, never comes inside to play poker. You get 10 guys aboard who like poker, bourbon and cigars every night and after 10 days Ralph . . . well, he can make some guys a little jumpy.”
Mikkelsen does nothing to alter his reputation. Some examples:
On a trip in 1982 he stood on the deck of a boat and fished, non-stop, for 72 hours. “People were asking me what I was on,” Mikkelsen recalled. “Just a lot of vitamin C is all I was taking.”
On another tuna expedition a few years ago the boat was anchored for the night on top of what must have been a shark hotel. Every bait tossed into the water was gobbled up by big and undesirable sharks. Everyone quit fishing after several hours of wrestling with the sharks. Except Mikkelsen. “I hooked 70 sharks that night and lost 70 hooks,” he said. “But on about the 75th or 79th bait, I nailed a 300-pound tuna. That’s why I put up with the sharks.”
With thousands of hooks on the market, Mikkelsen will only use the Mustad 3997A for tuna fishing. When Mustad stopped making them, Mikkelsen roamed the entire Pacific Coast, checking tackle shops and commercial fishing stores, buying any small box of them he could find. Finally, he located a large shipment and bought it. All 10,000 hooks. Since Mikkelsen spread the word of the hook, the company has resumed production.
Quite a remarkable transformation for a guy who spent his first albacore fishing trip in 1948 hanging over the rail, trying to decide whether to jump overboard. When you get severely seasick, as anyone who has been so afflicted can attest, at first you’re afraid you’re going to die. After several hours with no relief on the horizon, you’re afraid you’re not going to die.
“It was awful,” Mikkelsen recalled. “I never thought I could get on a boat again.”
Now, people wonder whether he ever gets off a boat. The answer is yes, he does. But only briefly. His life consists of an eight-day fishing trip, followed by a return home for tackle repairs and restocking of tackle boxes, followed by a 16-day fishing trip, followed by several four- or five-day fishing trips. And all of this fanaticism is directed at one fish, the yellowfin. More specifically, at the first 400-pound yellowfin. Mikkelsen knows he’s out there. He’s hooked him and he’s seen him. At Clarion Island in 1982. The gigantic tuna crashed Mikkelsen’s bait and the two of them duked it out for 3 1/2 hours. Mikkelsen, along with Poole and Dennis Kreutel--the skippers who in 1977 gaffed Curt Wisenhutter’s former all-tackle world record, a 388-pound yellowfin--saw the fish several times. They all knew it was well in excess of 400 pounds, probably more than 450 pounds.
And just when Mikkelsen thought he had the fish whipped, it dove under the boat, rubbed the line against the propellers and was gone.
“Bill Poole knew how bad I felt so he just said, ‘Ralph, forget about it. It was just another big fish.’ But later he told a friend of his that it was well over 400 pounds. He told me later, ‘Ralph, that fish made Curt’s 388-pounder look like a pup.’
“We saw him eight times during the fight. They had five gaffs ready to stick him with after a couple of hours, but that fish was so hot he was all lit up, all bright blue and yellow and full of fight. Nobody wanted to be the first one to stick a gaff in him. It’s quite awesome to see a fish that big and, well, quite frankly, no one wanted to stick this fish by himself. There is a great fear at that point of having this fish take you over the side of the boat. Personally, I think if someone had stuck him then, when he was so hot, that person would have gotten hurt pretty bad.
“You know, sometimes I can still see that fish. I see him like it was yesterday.”
Wisenhutter’s 388-pound yellowfin, by the way, was hooked and landed in 3 1/2 minutes. It hit at night and, confused by the boat’s lights, swam directly to the side of the vessel where it was gaffed by several deckhands.
“Big fish at night act real weird,” Mikkelsen said. “We call them kamikaze fish. Curt didn’t even pull on his fish, just hooked it, reeled in some line and they gaffed it. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”
The tone of Mikkelsen’s voice leaves no doubt that he thinks the Orange County resident’s 3 1/2-minute “battle” with a world record yellowfin is about as funny as a bad knot. Mikkelsen is the accepted king of long-range sport fishing, and while he hopes everyone on his trips catches really big tuna, he also hopes their fish are just a little smaller than his fish.
“I’ve fished all night and watched a guy stumble out of his bunk in the morning, throw out a line and catch a 250-pound tuna,” he said. “I’m happy for him, but I’m always wondering, Why him? I’ve been up all night, paying my dues.’ ”
And Mikkelsen has no intention of halting his payment of dues or losing his status as president of the club.
“First there’s the business of that 400-pounder,” he said. “After that, who knows. A 350-pound yellowfin is just 6 years old, biologists say. A 400-pounder might be 7 or 8 years old. But no one really knows how long these fish live. If they get that big in six or seven years, it makes you wonder: What if they live to be 10 years old? It makes you wonder just how big they might be, just how big some of these guys get. Maybe someday we’ll find out.”
What Mikkelsen meant was, maybe someday he’ll find out.
