Taking the Bait : Frappier Left His Contracting Job for Fish Business, but Some Bass Have Taught Him Expensive Lessons

Nelson Frappier thought he had it all figured out, but the bass took him for everything he had.

Frappier got back on his feet, only to be soaked by a bunch of sardines not worthy of a cracker.

If this sounds a little fishy, maybe it is.

But then it seems that whenever anybody, such as Frappier, tries to run a live bait business around Catalina, something fishy happens.

There was the time a bait boat from San Diego tried to make a go of it. But the bait soon disappeared from the area. The trip it took to find the bait, and the beating it took en route back to Catalina, soon put an end to this venture.

Then, a few years back, there was the owner of a small barge, who would wake up before dawn and catch those green-backed mackerel so popular among Catalina fishermen, who soon found themselves shelling out too many greenbacks from their wallets. They took their business elsewhere, which was either nowhere or back to the mainland.

“The last time that barge was seen the Navy was using it for target practice beyond San Clemente (Island),” Frappier said.

Now there is Frappier, a 52-year-old general contractor from Orange, who with his 12-year-old son, Frankie, lives aboard the 105-foot Chovy Monster, a contraption of steel pipes and pumps, soggy wood and draping nets--afloat in a heap a few hundred yards east of town.

The glass-bottom boat it is not.

But Frappier’s Chovy Monster, offering the only live bait at Catalina, has received lots of attention since it opened earlier this month. After all, the waters around the island are some of the most heavily fished in the state. And fresh live bait makes the fishing all the more productive.

Frappier’s telephone line--1-800-585-BAIT--has been ringing off the hook, he says. Inquiries via marine radio on Channel 72 have been steady. The barge itself is frequented by private boaters throughout a given day.

“We went to Newport (harbor) and Dana Point before coming here and there was no bait,” said Dan Haderer, a fisherman from Rancho Cucamonga who came to Catalina with three friends aboard a 20-foot boat. “If there was no bait here, we wouldn’t be fishing. Even when we do get bait at Newport, we usually lose half of it (on the way over).”

Haderer and friends paid their $20 for half a scoop of anchovies and shoved off a happy bunch.

“They know that the bait is a little more expensive here,” Frappier said. “But the fishermen want popcorn bait; they want fresh bait. They’d rather pay a little more and have fresh bait.”

Chuck McGarry, 38, of Huntington Beach didn’t seem to mind paying an extra $5 or $10 for half a scoop.

“It’s a lot easier than having to pick it up at Newport,” he said. “You can run faster and get over here without beating it up on the way.”

Rick Gothe, 46, of Bakersfield, called the Chovy Monster “a godsend” before pulling away in his 35-footer, its bait tanks spilling over with live anchovies.

But things might not be as good as they appear.

“It’s been tried by two others who went bankrupt,” he told a visitor one recent sunny day. “And it looks like there’s going to be the same with the third outfit--us.”

Frappier insisted that he was merely venting his frustration with such a comment. “I don’t give up that easily,” he said.

But few would blame him if he did.

While his son Frankie scooped anchovies for customers last Friday, Frappier explained why he quit his job as a mason and embarked on a course that has become so full of obstacles.

“I got the idea to sell bait at Catalina four years ago,” he said. “I used my own boat, a 30-footer with self-made bait tank raised on 4-by-4 boards on the stern, which could carry 25 scoops.

“I would sit out here at 6 a.m. and by 7 I was sold out. I was making $500-$600 and then the rest of the weekend me and my kid, we would have a ball on the island.

“And then I said, ‘Wait a second.’ I was 52 years old. I’m a licensed general contractor, I specialized in masonry and concrete, and I just had my back fused; they took two disks out and replaced them with bones. I said I can’t lay concrete or brick anymore. I said, ‘What am I going to do?’ ”

What he did was fashion a bait barge at a cost of about $70,000. He put chain-link fence on the outside of the wells, to guard against seals and sharks, and nets on the inside.

He hauled the contraption to Catalina and set up shop, filling his wells with anchovies that would fill his pockets with money the next morning.

Or so he thought.

Frappier drifted off to sleep an entrepreneur. He would awaken a near-pauper.

The very fish that his anchovies were suppose to help fishermen catch, were, by night, catching his anchovies by the thousands.

Like the locusts of Africa, they were upon Frappier’s bait in a swarming and frenzied mass. The smaller fish swam right through the chain-link. The larger fish squeezed through. Those that couldn’t make it through the holes waited on the outside.

“Oh man, they came in . . . do you know a legal-size bass fits through chain-link?” Frappier said, shaking his head in disbelief. “They would come in by the thousands and through the chain link, and sit around and bite the . . . out of my nets, until the webbing would break, then they’d go in and scare the anchovies out of the same holes they came in, and they would stay in there and feast on the anchovies. So my 300 scoops of bait, that would bring me X amount of dollars, went down to 50 scoops of bait. I would lose all my bait. So, I lost about 60 or 70 grand.”

That was a year ago and Frappier, struggling to make ends meet at his home in Orange, is back on the water with a new and improved model of the Chovy Monster, $45,000 poorer but ambitious nonetheless.

After all, his new barge had been fitted with aqua-mesh, the stuff the mainlanders use so successfully to keep all fish out.

Frappier took on 400 scoops of anchovies and 300 scoops of sardines and “greenbacks” and looked forward to the beginnings of a new season.

“Well, that was Monday,” he said last Friday. “Today we are done scooping all of the dead bait out of the wells. We’ve lost, out of 300 scoops, 270 scoops. They all died.”

Frappier estimated the loss at $10,000. He couldn’t explain why the sardines and mackerel had died, nor could any of the mainland operations, whose fish from the same load were still swimming and seemingly fresh.

Frappier’s anchovies survived, but went so fast they were sold out by last Friday afternoon. He has been without bait ever since, but expects a fresh load any day.

What happens to that, however, is anybody’s guess.