Outdoors : Oil and Water Rigged to Make a Natural Mix : Fishing: Offshore oil platforms near Huntington Beach provide the opportunity to catch elusive yellowtail.

The small army aboard the Freelance was optimistic, its destination having been the location of many successful campaigns in recent days.

The huge oil rigs offshore, brightly lit and glowing white in predawn darkness, were growing closer. Furious battles had taken place beneath one of the rigs all week.

Yellowtail had been active and the word was spreading like oil on water. The serious “rig fishermen” were out in force, 60 having crowded aboard the Freelance in hopes of landing one of the powerful jacks, which people say have grown particularly wary in their territory.

“These are the home guards,” skipper Jackie Kemnitz said of the normally migratory species that has taken up residence beneath the oil pumping structures off Huntington Beach. “The fish live here all year long.”

For these resident yellowtail, the rigs offer far more protection than the kelp forest or rocky terrain they typically encounter. Their steel forest, stretching deep and wide across the ocean floor, makes the already elusive species all the more challenging to anglers. So naturally, a special following has developed.

“That’s why the boat is so crowded,” Kemnitz said, adding that if the bite held up there would be 90 aboard for the weekend outings.

Still en route, the crew discussed the day’s prospects in the wheelhouse. Kemnitz predicted a 50% success rate, based on his 13 years as co-skipper of the Freelance, which operates out of Davey’s Locker Sportfishing.

Elly, the middle of three oil platforms frequented by Southland fishermen, about five miles offshore, loomed as an impressive display of steel as the Freelance approached.

“For those of you who haven’t done this before, it will probably be different than anything you have ever done,” Freelance crew Norris Tapp yelled over the steady roar of the diesel engines.

In the waters around the rigs, Tapp said, are “probably the most powerful fish, pound for pound, there is.”

Those who had fished the rigs before nodded. Newcomers listened carefully, some appearing slightly intimidated by Tapp’s speech.

“They’ll run right back at the rig and you have to stop them,” Tapp said. “Check your drags. You’ll want to set it a bit stronger than you might expect.

“If you use 12- or 20-pound, I’ll guarantee it’ll be a waste of line. The fish will break you off. You just can’t stop em on light line.”

That became apparent soon after Kemnitz positioned the boat off Elly’s southwest corner. Though 80 feet long, the Freelance was dwarfed by the magnificent structure rising from the ocean floor, 250 feet below.

Live sardines, a favorite of the yellowtail, caught by the crew in the night before departure, were cast and swept by the current toward the rig.

All was quiet on the boat. A helicopter thumped overhead. Oil company workers in hard hats wandered about their workplace well above water, seemingly oblivious to the Freelance’s activity.

Then came the cry everyone was waiting for.

“Hookup!,” shouted one of the deckhands.

A fisherman at the stern had his rod bent almost double as the fish sounded. The intensity level grew among the 59 others, who braced themselves should they, too, hook up.

Following Tapp’s instructions to the letter, the fisherman held his rod tip up and the reel close to his chest. He made short cranks of the reel when he could to keep the fish out of the rigs. Finally, he was able to fight the tiring fish in normal fashion--pumping up and reeling down.

A small yellowtail showed at the surface, was stuck with a gaff and lifted over the rail by a deckhand.

Meanwhile, others had already hooked up and were scrambling up and down the deck, trying to keep their fish from the rigs and fighting tangles with others--something unavoidable with so many lines in the water.

By 9 a.m. about 10 yellowtail had been landed--the biggest a 22-pounder--and at least that many had been lost, broken off on the steel legs of the platform. A fishing rod had been dropped overboard in the excitement, but was trapped by the web of lines in the water and retrieved.

Suddenly, the bite stopped. It was as if the yellowtail had sensed something wrong and decided they had had enough.

Kemnitz, in an attempt to please all the passengers, decided to go to Catalina Island in hopes the sacks might be filled with bass and bonito.

The 1 1/2-hour move to the more scenic but less thrilling location appealed to most, but a few of the adamant rig fishermen voiced their displeasure at leaving an area that presented a challenge far greater than any offered off the Catalina coastline.

“I’m a rig fisherman,” exclaimed Joe Cornman as he stormed angrily about the deck. “April, May, June and July I’ll fish (for other species) but right now the rigs are where it’s at--that’s why I pay $1,000 for my annual pass, to fish the rigs.”

An hour or so later, with only a few bass and bonito in the sacks and the rigs still on the minds of most, Kemnitz stopped there on his way back to Newport Harbor.

Cornman was happy again, and most of the others appreciated the second chance as well.

“Even when the fish aren’t biting, just knowing they’re down there makes it more exciting,” said Dean Hennick of Glendora.

The return to Elly proved his point.

Another hookup. Then another. More fish caught and more fish lost.

In all, 14 yellowtail were landed--three apiece by David McDonald of Santa Ana and Kirk Drickman of Woodland Hills--and at least 20 lost, by Kemnitz’s count.

“They know they can get away there,” he said. “They know that that’s where their domain is, so it’s brutal. The fish really have a chance.”

The three most heavily fished oil rigs were built in the 1970s, and since then, sportfishing landings from San Pedro to Newport Beach have included them in their trips.

Emma and Eva are on either side of Elly, in about 750 feet of water. Elly, the favorite come yellowtail season because it is larger--it is actually two rigs connected by a bridge--sits in 250 feet of water.

The steel supports appear to go straight down but actually branch out underwater, like tripods, making it difficult for the fisherman to know if his hooked fish is free from obstruction, and giving the fish several hundred square feet of structure to live, feed and hide in.

“There’s a whole food chain out here,” Kemnitz said. “There’s almost no pollution--(oil company workers) aren’t allowed to throw even a paper cup into the water. On the legs, there’s mussels, (and) there’s little fish around the mussels. It’s great.”

The mussels attract the little fish, which attract the bigger fish, and so on.

Just about everything available to the near-shore fisherman--calico bass, bonito, barracuda, halibut and rockfish--can be caught at the rigs. Even rock cod and lingcod are occasionally taken at the deep-water rigs.

But yellowtail, whose migration has become simply from rig to rig, according to Kemnitz, is by far the most popular species.

Employees stationed on the rigs said that while checking their piping with submersible cameras they have seen schools of up to 500 yellowtail in the middle of winter. So popular have the rigs become that on weekends during a good bite it becomes difficult for skippers to squeeze into position, and even should they find a productive location, it is usually only a matter of time before someone else moves in.

“Small boats are all over the place,” Tapp said. “Private boaters at times drift right over our chum line (bait tossed overboard to attract fish) and push the fish right back down. And then nobody catches fish.”

Then there are the party boats themselves. They do get crowded. Not one of the 60 aboard the Freelance went tangle-free. Imagine 90 people. If only there were a market for monofilament bird nests.

Frustrating? Perhaps.

But ask the avid rig fisherman if the crowd bothers him and he will tell you it’s part of the challenge.

“I work hard and save a lot of money. Then come September I’m out here,” said Hennick, who claims to have fished the oil rigs 100 times.

Hennick’s biggest catch at the rigs was a 31-pound yellowtail caught in mid-December.