Lobster Baggers Dive In at La Jolla on Opening Night

In the grip of lobster fever on opening night of the season, sport fishers came, they dived and they saw lots of lobsters. But many left lobsterless.

Unrequited hunters, your excuse?

“The surge,” said Brian McDowell, 16, a visitor from Aberdeen, Scotland, who spent about 20 minutes getting bumped against the reef off the Children’s Pool in La Jolla, before leaving the water. “It’s like being in a washing machine. To stay in one place, you have to hug a rock. You don’t have a free hand to hold a light, or a measuring tool, or a lobster.”

Aware of the tricky conditions, yet undaunted, scores of scuba divers searched for lobsters in the waters off La Jolla Wednesday shortly after midnight.

Of the 75 divers who poked about in the reefs off of Casa Cove, Children’s Pool and Boomer Point, those who were successful wowed spectators with their catches.

The empty-handed majority tried to impress with stories of the invariably bigger lobsters that got away.

Bill Sargent, 28, of Vista, who led several of his diving class members on their first hunt, said he went for a rare, double snatch--a lobster in each hand.

“I grabbed one with this hand,” he said in front of a group of friends on land, as he palmed an imaginary captive with his left hand. “On the other side, the bigger one--much bigger . . . barely got away.”

It turned out the left-hand lobster was too short to keep, he said.

Mark Dietrich, 27, a car mechanic from Santee, said he and his friend Robert Brenner let go of five shorts--defined by the state Department of Fish and Game as measuring less than 3 1/4-inches long on the carapace. Dietrich said he also let go of a keeper.

“I had a little hole in my glove,” he said. “The bug was biting me.”

A moniker for lobster, “bug” is a term of either endearment or scorn, depending on whether you get lucky.

Dietrich spoke as his friend Brenner was cited by a Fish and Game warden for a lobster he now wished had gotten away. One sixteenth of an inch shy of legal, the “short” may cost Brenner up to $500 and six months in jail, although usual fines for “hairliners,” or close-to-legals, run about $100 each.

“Expensive dinner,” Brenner said, looking at his nylon mesh bag that held three keepers.

At least 15 people lost lobsters to Fish and Game wardens during the first four hours of the season, which lasts until March 18. Tickets were issued to those with undersized lobsters and to those trying to take more than the limit of seven lobsters.

The night’s biggest losers were two unidentified men who tried to take home 13 lobsters--before the season began.

“I cited them at about 10 (p.m. Tuesday),” said Fish and Game Warden Jackie Krug. “They said they thought the season already started. I went ahead and measured what they had--all of them turned out to be shorts. They just shut up, after that.”

Not everyone went home disappointed.

John Foster, 31, a contractor from Cardiff, left with a 6-pounder he found on a reef slightly farther out and deeper than most divers went.

Sizing up the lobster as it snapped up and down in Foster’s pickup truck bed, Fish and Game Lt. Ken Maehler deadpanned: “I’m afraid we’re going to have to relieve you of this. It’s oversized.”

Foster laughed, then told Maehler his plans for the night’s biggest catch.

“Dinner,” he said.