They Are Becoming Old Salts : With Favorite Lakes Dry From Drought, Bass Fishermen Are Going to Sea
It is an odd sight: freshwater bass fishermen heading to sea aboard a bulky old sportfisher with their custom bass rods and reels, their slick black jackets and caps with sponsors’ names.
No high-speed bass boats racing about in search of bass hide-outs, just the steady drone of diesel engines and confinement to a single boat that affords little in the way of maneuverability and nothing in the way of secrecy.
“It’s not a cutthroat kind of thing,” says George Valenzuela, 43, proprietor of San Simeon Landing and organizer of saltwater rockfish competition. “You’re not in an individual boat. You’re all together, and everybody’s basically trying to help each other.”
Over the large, rolling swells goes the Holiday, making its way north to a rocky shelf somewhere off Cape San Martin, there to fish the cold waters of the central coast at depths to 120 feet.
A spinner bait is tied to 12-pound-test line and dangles from the tip of a light-tackle bass rod. A plastic worm hangs beneath a heavy lead lure attached to another light rod.
So what gives? These are freshwater bass baits, but there are no largemouth bass where this boat is going.
But there are fish with large mouths, full of razor-sharp teeth. They are much larger fish, too, by and large, with a good deal more spirit.
The lingcod is one of the most prized of all fish in these waters. It has a strong tendency to inhale any offering, from a small lure to a fish half its size, one that someone might even have on a hook.
“They’ll sit there and chew on that fish right in front of you,” Valenzuela says.
The lingcod is a tricky fish. Hooked, it will swim to the boat and fool you into thinking you have a much smaller fish, then speed into the rocks below.
“All hell breaks loose,” according to Valenzuela.
The lingcod’s voracious habits and savage dentures make it a tough customer indeed.
Vermilion rockfish, copper rockfish, gopher cod, cabezon, johnny bass and greenling are other fish that thrive in the dark, cold waters off the central coast. Fishing pressure is light, so the waters are very productive. Many fish exceed 20 pounds and some go as high as 40.
And here, out of their element, the bass fishermen are brought by a sort of necessity. The bass fisherman must compete as often as he can. It’s in his blood.
“Professional bass fishermen are so fed up with the lack of water in the lakes that they are just hungry for some alternatives,” Valenzuela says.
Bill Bibbler of the Sierra Bassmasters, a San Joaquin Valley club, does not deny that the drought has bass fishermen heading west, to the coast and beyond.
“We’re doing this because there’s no water (in the lakes) up here,” he says. “We can’t fish for bass anymore. The ones we do catch are small.”
Like those to the south and north, Central California’s lakes have suffered from the lack of rain. Spawning beds are high and dry, and fish often become concentrated to the point where they are overly susceptible to angling pressure.
“We’ve had 1.25 inches of rain (this year), and that isn’t going to cut it,” says Jim Snow, a Sierra Bassmaster and bass pro from Dinuba, Calif.
Snow’s club holds regular tournaments at Fresno County’s Pine Flat Reservoir, whose reserve has shrunk from a million acre feet to 45,000 acre feet.
“Pine Flat is ‘unlaunchable,’ ” Snow says. “The drought has the fish all stressed. . . . Some lakes are ‘launchable,’ but they’re pounded so hard by tournaments. Last weekend we had a tourney at Millerton Lake; there were 93 teams and 200 guys, and there was one limit of fish caught.”
So here they are holding a tournament aboard the Holiday. And what irony!
Driven to sea by the drought, these representatives of the Sierra Bassmasters and San Luis Obispo Bass Ambushers--and a handful of regulars and newcomers--find themselves in a cold wind and driving rain.
The rolling hills, dotted with Monterey Pines, are barely visible as a mist begins to smother the region.
“I guess we can’t complain,” one fishermen says as the Holiday bounds gently over the westerly swells.
Two hours pass and the Holiday slows, turns and the call is made to “let ‘em down.” The spinner baits, irons and plastics drop quickly to the bottom.
A small lingcod is the first to hit the deck. Measured a half-inch shy of the mandatory 22 inches, it is thrown back. Brilliantly-colored rockfish begin to come over the rail, most ending up at the bottom of a burlap bag. More lingcod start to show, their bellies a sickly green, their mouths full of teeth agape as they are plucked aboard by gaff-wielding deckhands.
Hangups on rocks and kelp are frequent, and skipper Mike Packard tries as best he can in the swells and current to remain away from such obstacles, yet near enough to the fish that prefer the tricky habitat.
The clouds spew drizzle and rain, which is blown into the fishermen’s faces by a strong, cold wind.
The fishermen, wearing plastic bags and ponchos, methodically tie new knots and reel in new fish. It quickly becomes apparent that the bass fishermen aboard the Holiday are not out of their element, at all. In fact, they are rather adept at this.
Snow, with his 6 1/2-foot rod and bass bait-casting reel, wins a battle with what proves to be the biggest lingcod of the day, a 14-pound 8-ounce fish worth $150. His partner Mike Wilson, a Sierra Bassmaster, takes the largest red rockfish, 8-6, and $150. Jerry Sato, a former landing operator from Los Osos, wins heaviest sack and $200 with 40 pounds of fish.
The 27 fishermen account for 18 lingcod, 35 red rock cod, 30 whitebelly rockfish, 35 gopher cod, 180 assorted bass and a 20-pound halibut, a species ineligible in the tournament.
It is a fair haul, considering the weather, Valenzuela says, as the sodden passengers huddle at the stern for the weigh-in.
“And no, the weather isn’t always like this,” he adds.
On the contrary, San Simeon, 25 miles north of Morro Bay on the southern edge of the Big Sur, has some of its best weather in the winter and a unique geography that is ideal for shallow-water rockfishing. (Lingcod and other rockfish are typically targeted by heavy-tackle fishermen in waters that often exceed 300 feet in depth.)
The area fished in Valenzuela’s tournaments--between Lopez Point and Cape San Martin--is a constant 52 degrees, the result of strong up-welling currents that bring up cool, nutrient-rich water from beyond a steep shelf, on which the rockfish spawn.
It is off limits to gill netters and requires a night-long ride from Morro and Avila bays to the south, one rarely made. Additionally, San Simeon was closed for a year until Valenzuela received the state contract in July of 1989 to reopen at the end of San Simeon Pier.
“At first we were strictly deep-water rock cod,” he said. “When I got the landing, we started exploring some of the shallow-water spots and discovering that we had these heavy concentrations of big fish.”
The bass clubs got wind and took an immediate interest.
“We started a couple of years ago,” Snow said. “I had fished a lot of light-tackle stuff in the ocean, and I got the club fired up about it. So we chartered a boat and had a great time. We decided to do it once a month or every two months.”
Now the tournament is open to all comers, with two circuits operating year-round, complete with cash prizes for each event and a tournament of champions next December worth $3,000-$5,000 to the winner.
“It’s $75 a tournament every other month, so on the average it’s less than $40 a month,” Valenzuela says. “The average guy can compete and over a period of time can establish his own reputation and skills and be recognized as a professional in that specialty. The average guy can go out and feel just as skilled as the bass pros.”
Maybe someday he’ll even have a sponsor.
