OUTDOOR NOTES : Warm Water Provides Bonanza of Exotic Species

It seemed only a matter of time before unusually warm water off the Southern California coast attracted exotic species from south of the border--and that time has apparently come.

Since Avalon Sea Foods weighed in a 112-pound striped marlin caught Saturday by Warren Merrill of Long Beach, the count has risen to seven, and more of the scrappy billfish are said to be around Santa Catalina Island.

There is no El Nino like the 1982-83 warm-water phenomenon that brought exotics to Southern California waters, but surface temperatures are unusually warm, extending northward the normal migration pattern of such fish as dorado and tuna. Although tuna have yet to show in any significant numbers north of the Mexican border, dorado have appeared.

“The dorado are thick out here,” says Rosie Cadman at the Avalon weigh station. “They’re bringing them in right and left. And yellowtail, and white sea bass. . . . It’s good fishing!”

Jaye Apperson of the Balboa Angling Club said that besides “a ton of dorado,” she recorded four marlin caught Sunday, bringing the BAC’s total to seven, and that Ken Kouchi of Laguna Niguel brought in a 159-pound swordfish Saturday after a 55-minute fight near the 14-mile bank, between Newport Beach and Catalina.

Ron Dotson, a migratory species expert with the National Marine Fisheries Service in La Jolla, said lack of wind off Southern California is the main reason for the unusual intrusion of game fish.

“We’ve had no wind to speak of, so you’re getting no mixing at all,” he said. “You’ve got probably a four- to five-degree difference between the surface temperature and what’s down there at 50 feet.”

Forrest Miller, a meteorologist with the Inter-Tropical Tuna Commission, says the ocean has been gradually warming in the tropics and that there are indications that an El Nino condition could develop by the end of the year.

“It kind of looks like we’re leaning that way and one could start sometime anywhere from November to February,” Miller said. “I would expect that when it does develop, it’ll be of a mild to moderate intensity. It would take some time before it got up this way and we’d begin to notice it in terms of some more tropical species getting up this way--maybe more frequent yellowtail, some skipjack and yellowfin (tuna) eventually getting up this way.”

Yellowtail, bluefin tuna and dorado continue to draw customers to San Diego’s overnight fishing fleet, but the question remains--where are the albacore that generally show during summer?

Experts believe that the water is simply too warm to accommodate the longfin tuna.

Surface temperatures in the areas being fished--about 70 miles south of Point Loma--have been running between 69 and 72 degrees, “which is the upper end of preferable water temperatures for albacore,” according to Ron Dotson of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“It’s warm enough to keep the albacore down in the water column,” Dotson said, adding that the other fishing has been so good that there simply has not been much of an effort made to locate albacore.

“There may not be a lot of albacore in the area, but what there is in the area is probably not being targeted just because there’s too much other stuff to try for (on the surface),” he said.

As of 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, the passengers aboard Irv Grisbeck’s Big Game had caught more than 100 yellowtail, 20 bluefin and one bigeye tuna, and 25 dorado.

Jack Cope of Huntington Beach had never had a chance to take his grandson, Robert, 29, fishing until the young man got out of the Navy this year.

“He’d never been fishing,” Cope said. “I made up my mind he was going to catch a marlin.”

Aboard the Hotel Palmas De Cortez’s Valeria in the Los Frailes area of Baja California, Robert caught and released several sailfish and yellowfin tuna but no marlin, although his grandfather landed a 240-pound blue.

“We were about to head back when all of a sudden he got a hit,” Cope said. “It jumped, and (skipper) Alberto and I looked at each other. We couldn’t believe it.”

The fish, the first black marlin taken in the East Cape region this year, weighed 682 pounds.

Meanwhile, marlin fishing is considered “fair” both in the East Cape and Cabo San Lucas.

Darrell Primrose of Cabo San Lucas’ Tortuga Sportfishing said boats off the tip of the Baja California peninsula are averaging one to three billfish, mostly striped marlin and sailfish. “They’re still hauling in blue marlin every day; I would say an average of about one per four or five boats,” he said.

Northern pike have been found in a remote Sierra reservoir and the Department of Fish and Game now plans to poison the lake. The DFG says the illegally-introduced pike threaten not only the lake’s other fish, but those of the entire San Francisco-San Joaquin delta as well.

The fish kill--tentatively scheduled for September--will take place in Frenchman Reservoir, a state recreation area on the headwaters of the Feather River near the Nevada border. The reservoir’s waters will be treated with rotenone, a chemical that suffocates fish and then dissipates quickly.

The chemical will kill all fish in the reservoir, which will be restocked with its usual sport fish after the operation.

“The northern pike is like a barracuda. It has a big mouth and big teeth,” says L. B. Boydsten, a supervisor for the DFG’s Inland Fisheries Division. “If this thing gets out of Frenchman Reservoir, the next stop is Oroville Dam. If it gets past Oroville, the next stop would be the delta.”

Briefly

The DFG says the drought is responsible for an increase in black bear-human conflicts in Southern California mountain ranges and warns visitors to take these precautions: Don’t feed or leave food out for bears; secure all food in bear-proof containers, such as car trunks, or suspend it at least 10 feet off the ground; Avoid cooking greasy foods and avoid sleeping in clothes worn while cooking; deposit trash in bear-proof trash cans or pack it out.

Numbers of breeding ducks in the United States and Canada remain at low levels, with the 1990 spring population virtually unchanged from last year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The breeding population for ducks in surveyed areas totaled 31.3 million, up 1% from last year. The 1990 count is the third lowest on record, after 1985 and ’89. Drought and destruction of wetlands is blamed for the growing lack of nesting habitat.

An International Game Fish Assn. Weigh Station will be installed at the Union Oil Station at No. 1, Bora Bora Way, according to Randy Sprout of the Marina del Rey Anglers. Sprout said his group will take a group of under-privileged children on a fishing trip Aug. 8. They will return in time for the ribbon-cutting ceremony--and subsequent weigh-in--at the new weigh station.