Egos Churning the Waters : The Competition for Lunker Striped Bass at Silverwood Lake Turns Mild-Mannered Sportsmen Into Volatile Finger-Pointers

Some of the fishermen at Silverwood Lake aren’t speaking to each other.

One suggests that another is illegally using live trout for bait. The former is suspected by the latter of fibbing about his catches--jealous, because the latter caught a whopper that day.

A tackle store in Palmdale won’t do business with the first angler anymore, but a tackle store in Newhall says: “He’s a real nice guy.”

At the center of the storm, respectively, are Gordon Griffith and Allan Cole, and the storm is over striped bass. Both live in Lancaster and share a passion for catching the trophy fish, but that’s about all they share.

Griffith and Cole actually are latecomers among the fanatics drawn to Silverwood by the stripers, which grow to tackle-busting size by feeding on rainbow trout planted by the Department of Fish and Game and a constant flow of nutrients through the California Aqueduct.

Gregg Silks and Del East have been working the lake since it opened in October of 1972. Silks, of Alta Loma, holds the lake record: 41 pounds 1 1/2 ounces, in May of 1986. The world record is 66 pounds, from O’Neill Forebay near Los Banos in the same aqueduct system.

It was all great fun until this fall, when Cole, a painting contractor, caught 13 stripers weighing from 20 1/2 to 31 pounds in a span of less than two months. Then Griffith phoned The Times to say he had caught three from 21 1/2 to 35 pounds in a span of a few days.

That brought a call from Cole, who said: “He claims he’s caught them, but nobody’s seen any of them.”

However, Griffith, fishing from the dock as Cole returned from the lake one evening last week, showed a reporter photos of himself holding large stripers. There aren’t more, he says, because he fishes from shore at night.

Silks says the best striper bite is from 2 a.m. to dawn. Otherwise, manager Jean Bryant and her assistant, Jackie Gwantney, log all of the trophy catches in a journal and post Polaroid photos of the fish.

“I’ve weighed and got photos of every one of mine,” Cole says.

Cole fishes during the day from his boat, trolling the shorelines of the H-shaped, 900-acre lake 10 miles east of Interstate 15 in the San Bernardino Mountains.

“He’s usually just starting when I’m finishing,” Griffith says.

They sometime see each other, but do not speak.

Dan Lengning, who owns Sportsman Supply in Newhall, says of striper fishermen in general: “They’re their own kind of people.”

Griffith says: “Allan and I used to talk on the phone before all the stuff got crazy . . . discuss whether we were putting too much pressure on the big fish . . . sane conversations. But when I wanted information on water temperature, how deep should I fish, how fast should I fish, action on the lure, I talked to Gregg Silks.”

One tip they all know is to fish right after a trout plant--not for trout but for the stripers that pounce on them.

“To see those stripers actually chase a fish up onto dry land . . . it happened to me last week,” Lengning said.

Silks, who lives in nearby Alta Loma, says the trick is to catch stripers when there has not been a trout plant.

“For the newcomers, one out of 10 times they’ll catch fish,” he says.

Silverwood’s top striper anglers, who also include East, Butch Augustine and Eldon Goetzinger, guard most of the secrets of their lures and techniques.

Goetzinger, of Northridge, says: “There’s more jealous fishermen on that lake than any other lake I’ve ever fished.”

Silks says: “I try to stay away from it. It’s childish. . . . I don’t know (Cole), but I’ve noticed that in the last year or so he’s getting the techniques down, getting better at it.”

Silks is content to market a lure he designed and avoid the controversy.

“When I caught the record, it was the same thing,” Silks says. “Everybody was finger-pointing: ‘Biggest trout-thrower there is.’ . . . ‘Nobody ever sees him catch fish.’ . . . ‘I’ll bet he caught it right after the trout plant.’ . . . ‘He caught them in the aqueduct using nets.’ ”

Silks doesn’t go out of his way to weigh in his catches anymore. “I just got tired of all the complaining,” he says.

Goetzinger says that when Cole started catching trophy stripers, word circulated among Silverwood regulars that he was using live trout for bait.

“When he was cleaning his fish, they’d come around (and ask): ‘What’d you get that on?’ (He’d say): ‘A home-made lure.’ And I’d hear them walk away muttering, ‘Yeah, he used a trout.’ ”

Park rangers, alerted to possible violations, followed Cole out onto the lake.

“One day in October when I went out with him, they came by us three times with binoculars,” Goetzinger said.

Another time, Cole and Goetzinger were fishing near another regular when Goetzinger landed a 21-pounder and then showed off the lure.

“Hey, by gosh, that does look like a trout,” the man said.

Goetzinger says of Cole: “You know why he’s catching more big stripers than anybody? Because he fishes harder than anybody else.”

Griffith says: “The one thing he does that nobody else on the lake does--and I’ll hand it to him--if he sees fish in an area, he’s relentless.

“It’s hard work. I’ve got good technique, but I’m (also) willing to put in the hours, freezing. When I get mine, I put in eight or nine hours a night for one fish, each night.”

Cole arrives by 7 a.m., when the gates open, and is launched and on the lake by 7:15, trolling by 7:20. This day he is alone with a reporter, firing up a propane heater to ease the morning chill.

While trolling close to shore, he alternates his lures on a second line to test their movement through the water. Cole’s most effective lure--the one he calls an “AC Plug”--was originally designed by his son, Eric. It’s a wooden, jointed “broken-back” fashioned on a lathe, with a pair of treble hooks, glass eyes and a rubber Worm King tail made by Marv Bendalin. At the right trolling speed, it moves through the water, slithering side to side, remarkably like a trout.

“Look at that sucker swim,” Cole says.

But the conditions are poor: bright sun, glassy water, no trout plant. Good for water skiing, lousy for striper fishing. Cole says the best fishing is when the weather is worst.

“When I see a storm coming, I get out here,” he says.

But he persists on this day, covering virtually every inch of shoreline from Miller Canyon to Cleghorn Arm to Outhouse Cove and the dam and spillway at the far north end. The rod tip twitches rhythmically as the lure works, but . . . nothing.

At 11:30 a.m., Cole says: “I think the good feed’s in the afternoon, with the moon the way it is . . . 3 o’clock.”

At 1:20 p.m., a slight breeze raises a chop, and Cole is encouraged. Then, at 2:45, in a cove off the channel connecting the two arms of the lake, the rod suddenly bends at a right angle, flexing hard.

“Hey, I got one--a big one!” Cole yells, leaping from his seat to the rod holder at the stern. “He’s taking line good. Whoo! Ha-ha-ha. Aw, I don’t believe it! I figured the bite was over. I didn’t know what to think. . . . I think it’s a 30. It’s gotta be more than 20. It’s a big one, man. Get that net ready. He’s coming. He’s coming up now. All right, I hope I don’t lose him.

“Ooh, look at him. Oooh, lookit, lookit, lookit, he’s taking line. Whoo! He’s not ready. I hope he don’t come off. . . . There he is. Ooh, look at him. He’s up on top. Yeah, he’s a big one, all right. All right! Whoo! Right on top. I told you this was a good spot. Oh, ho-ho-ho. Here he comes. I knew he was big when he was taking line.”

Cole has recently started fishing with a relatively tight drag on 25- to 30-pound test line because he thought he was losing too many fish. He won’t lose this one. “Oh, yeah, he’s a big one. Get the net ready. Get him head first. Here he comes . . . head first . . . lift him. Ohhh, he’s gotta be 30. . . . oh, he’s thirty- five! He’s 35 for sure. I don’t believe it. This was slow today. Agony. . . . Hey, do my lures work?”

It was, indeed, one of his homemade lures, hooked hard in the side of the striper’s mouth.

Back at the landing, the fish checks out at 34 1/2 pounds and is 43 1/2 inches long--the largest striper Cole has caught this year and not far off the largest he has ever caught--38 1/2 pounds.

He tells a reporter: “If you hadn’t been here, they would have been accusing me of everything . . . live trout, dynamite.”

Cole has always targeted trophy fish. A founder of the Brownbaggers, he has caught 20 German brown trout weighing more than 10 pounds, has held the state albacore record for eight years and recently mounted a 140-pound bigeye tuna.

As Silverwood regulars come by to see his latest prize, Cole says: “Catching a fish is fun--but bringing them in (to the dock) is kind of fun, too. That was the most satisfying experience I ever had with a fish.”