It’s Never Too Late : For Those Who Didn’t Get a Chance to Learn Fishing, or Simply Are Old Enough to Get Started, Help Is Here

Ever have the feeling that everyone on the lake or the stream or the bay or the boat knows more about fishing than you do?

“I had a deprived childhood,” said Rick Duggan, 38, of El Toro.

Ever wander through a tackle store, baffled by the array of exotic gear but feeling too dumb to ask about it?

“Actually, I’ve avoided it,” Duggan said.

Isn’t the whole sport intimidating to a novice, especially a male adult novice?

“It really is,” Duggan said. “But I think I would like it.”

Duggan is from a lost generation of non-anglers, but his three kids got him back in the mainstream. They were among those attending last weekend’s free how-to-fish seminar conducted by the California Department of Fish and Game at the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve.

Dave Parker, a DFG marine biologist, was pleased that “people who are beginners are bringing their kids, so they’re both beginners.”

Duggan said: “You don’t realize it at the time, but later on when your kids want to fish, you don’t know what to tell them. I thought this would be a good chance to get them started and get me a little education, too.”

Nearly 2 million Californians--about one in 15--have fishing licenses, the most of any state. But it is also a much smaller percentage than most states--10 states are one in four or better--and California leads a decline in the Pacific region, which lost 2.3% of its anglers from 1985 to ’90.

Charles Gauvin, executive director of Trout Unlimited, believes the decline is a national phenomenon that is most evident in California because of the state’s soaring population.

“With the decline of the American two-parent family and with greater urbanization, there is no fishing heritage left in many parts of the country,” Gauvin said. “My father’s fondest memories as a child were of being taken fishing by his uncle. We’ve almost lost that in this generation.”

But all anybody ever wanted to know about fishing and was afraid to ask is still easily available.

Frank Selby, a fly fisherman who was at Newport Bay, said: “Most fishermen will help anybody. Most of the tackle shops have classes, but an older person is a little intimidated. A lot of times, the parents don’t fish but the kids want to fish: ‘Ask Uncle Frank to take you.’ I was lucky when I was little. I grew up around a bunch of fishermen.”

It’s never too late. After all, the complexities of fishing are largely overrated. There’s only one object: to persuade a fish to bite your hook. Parker keeps it simple.

“We’ve got spinning tackle here,” he told a group gathered around him. “To let the line off the reel, you have to flip this bail over . . . run the line through the guides. These reels have a little lever back here that in this position you can’t crank it backwards. These reels also have a drag (adjustment) which lets the line be pulled off before it breaks. A big fish can take a little line and get tired out without you breaking the line.

“For fishing here on the bay, we’re recommending a real simple little outfit for bait . . . an egg sinker, to get your bait down to the fish. We slide it right up the line about 18 inches, and to keep it from sliding back to the hook, I like a little split shot right there. And that doesn’t snag up on the bottom very easily because it’s kind of rounded.

“For tying on the hook, a fairly easy knot is a Palomar knot. You double five or six inches of your line, roll it a little bit to squeeze the tip down and put that through the eye of the hook. You get that double line through the eye, then you just tie a simple overhand knot, like the first part of a shoelace. Now you’ve got a hook dangling. Take the hook and put it back through that first loop you originally made, pull everything up above the eye of the hook and then slowly pull on the main line (until it’s tight). You can snip off what’s left.”

What size line to use?

“The lighter the line, the more strikes you’ll get, because the bait or whatever you’re using is less restricted,” Parker said. “And the fish can detect that line if it’s heavy enough. But the tradeoff is that with lighter line, you might lose more fish. The skill level goes up.”

How large a hook?

“The smaller hook will draw more strikes, but if it’s too small, in relation to the fish’s mouth and the size of the bait you’re using, your chance of hooking the fish might be reduced.”

That’s it?

“The whole purpose of this is to show people it’s pretty simple,” Parker said.

Parker sent them off to another station to get some cut mackerel or anchovies for bait. Some returned, discouraged that all they’re catching is algae. Parker told them they weren’t doing anything wrong. Actually, the algae meant they’re fishing in the right places.

“It’s the start of the food chain. It’s what makes it productive,” Parker said.

Some of the novices catch sand bass and stingrays, even in mid-day, when a lot of anglers might think they’re wasting their time.

Parker said: “In a bay like this, the most important thing is the tidal cycle. When the bay is changing and the water’s moving, that’s when fish are attuned to feeding--probably on the in phase more than the out when fish are moving up into areas that were dry.”

Dave Ayala of Fullerton said he has been fishing the bay successfully for 21 years, “and the last day I got skunked was in 1980.”

Ayala, who prefers to fish early in the morning, said: “I’ve been out there at 8 in the morning and it’s all over with. It’s the light, and the fact that maybe they eat for only an hour or so.” Ayala is helping Donna Halperin of Irvine.

“I don’t care if they’re this big, nibbling,” she said, holding a thumb and forefinger apart. “That little tug on the pole is (exciting).”

If such programs can bring people back to fishing, there remains the question of how good fishing will be for future generations. That’s the larger concern of Trout Unlimited, which started in Michigan 32 years ago and has grown into a conservation organization with more than 66,000 members.

Gauvin, visiting Los Angeles this week, said: “California seems to have the best representative sampling of Western trout habitat problems of any state. You’ve got everything . . . irrigation return flow problems, grazing problems, dewatering problems, water pollution problems. If you could manage California’s trout fisheries successfully, you could probably do it anywhere in the West.”

But Gauvin believes that California and other states have tried to solve their fish problems mainly by planting more fish.

“If it’s been in the stream long enough, it doesn’t taste like liver pellets anymore,” he said, referring to hatchery food.

“State resource managers in this country have promoted hatcheries over habitat because they’re ducking the big, tough political issues . . . (for example,) allowing the federal power agencies to block downstream access for salmon and restrict upstream access for the adults. If you fail to manage the larger ecosystem for the sensitive species, you’re going to lose. No amount of hatchery work will catch you up.”

Gauvin, an environmental attorney, grew up in New England and is based in Washington. He has been running Trout Unlimited since April.

“I want to increase the strength of our federal advocacy,” he said. “What we have lacked is a strong presence in Washington. CalTrout, Oregon Trout and some of these other organizations have been very effective in their respective spheres, but it’s up to us to be the national organization.”

Some wonder if Trout Unlimited can handle that.

“A lot of people think TU is an elitist organization,” Gauvin said. “For years, we’ve been battling this conflict between something like a fishing club and something like a fishing organization. TU is pretty much a blue-collar group. I don’t mind bait fishermen. How you catch your fish doesn’t make any difference.

“We are resource-oriented. Right now, we’re so busy with conservation issues that people who have come into the organization have found their time on the trout stream has dropped dramatically.”

The group also has a youth education program.

“It’s very difficult to teach biodiversity to an 8-year-old,” Gauvin said, “but if you take that 8-year-old out on a trout stream with a fishing rod in his hand and let him catch a few, then you start explaining the building blocks of stream ecology. He really starts to learn something.

“The basic message is one you can build in a lasting way--not just on one Saturday showing kids how to fish.”