Fishing You Can Sink Teeth Into : Some Anglers Bring a Gun Along in Case of Trouble With Mako Sharks, but Tricarico Prefers to Grab Them by the Tail Aboard the Jawbreaker

Fog lies heavily on Skipper’s 22nd Street Landing and the Cabrillo Marina as sportfishing boats prepare to leave at 7 a.m., searching out calico bass, sand bass, sculpin and the like.

The Jawbreaker will wait a while. Skipper Rich Tricarico’s quarry is specific, and there is a sense of it waiting for him, out there in the fog in the San Pedro Channel: Mako sharks.

At 8:40, a radio report says visibility is improving in the channel, so Tricarico casts off. Passing the lighthouse, he would rather go right to the 270 Bank off Point Fermin, but he can’t raise a boat in that vicinity to get a water temperature. For makos, the warmer the better.

So Tricarico points the Jawbreaker southeast toward the 14-Mile Bank--twice as far at 22 miles, but the waters where he picked up makos weighing 83 and 72 pounds a few days earlier. The world record is 1,115 pounds, caught off Mauritius in 1988. Local makos often weigh more than 100 pounds. Tricarico’s largest catch has been 150.

At two-thirds speed through the fog in the 25-foot Skipjack, the trip takes an hour and a half. A few seals and several small boats are already there. Tricarico flips on his depthfinder to show the bottom rising as the graph scrolls across. He is looking for the ridge.

“Where there’s any kind of ridge, there are going to be currents hitting those ridges, and whatever is on the ridge--the smaller baits like plankton, shrimp--is going to be pushed up toward the surface, like a ramp,” Tricarico says.

“The anchovies and sardines are eating that, the mackerel and the bonito are chasing them, and the mako sharks are eating the mackerel.”

There are several underwater ridges along the channel, but Tricarico says: “We’re fishing here because it’s the warmest place around.”

Tricarico stops the engine, lashes a square plastic laundry basket to the starboard quarter and sets a five-gallon bucket into it upside down. This is the chum--a frozen chunk of ground-up mackerel, bonito and anchovies--that will attract the makos.

“Anchovies are the oiliest things ever,” Tricarico says. “You can squish an anchovy and drop it in the water and it looks like an oil slick going out.”

There are several ready-made chum buckets of commercial bait available, but Tricarico prefers what he makes himself, in his front yard at Playa del Rey. “It’s kind of gruesome,” he says. “The neighbors think I’m nuts.”

With the chum oozing, Tricarico sets out three lines in rod holders at various depths, with 50- to 60-pound monofilament line and 250-pound wire leaders--heavy-duty tackle for the size of the fish. The 9/0 and 10/0 hooks are baited with fresh mackerel.

“You want to overmatch any fish you might get,” Tricarico says. “A mako, once he’s hit, isn’t going to come back.”

But conditions are less than ideal. Noting that the water temperature reading in the corner of his depth display is 66.9 degrees, Tricarico says: “It’s a degree and a half cooler than it was Sunday when we got the two.”

Also, there is little wind to make the boat drift and stretch out the chum line, and the few boats there are trolling for marlin, which means they will be breaking up the chum line when they cross it, despite Tricarico’s arm-waving.

But these are the conditions, and all one can do now is wait.

Serious anglers have been targeting makos off Southern California only since the mid-1980s, when Jack Kemnitz’s California Don party boat and Joe Bairian’s Bongos private charter--or “six-pack,” licensed for a maximum of six passengers--started running out of Davey’s Locker at Balboa. Now there are eight party or charter boats available for shark fishing at landings from Newport Beach to San Diego, plus Tricarico at San Pedro.

Earlier, sharks were generally held in contempt. It was a bad rap.

In his “Fisherman’s Field Guide,” Robert Ehman writes: “Shark fishing for its own sake can be intensely thrilling. . . . They are all muscle and hunger and teeth.”

And, Ehman adds: “The best by far in terms of sporting qualities is the mako . . . Isurus oxyrhinchus, also called the bonito shark or sharpnose mackerel shark.”

Makos are the swiftest and most acrobatic sharks. Eddie DiRuscio, manager of Davey’s Locker, says: “It’s one of the more popular types of big-game fishing you can do around here. They run, jump and sound. They’ll do everything a marlin will do--plus they’re a lot better to eat.”

About 80% of a mako is meat. Shark is sold in supermarkets, but it is more likely thresher rather than mako.

But this has been a good year for makos.

Tricarico says: “The makos right now seem to be on the feed. There’s been some warm water coming through, and the humidity has kept the heat in the water. Also, there are a lot of bait fish around--mackerel, anchovies and sardines.”

Steve Crooke of the California Department of Fish and Game says: “The catch rates seem to be higher than normal, about 1 1/2 to two times what were caught last year.”

That may be because more people are going after them. To protect the resource, the DFG last month proposed to the Fish and Game Commission establishing limits of mako, thresher and blue sharks at two a day.

Currently, there are no limits on sharks.

Also, Tricarico and DiRuscio agree that makos weighing less than 40 pounds should be released. A few days ago, Tricarico hooked six, but kept only a 60-pounder. One estimated at 80 pounds broke 25-pound test line.

Tricarico once lived on Long Island, where he fished on party boats.

“But it got to be a drag because I had my own ideas,” he says. “I would watch the charts and do all this stuff. I wished I had my own boat. . . . “

Moving to California, he played baseball at Loyola Marymount but couldn’t hit the long ball. Then he got a break: his jaw.

He was in a car accident and the insurance settlement enabled him to buy a boat and go fishing for sharks--hence, “Jawbreaker,” suggested by his mother.

“I bought it not to make a business out of it but just to take my family and friends fishing. Then I started noticing I was catching a lot of fish . . . doing better than most people. (And) I saw that people were making money from this.”

Most shark anglers catch more of the less desirable blues, up to 10 for every mako. Tricarico catches more makos than blues.

At 12:30, Tricarico notes a school of small fish churning the surface nearby and says: “That’s a good sign. They’ve been chased up by a marlin.”

Fifteen minutes later, he notices a twitch of a rod tip imperceptible to others on the boat. “There’s a hit,” he says.

He carefully lifts the rod from its holder and says quietly: “It feels like a mako. A blue will just swallow the whole thing. . . . Yep.”

Tricarico can feel the mako knocking the bait around with its pointed snout. After two minutes, he feels it bite the bait, and rears back as hard as he can to set the hook. Then he hands the rod to Melanie Jones, the 22nd Street Landing manager who has never caught a mako. Ten minutes later, the mako is alongside the boat, but that’s only half the battle.

“There’s a lot of danger involved,” Tricarico says. “You get into a school of bonito, great, gaff them and they’re in the boat. A marlin, they jump and they look pretty, but when they actually come to the boat, they’re usually so worn out that that you grab them by the bill, take the hook out, release them and kiss them goodby.

“When the mako comes up, all you see is teeth. They are the nastiest-looking things on Earth.”

DiRuscio says: “They’ll bite anything that’s close to them . . . jumping and snapping their jaws.”

Some anglers carry guns to subdue makos. Baseball bats are handy.

“I don’t shoot,” Tricarico says. “You have to gaff it, put a tail rope around it, immobilize this fish. If it gets away, then he deserves to get away. It’s a sport.”

Only when the fish is docile--sometimes an hour after hanging upside down over the side--is it brought on board. Jones’ fish weighed about 35 pounds.

“Ordinarily, I’d release it,” Tricarico tells her, “but you’ve never caught one before. I’ll do the jaws for you.”

Jaws--every shark angler should have his own.

The rest becomes steaks.