For the Hearty, Catalina Waters Offer Some Great Shark Fishing

After fishing for yellowtail against the kelp-laden shores of Santa Catalina Island on a recent early-morning visit, Mark Wallace and Mike Barrett decided to try something a little different--shark fishing.

“You should have seen it out there,” Wallace said. “We had sharks all over the place, it was crazy.”

Six bags of ground-up anchovies dumped over the side of their 20-foot boat was all it took to lure several sharks close to the boat. A whole mackerel or bonito on the end of a steel leader was what it took to hook up.

After the two had caught a couple of blue sharks, things began to heat up, and soon there were more sharks than Wallace and Barrett knew what to do with.

“Mike had this one mako that must have been 150 pounds,” Wallace said. “After fighting it for a few minutes, all of the sudden his line went slack and we saw the shark charging the boat. It veered under just in time, then took off and snapped the line.

“Then this big blue started attacking our chum bags (which were hanging over the stern) and got hung up on the outdrive (of the inboard-outboard motor) and it popped him out of the water and he went crazy. He started biting the outdrive and thrashing around the boat. All we had was this small aluminum gaff. It was scary. There were sharks all over the place.”

At that point they decided they had had enough. It was getting late and they still had the wind-whipped channel to cross.

As they were lifting aboard the tail-roped sharks they had caught--four blues and two makos--another big shark lunged to the surface, trying to get the shark Wallace was pulling aboard.

“The big blue came up from under the boat, staring me in the face, and made a charge at the (dead) shark,” Wallace said. “It almost came out of the water after me.”

The Redondo Beach residents escaped the shark-infested area with their catch intact and a new twist on an old fish story: They were the ones who got away.

Just a two-hour boat ride from the mainland, Catalina provides fishermen an exciting alternative to the routine catches of bass, bonito and barracuda caught locally. These fish are abundant off Catalina as well, but the chance at bigger game can make a trip all the more worthwhile.

The mako shark is just one of the reasons fishermen cross the channel.

Said Miguel Martinez, 32, the skipper-owner of the charter boat Widowmaker, which he operates out of Marina del Rey:

“I go to Catalina once or twice a week,” he said. “I like to fish big game and I think the mako shark offers the best return.

“As far as the sport and fight goes, they’re excellent. . . . I’ve had ‘em jump six or seven times before even setting the hook.”

Martinez has been fishing Catalina waters since 1979 and has encountered everything from the smaller fish all the way up to killer whales.

“Once (during the warm water current caused by El Nino in 1983) when we found a school of yellowfin tuna, everybody on board was hooked up and then, all of a sudden, the bite stopped.

“It turned out that what actually terminated the bite was a pod of killer whales circling the boat no more than 10 feet away. Seals had been taking the yellowfin off the hooks and I guess the killer whales were after the seals. They circled my boat for a while.”

Martinez has brought aboard his 30-foot sportfisher just about every species known in Catalina’s waters, from large sharks and marlin to calico bass. One fish he is particularly proud of is a 42-pound yellowtail he caught on the backside of the island.

Party boats from various mainland landings make daily trips to Catalina as well, mostly during the summer months, in search of yellowtail and occasionally bluefin tuna and white sea bass.

Said Rico Curtis, who operates 22nd St. Landing in San Pedro: “We go out there because of the scenery and because you never know what you might catch.

“It might be bluefin tuna off the east end or big yellowtail out at the Farnsworth Bank (on the back side of the island).”

For most of the private and charter boats, however, striped marlin is the primary target, even though the chances are “hit or miss,” according to Martinez.

“I’ve always got people who want to go for marlin but they’ve got to know that there is a risk (of not catching one),” he said.

Lately, however, marlin anglers have been successful.

“We’re up to 56 now,” said Rosie Cadman, the weighmaster at Avalon. “There have been lots of sightings (one to four miles off the east end) and there have been lots more broke off.”

Cadman, the weighmaster for the last 20 years, said that the fewest marlin brought into Avalon during any one year was 27. The biggest haul was 350 during El Nino.

Marine biologist Norm Bartoo said that the marlin bite off the east end is normal, and that the 56 marlin caught so far at the island is about normal, too.

“That’s a pretty typical place to catch them,” he said. “And fishing there has been picking up in the last couple weeks.”

Said Martinez: “There are some marlin starting to come in off the east end and some off the west end as well. I’ve seen lots of them. They like to hug the east end, maybe a quarter-mile to a mile offshore.”

Paul Caronna of Torrance caught the season’s first marlin aboard the Challenge II on July 4, which is about the time they usually begin to show, and the largest so far has been a 198-pounder caught recently by Robert Sherrill of Avalon.

The center of distribution for the gamefish, according to Bartoo, is in the eastern Pacific, encompassing a 500- to 1,000-mile radius.

“We are on the northern edge of that distribution,” he said. “Consequently in the summer months when the water temperature rises, the marlin tend to come up from Mexico and it’s very typical (to catch them off Catalina).

“It doesn’t take much of a subtle shift in water temperature to bring up some of the other species as well,” Bartoo added.

“Both tuna and billfish have been a popular sport species there for a long time.”

Said Cadman: “I’ve seen em’ all . . . dorado, tuna, marlin, albacore, opah. You name it.”

Added Curtis: “It’s a good place to fill the sacks.”