No Safe Harbors for Fish : Not Even Sailboat Traffic Can Disrupt This Southland Guide’s Expertise

You have fished the offshore waters, where solitude is generally broken only by the chaos of a wide-open bite. You have been to the local islands, where scenic beauty is part of the plan. Along the coast, you can sometimes see the city skyline and bustling highway, but you are satisfied in the knowledge that you have “gotten away from it all.”

After all, that’s what fishing is all about.

So what sort of guide is it who puts you in the middle of a harbor channel, where sailboats tack around you in what seems an endless flotilla? Where huge sails flap and cast shadows over your head as boats pass within arm’s length, while you try to concentrate on your sport?

Mike Gardner is that sort of guide. He will put you in the path of boats, kayaks, catamarans and canoes. You’ll see so many pilings, docks and slips it will make your head swim. You will see homes of stars, and yachts that are like homes.

Newport Harbor, “land of the free and home of the rich,” as Gardner puts it. It’s one of the busiest pleasure harbors on the West Coast. And Gardner knows every inch of it.

He will almost get you run over, but amid all the activity, he will make sure you catch plenty of fish. He will guarantee it.

“He tells people, basically, ‘You’ll see 100 fish brought to the boat.’ People don’t believe it,” said Chuck Garrison, publisher of Sportfishing Update, a fishing newsletter.

“Now he’s not God, where he’s going to guarantee 100 fish. But on most of his trips, if he’s got two guys fishing on the boat and he fishes himself, they catch 100 fish. I went with him with a friend and guess what. We caught 100 fish.”

One of those fish was a bat ray that Gardner said weighed 89 pounds.

Garrison labeled the catch “one of the most masterful feats of fishing I have ever seen, and I’ve seen guys pull in 300-pound tuna.

“He absolutely finessed this bat ray for well over an hour, and he brought it up on eight-pound test. For a guy that big, who has bear paws for hands, you would think he couldn’t handle that light gear.”

Gardner’s list of Newport Harbor trophies includes a 10-pound sand bass and a six-pound spotted bay bass. He will tell you about the 28-pound halibut he caught near a dock at the end of Lido Island, on an old aluminum boat he named Tintanic.

“I followed that fish all over the bay,” Gardner says. “(And) I’ve caught white seabass--lots of legal white seabass in here over the years.”

Gardner, 51, is a former freshwater bass fisherman who utilizes those skills in the saltwater harbors he serves as a guide. But Newport is Gardner’s domain, and don’t expect modesty if you enlist his services.

“I seriously have it down to a science,” he says. “I know when they’re going to bite. And I usually know exactly where they’re going to bite. In fact I know these (fish) by name because I’ve caught every one of them so many times.”

He will tell you about structure and habitat, pointing out same on depth sounders and meters. He swears by the fishing charts and Solunar tables and will tell you before you board his 20-foot boat what to expect.

If the charts and tables don’t jibe, he says, “We’ll probably catch 50 fish if we’re lucky.”

Not bad, you might think, wondering what he considers a good day. “Our average day is usually about 100-150 fish in the winter time,” he says. “And in the summer, between 150-250. We had 347 fish one day. Our fingers were just bloody raw from taking the fish off.”

He will take you beneath the Pacific Coast Highway bridge. You will be awed by the massive concrete structure high overhead and pray that there’s no earthquake. But you will forget about danger when a spotted bay bass hits your lure and boldly resists.

You might stop off at the Reuben E. Lee, a steamship of a restaurant slightly beyond the bridge. You will catch fish here, or you will continue through the harbor. Gardner will put you within a shout of the waterfront home once owned by John Wayne, where you might land a three-pound sand bass.

Rowing crews from local colleges will flash past, a lure’s toss away on either side.

You will traverse the channels and slip into slips, where spotted bass and sand bass thrive. They will attack your plastics and bend your rod. Children will watch from docks, and boaters will comment as you release fish from your hook.

Barracuda will move in and about, occasionally slashing your retrieving lure. More than likely, you will catch a few.

At low tide, you will escape to the back bay, where the only human activity is on faraway hillsides. Bird activity, on the other hand, is everywhere in this picturesque sanctuary. Snowy egrets stand tall in the mud while gulls and terns cruise the surface of the narrow channel.

Gardner, however, will tell you why he brought you here.

“Halibut have just been stacked back here,” he says. “There’s tons of bait back here, therefore there’s game fish.”

Using his trolling motor, Gardner will maintain position in tidal current, and you might catch a keeper halibut.

Fishing in harbors is nothing new, but the popularity of light-tackle fishing with artificial lures has increased dramatically in the last two years “because people realize you can actually have more fun fishing the bays,” according to Dick Gaumer, 55, a pioneer in the sport.

“The neat thing is, we have bays close to everybody,” Gaumer said. “They’re all different, and they require a lot of thought and study. But they’re all close and they’re all inexpensive. All you need is a rowboat with an electric trolling motor.

“The neat part about it is that every time you look around, you see something. Every minute’s different if you keep your eyes and ears open.”

But Gaumer stresses that the increase in pressure on harbor fisheries should be of some concern to those who want to enjoy their years down the line.

“There’s no need to kill the fish in the bay,” he says. “Most of these bait fishermen fish (Newport Harbor) a lot. And I have seen a drastic change in the last year. I’ve seen sacks of fish and most of them aren’t legal size. They take over their limit.”

Gardner has similar concerns.

“I’ve created a monster,” he says, referring to the sharing of his knowledge of Newport Harbor with others. “I’ve got a lot of people who can come in here and rape this place, when the bite is on. . . . There are a lot of guys who have been doing it.”

HARBOR HIGHLIGHTS

Dick Gaumer has a fascination with harbors and has fished and studied those on the West Coast extensively. He shares his knowledge through writings and seminars. Gaumer, of La Crescenta, was asked about some of his favorite harbors and what they might produce. His assessments:

MORRO BAY

“A phenomenal harbor. I was there just before Christmas and I saw a number of halibut caught in the 40-pound class. Guys who use the plastic baits and the plugs just knock them dead.”

The problem is, Morro Bay can also be dangerous because of swift tidal flows.

“The mouth is very dangerous because it is narrow and essentially, it’s shallow. The tides really move fast--four times faster than at Newport. It’s full of grass and has a variety of structures. When you have a full moon, you have big high tides. You can’t fish the harbor then. You want to fish it when the tides are moving, of course, but watch the extreme high, fast-moving tides.”

OXNARD

Oxnard is essentially a flat and sandy harbor, so Gaumer suggests that anglers look for any change in depth on the sandy bottom, suggesting that even a foot will serve as structure for bass.

“The fish stack up against it because that’s the only structure there is. Most everybody passes that up.”

If you can find a sort of washboard terrain “you can stay on the fish all day,” according to Gaumer. “It’s the only structure besides the shoreline. That’s why you don’t see a lot of people fishing the open water, because they don’t realize.”

LONG BEACH

This harbor is unique because of its varying depths, up to 100 feet in some places. Therefore, an assortment of tackle--to about 15-pound strength--is recommended to deal with deep water and heavy structures. The five oil islands are especially productive.

“The oil islands are phenomenal. You get every variety of fish that’s in the inshore waters. You also get sculpin and cabezon because of the depths and structure. You could fish Long Beach for five years, every day, and never fish all the structure.”

HUNTINGTON HARBOUR

“Most people don’t even know it exists (but) that little harbor is like a fish trap.”

It is productive because it is relatively narrow, with grass beds on one side of the channel, clam beds on the other.

“There’s so much variety of fish in there--I’ve even caught bonito up in there. I’ve caught as many keeper halibut in there as I have in any harbor.

“But you also get a lot of yellowfin croakers, which are really a sporty fish. I’ve caught and released as many as 50 or 60 in one day. I’ve never had such good yellowfin croaker, and they’re all big--oh, two, three, four pounds.”

NEWPORT

“Newport is a premier harbor because it has lots of different types of structure.”

There are docks and sandy beaches, moorings and bridges.

“You also have lots of flats and grass beds. So Newport has a lot of different types of structure that the average guy doesn’t even see or look for.”

MISSION BAY

A sprawling bay, it contains structures similar to those in Newport. “The most interesting part of all about Mission Bay is an area called Chula Vista. That area is absolutely the best spotted bay bass fishery I’ve ever fished, in size and numbers. It’s absolutely unbelievable light-tackle angling.”