THE OUTDOORS : Forget the Albacore, Just This Once : Yellowtail Fills the Tuna Gap Near Coronados

For the third consecutive year, albacore fishing in Southern California has been a bust.

There has been no sign of the massive schools of albacore that normally pass by San Diego and transform thousands of usually sane people into frothing, bug-eyed loons who jump into their cars and screech into parking lots at sportfishing landings, loaded down with fishing rods and tackle boxes.

The symptoms of albacore fever are many. And they are severe. The most common include sitting in one’s living room for four hours in a semiconscious state, sharpening already-sharp hooks with a file as teen-agers poke their heads through the doorway and mumble about their parents having lost it again.

Another common symptom of the disease is the uncontrollable urge to make up a wild excuse, to be delivered to an indignant spouse, as to why one must abandon the land and the family for the next 24 hours. Typical is, “It’s a business thing. My bosses organized it and we have to go. You want me to lose my job?”

The reasons given by biologists for the third straight no-show year by the hard-pulling tuna are many. Water is too cold. Water is too warm. Water is too polluted. Not enough bait fish. Too many bait fish, which lured the albacore into unreachable waters far off the coast.

The truth is, no one really knows why the longfins have abandoned their traditional migratory route.

One theory offered last week by an angler about to board the Daiwa Pacific out of H & M Landing here may, however, rank above all the others.

The man, who said he was from La Mesa and that his first name was Edward, but who wouldn’t give his last name because he was taking an unofficial day off, ventured this opinion: “The albacore have just learned to avoid this place, I think. After so many years, they know enough to stay way off the coast, to get around all the boats.”

The man appeared absolutely serious. This, perhaps more than anything else, may shed some light on just how serious albacore fever can be.

There is, however, some good news for anglers pining for the feel of a powerful fish stripping line off of their reels. For although the albacore performed yet another disappearing act this season, the yellowtail moved in, packing the nearby Coronado Islands and pounding away at offerings of sardines and squid.

The fish have averaged close to 20 pounds, and although yellowtail that size don’t quite pack the thumb-burning power of the swift albacore, they do threaten to jerk the expensive fishing rod from your hands.

Serious anglers ask no more than that.

Thousands of yellowtail began moving northward along the Baja California coast two months ago and reached the Coronado Islands just south of San Diego about five weeks ago. Finding perfect water conditions and seas stacked with sardines and squid, they stayed.

The fish counts mounted slowly at first, with daily catches of 200 and 300 fish. During the first week of August, however, the count soared higher than 1,000 fish a day for the fleet of boats out of H & M, Fisherman’s and Point Loma landings.

A group of newspaper people, restaurant owners and telephone company executives from the Los Angeles area who had chartered a boat for a day each summer for the last six years and who monitor the daily fish reports, began picking up their telephones. The troops were being organized and called to duty. And Aug. 21, they gathered in San Diego. They came from Los Angeles and Glendale and Woodland Hills and Simi Valley. One veteran came from San Francisco for the 24-hour assault on the islands.

The excitement built after 10 p.m. as the anglers arrived and stashed their fishing rods and shook hands with their once-a-year angling companions.

A hint of the excitement occurred at about 10:30 p.m. when Larry Mascari, owner of a restaurant in Los Angeles, got onto the wrong boat. With a few of his friends watching, and smirking, from the deck of the right boat, Mascari bounded aboard a charter vessel crammed with strangers. When he realized that he knew no one aboard that boat, he sheepishly got off and found the right one.

When the morning light broke upon the water, the 21 anglers stumbled, still half-asleep, from their bunks and up the steep stairs to the deck. A few of them did not slam their heads against the low-hanging bulkhead at the top of the stairs. The majority of them paused briefly to rub their reddened foreheads, cursed softly to themselves and spent the next 15 minutes drinking coffee and relaxing.

It was the first and only rest period they would get all day. By 4 p.m., the boat would be packed with 85 yellowtail, all weighing between 20 and 25 pounds.

It began at 7:30 a.m., when the first was hooked. The sound of a spool filled with 25-pound test line revolving at roughly the speed of light brought more than a dozen anglers plowing through the narrow doorway from the boat’s galley. In a minute the rails were lined with anglers, bait thrashing on their hooks as they lowered the offerings into the still-dark water.

In seconds, there were three more hookups with the strong and sleek yellowtail.

The action continued for eight hours, with never more than a few minutes between flurries of hookups and shouting and 20-pound fish beating out a rhythm with their tails on the deck.

Sometimes it was hard work.

Walter Maciunskas of Glendale fought his first yellowtail for 20 minutes before it was gaffed. A 200-pound building contractor, Maciunskas was worn out by the unrelenting pressure of the fish.

When the battle was over, he sighed, snapped his fishing rod into a rod-holder on the side of the boat and said: “That’s it for me. I’m gonna go sit down for a while.”

Ten seconds later, two anglers on the stern jerked their rods backward, setting the hooks on two more burly yellowtail. And Maciunskas was lunging for his rod, quickly impaling another squid and getting back into the action.

“I’ll rest tomorrow,” he said.

Sometimes it was chaos.

Several times, a dozen anglers were being dragged along the railing by yellowtail at the same time. Twenty-one fishing rods looked like conductor’s batons in some sort of weird yellowtail concert, waving left and right and snapping straight down as the anglers with hooked fish fought to get over, under and around all of the other anglers to avoid tangling lines.

But mostly, it was all-out fun.

Chuck Nigash of Irvine went through a stretch of about an hour when he hooked no fish but was involved in nearly every hookup. Wherever on the boat Nigash seemed to wander, a hooked yellowtail always seemed to know where he was. Six times his line was involved in massive tangles with a “hot” line. Six times Bill Stephenson, the boat owner, in a frantic effort to keep the line with the yellowtail on it from being snapped, reached over the rail and cut one of the other lines with his pliers.

And six straight times, it was Nigash’s line that he cut.

“Geez,” Nigash finally bellowed. “I’ve been here for three hours and all I’m doing is tying on new hooks. I must’ve tied 50 knots already. Is this a fishing trip or a Boy Scout camp?”

As the day progressed, however, the score began to even out among the anglers. Everyone had at least two yellowtail aboard by noon. Even the somewhat slow periods were dotted by times of excitement.

During one such lull, Ray Barbour of San Francisco turned to look toward the galley as he held his fishing rod over the rail. And at that moment, while his eyes were focused elsewhere, the rod was jerked violently down and was nearly wrenched from his strong hands.

Barbour reacted instantly and reared back to set the hook on what he figured must be the Dom DeLuise of yellowtail.

He turned quickly and brought his widening eyes back into focus on his fishing rod just in time to discover, not the expected 50-pound yellowtail attached to his line, but rather a 160-pound Mascari, his hand still wrapped around Barbour’s line, a smile on his face as he reveled in having just caused an angler’s heartbeat to crack that magical 250-beats-a-minute barrier.

The overall fish count, which had dropped to 400 and 500 in the preceding days, soared to more than 2,000 yellowtail that day. It was the perfect trip. And for one day, a pack of crazed California anglers didn’t mind a bit that the prized albacore tuna was, once again, available only in 8-ounce cans.