The Hunt Is On : Night Time’s the Right Time to Grab Fistfuls of Grunion at the Beach

As the wave receded from the shoreline, Dayna Miles quickly surveyed the wet, moonlit sand for a sparkle of light and then dashed up Buenaventura State Beach upon spying her wriggling prey.

A moment later, the 9-year-old Ojai girl let out a squeal and came running back toward her father with a small, squirming fish clenched tightly in her fist. “Daddy. Daddy. I’ve got one.”

Though hardly a trophy-winner, Dayna had caught her first fish--by hand. “This is a lot better than regular fishing,” she said.

Saturday night marked the opening of California’s grunion fishing season, a sport more akin to catching bumblebees in a jar than fish on a hook. It’s an annual ritual among some Southern California families, punctuated by moments of frenzied scrambling rather than long periods of contemplation between nibbles on a fishing line.

Named by early Spanish settlers for their soft mating grunt, the smelt-like grunion inhabit coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean from Point Conception to Punta Abreojos in Baja California, Mexico. They leave the ocean to spawn between late February and early September based on the cycle of the moon and tides.

The beach spawning takes place around midnight, over a two-hour period, just after highest tide following each full and new moon. Grunion runs are expected tonight from about 11:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. and Tuesday from midnight to 2 a.m., with the second hour generally offering better pickings.

Schools of grunion send scouts onto the beach, and seek out other mating grounds when the scouts fail to return, said Paul Gregory, associate marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. A female grunion will ride the larger waves onto the shore accompanied by as many as eight males, and ride them back out if no males are present.

Upon hitting the beach, the female burrows tail-first into the sand and lays up to 3,000 eggs. The male encircles its buried mate and emits its milt, which runs down the female’s body and onto the buried egg pack. The eggs hatch within 10 days upon being unearthed by the next extreme high tide.

No one can predict which beaches might host the largest runs. Gregory said grunion may carpet a beach by the thousands in one area and be nowhere to be found a half a mile away. Grunion hunting is forbidden in April and May to allow unimpeded spawning. A state fishing license is required at all other times.

Tina Rhodehame, 23, of Ventura decided to try her hand at grunion fishing Saturday night after searching rocks along Ventura Harbor that afternoon for octopuses to put in her 125-gallon fish tank with her leopard sharks.

Rhodehame, whose octopus excursion was unsuccessful, fared considerably better at grunion fishing. She and the three members of her party snagged more than 70 fish.

“This makes you feel like a kid again,” Rhodehame said as she stood in thigh-deep water waiting for a far-reaching wave to roll back into the ocean. “It’s amazing that a year in advance they can tell you on this day, at this hour, these little fish will come up on the beach.”

Her companion, Trevor Lindstrom, said he has come away empty-handed only once in a dozen grunion outings on Buenaventura State Beach, catching between 30 and 100 on all other occasions.

Lindstrom, 14, forswears the use of flashlights, which he said scare off the surf-riding grunion, as do crowds on the beach. He also does not go after the scouts, the first fish to show up on the shore, to ensure a larger run.

Lindstrom guts and scales his catch, cuts off their heads and tails and fries them in oil. Others suggest dipping them in cornmeal before frying them about three minutes on each side. Grunion average about five to six inches long.

“They taste like fish sticks,” Lindstrom said.

As for required skills, “You just have to have good eyes and run fast,” he said, before adding: “If someone wants to do this, they better expect to get wet for sure.”

“It’s fun when you catch a whole bunch because you really feel proud of yourself,” said Lindstrom’s fishing partner, Mario Navarro, 11. As for whether boy versus beached fish is a fair fight, Mario said: “Yeah, because you’ve got to run for your life to get ‘em.”

Bill Miles said he brought his two children out for the late night at the urging of his wife, Sandy, who recalled grunion hunts as a teen-ager enlivened by beach bonfires and sing-alongs.

“They’ll learn a lot about what the ocean has to offer,” said Bill Miles, whose family caught about 20 fish before heading home. “Besides, it’s fun.”

Garrett Duran, 17, arrived at the Buenaventura beach at the foot of Seaward Avenue about 12:15 a.m. after finding the Oxnard Shores beach barren. By the time that he arrived, no grunion were visible at his second foraging grounds either. But that did not discourage Duran, who said he would be out every night through Tuesday in an effort to catch his first grunion.

“You don’t usually see fish hopping up on the shore,” Duran said. “That’s something I’ve got to see.”