NEWPORT BEACH : Proposal Would Ban Fishing From Park

At the tip of the Balboa Peninsula, a half-acre park overlooking the ocean draws visitors to take in the scenic views of passing pleasure boats or to listen to waves crashing against rocks that slope off the sidewalk down to the bay.

The convenient access to the bay from West Jetty View Park also draws fishermen, who cast their lines from redwood benches and relax while waiting for a bite. But, residents and city officials complain, the fishermen draw less welcome visitors looking for a bite to eat.

“Rats are coming out during the day because of the bait and the entrails and other things that people leave behind while they’re fishing,” said Dayna Pettit, an area resident and past president of the Balboa Peninsula Point Assn.

Reacting to complaints from residents, park visitors and the city Parks, Beaches and Recreation Department, the City Council has given preliminary approval to an ordinance that would ban fishing from the park. If the ordinance passes, fishermen will be restricted to the jetty, which juts out about 100 yards from the 415-foot park, and to the rocks that extend from the sidewalk out to the bay.

Fishermen “leave sandwiches and that stuff behind as well as their cut-up bait; they’ll discard the (fish) head,” said Jack Brooks, city park and tree maintenance superintendent. “We try to keep it clean, but it’s impossible to keep up with it totally.”

But while the rats have drawn the wrath of the city, fishermen who frequent the park say it is they who are being unfairly ratted out by residents seeking a scapegoat.

Jim Lacy, a Newport Beach resident who has been riding his bike to the park to fish for four years, said that not only is he not messy but he goes out of his way to pick up discarded bait, stray beer cans and soda bottles.

“I clean up every morning when I’m down here. If there’s a beer can or whatever, I like it clean,” said Lacy, 66.

He added that the proposed ordinance “stinks” and said he will stop fishing in the area if he can’t rest on the bench while casting his line. “I’m too old to go bouncing around on the rocks,” Lacy said. “I did it one time and had 13 stitches. I almost broke my leg.”

Picking up a pile of cracked mussels, which provide bait for fishermen, Lacy said that the litter is no worse now than it has been in the past.

But Lois Grasso, who lives near the park in a 5,000-square-foot home built by razor-blade giant King Gillette and last occupied by rock star Dick Dale, said neighbors scared her two years ago, just before she and her husband, Al, purchased the house, with stories of “rats as big as dogs.”

Al Grasso said he has photographs of trash left behind by fishermen over the last two years. He said he’d be “happy to see (the ordinance) go through” because sandwiches, bait and dead fish left in the park are health and safety hazards.

“It takes away the park from what . . . the purpose (of the park) was,” he said.