OUTDOOR NOTES : Gartner Gets Grander, but Big One Gets Away

Duane Gartner has been on something of a mission in his years as a big-game fisherman. Like most others, his primary objective has been to catch the elusive “grander,” a billfish of a thousand pounds or more.

“I’ve been fishing big game seriously for 15 years,” Gartner said from his Newhall insurance office. “My largest was like a 750 (pounder), which I released four years ago down in Australia.”

Gartner now speaks in the past tense, though, because he took a 1,036-pound black marlin late last month on the first day of a seven-day trip aboard the Balek III out of Queensland, Australia.

“It struck three times and ended up taking a dead skipjack tuna,” Gartner said of his trophy. “The fish never showed, it never jumped. At a little more than two hours into the fight it went down and drowned itself. I had to pump it up.”

Fight time: three hours and five minutes--impressive but nothing compared to what happened two days later.

Gartner hooked up again, this time just before dark and to what he would soon discover to be a much larger fish.

“It was uneventful,” Gartner said of the first eight minutes. “The fish didn’t jump or anything. I had it fairly close and then, suddenly, it just exploded and jumped completely out of the water, and we knew it was huge. On one series it jumped seven times, completely out.”

Captain Laurie Wright, a widely known and respected skipper, estimated the fish to weigh at least 1,300 pounds. Unfortunately for Gartner, this would be the one that got away.

Three hours into the fight, under dark skies in a turbulent sea, the gear in the reel began to wear and eventually gave out. Wright solved that problem by hastily splicing the monofilament line onto the reel on another rod and handing to rod back to Gartner.

But the wind was howling fiercely and the 40-foot boat began to pitch. Gartner, though in a fighting chair, was struggling. Wright was fighting to keep the boat from being swamped.

“We were in some tremendous troughs, and he just couldn’t get the boat in position for the mate to grab the leader,” Gartner said. “It was there but it just got away from him two or three times.”

That was unfortunate for Gartner, 59, who eventually grew too fatigued to continue. He relinquished the rod and reel to one of the deckhands, who battled the fish for another hour, until 1 a.m., before it sounded to about 100 feet, as if being chased.

The deckhand felt a few hard “bumps” on the line and the fight was over. The leader had been bitten off by sharks, which had apparently turned Gartner’s prize catch into an easy meal.

Gartner’s response: “At least I caught my grander.”

In an effort to determine the feasibility of developing a trout fishery in embattled Lake Mead, Nevada’s Department of Wildlife will begin a five-year experimental stocking program sometime this month.

Trout were stocked in Lake Mead to create a put-and-take fishery from 1969 through 1983. But it declined rapidly, largely because of heavy predation by striped bass, and the practice was deemed too costly.

Whether or not that happens again remains to be seen, but the striped bass fishery has suffered in recent years because of a nutrient deficiency in the lake, and the fish are smaller. And this time, larger trout--10-12 inches--will be stocked to reduce the likelihood of striper predation.

“It is no secret that stripers have an appetite for trout,” said Will Molini, director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife. “From this study we hope to determine the cost effectiveness of stocking trout into a reservoir inhabited by stripers.”

The stocking of about 10,000 trout is scheduled for this month, and additional plants will continue through January.

Lake Mead, formerly one of the most productive largemouth bass fisheries in the country, has suffered as a fishery immeasurably since 1966, when the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam created Lake Powell more than 100 miles up the Colorado River.

Phosphorous--in the form of phosphates leached from rocks in the Colorado drainage area--settled into Lake Powell instead of making its way into Mead, creating a missing link in the food chain. The problem worsened when federal clean-water regulations were imposed in the late 1970s, and the Clark County waste-water treatment plant began removing phosphates from Mead.

Efforts to fertilize the lake have so far proved ineffective.

Briefly

BAJA FISHING--Blue marlin season is winding down, but wahoo are showing more frequently in the waters off Cabo San Lucas. “That brings a whole new crowd into town--the wahoo crazies,” said Darrell Primrose of the Finistera Tortuga fleet. Primrose said hotel boats are averaging 10-15 dorado and 1 1/2 striped marlin a day.

HUNTING--San Diego’s City Lakes continue to draw duck hunters, with most of the attention focused on Otay, where 48 hunters on Saturday killed 136 ducks and produced 25 limits of mostly bluebills and gadwalls. At Lake Barrett, 25 hunters shot 64 ducks, mostly ringnecks and bluebills. At Sutherland on Sunday, 14 hunters killed eight ducks. Reservations are recommended, especially at Otay. Details: (619) 465-4500.

SAILING--Gene Carapetyan and Louanne Peck of Los Angeles will give a slide presentation “Pacific Sailing Adventure” Friday, Jan. 4, at 7 p.m., at the Hyatt Edgewater Hotel in Long Beach. In 2 1/2 years they sailed 20,000 miles to Pitcairn Island, Hawaii, Japan and other landfalls. Admission: $6. Reservations: (213) 839-1232.