Discovering Reel Thrills : DFG’s Day of Free Fishing on Isle of Redondo Barge Lands Young First-Time Anglers Who Had Expected to Be Bored

Crystal Dematteo, 11, of Diamond Bar rolled her eyes when her father, Robert, told her they were going fishing last weekend and were going to have lots of fun.

“I had lots of doubts,” she said.

Then, arriving at the Isle of Redondo barge, they showed her how to capture a wriggling anchovy from the bait tank and impale it on a hook. Yecchh!

Later, with a sackful of mackerel filled with help from her father, mother and sister Angelina, 12, she summed it up.

“It’s fun,” she said.

The Dematteos were among 125 who took up the California Department of Fish and Game on an offer of a free fishing day, the first of two this year when no licenses are required. For the first time, the DFG offered a clinic to introduce beginners to saltwater angling. The only cost was $12 for a shuttle from the Redondo Pier out to the barge in Santa Monica Bay. Tackle was provided by Turner’s Outdoorsman, Berkley, Mojo and Mustad.

The fishermen were provided by Rancho Cucamonga, Boyle Heights, Burbank and every other point of the Southern California compass. The quota was reached two days before the event and the barge was filled. And nobody appeared to go home empty-handed, despite the fact that novices outnumbered the experts, two to one.

“You go on an overnight boat and you’ve got guys with $300 custom rods and beautiful reels,” said Dan Hernandez, who organized and coordinated the project for the DFG. “Here, everyone’s equal. The rods and reels are the same.”

DFG wardens Troy Bruce of Long Beach and Tony Warrington of Redondo Beach were on board, but they spent their time baiting hooks and identifying catches.

“By doing this kind of stuff, we can project a more positive image and show people we’re not just out to get them,” Warrington said.

“We try to teach them to release the fish if they’re undersized, rather than just throw ‘em in a bag, which seems to happen a lot.”

Ocean fish have different size and bag limits, which are posted on the piers and boats. The wardens passed out copies of the DFG’s free Marine Sportfish Identification handbook. Frankie Casas, 7, and brother Adrian, 5, of Pico Rivera, found a striped marlin on page 144.

“Daddy, daddy,” Frankie told his father Frank, “this is what I want to catch!”

It would be a long wait for a marlin to come to the Isle of Redondo, but there were hundreds of mackerel, along with some bonito, sand bass, barracuda and a shark.

“There are very few people here by themselves,” Hernandez said. “That’s what I was trying to do with the program, to show that fishing is a family entertainment. Traditionally, you’d think it was a father-son thing, but you look around and see a lot of fathers with daughters.”

Cheryl Brubaker of Burbank was celebrating a new job, alone.

“My husband doesn’t like to fish,” she said.

Danny Patterson of Rancho Cucamonga, standing alongside at the rail, overheard and said, “We ought to trade spouses. My wife doesn’t like to fish.”

Brubaker had caught a mackerel, which was gasping in a plastic bag on the deck behind her.

“I feel sorry for the fish,” she said. “It’s dying a slow death.”

Hernandez reassured her, “I have it on good authority that they don’t feel much.”

Hernandez, author of “Saltwater Fishing Adventures” and a former cable TV fishing show host, conducted seminars throughout the day on basic techniques.

With a Size 4 hook in one hand, he plucked an anchovy from a bait tank with the other and demonstrated how to rig it.

“When you’re fly lining, with no sinker at all, you want to just barely get the hook right under the gill plate,” he said. “Right behind the gill there’s a cartilage. Once you have it like that, it just runs freely.

“If you have a sinker on there, you want to go through the nose to help it swim. But if you put the sinker on and gill-hook it, as the sinker drags it down, it’s going to die.”

Hernandez also cautioned not to hook the anchovy too close to the eyes.

“A lot of people will put the hook way back here, and it’s already dead,” he said.

“To be confident at fishing here in Southern California, you need to learn to fish live bait, dead bait, plastic jigs and iron jigs.

“There will be times when you go calico-bass fishing (when) you might start out fishing live bait. After an hour or two they might not bite live bait anymore, and they’ll just want plastic bait. Later on, they may just want the iron jig. If you only know how to fish live bait, you won’t catch as many fish.”

Rowland Rice, a senior from Santa Ana, asked, “Are brighter colors better?”

“There’s a vary basic rule,” Hernandez said. “On bright, sunny days, fish like bright colors. On dark evenings or (overcast) days, use darker colors.

“When you fish a plastic bait, as a rule you’re fishing structure. Behind us we have a reef--an old ship. It can be kelp or rocks. Normally, you let it hit the water and sink. Most of the time, you’re going to get bit as the jig falls.

“When it gets down toward the bottom where the reef is, you bounce it back and bring it up slowly. Wind up, lift your rod up, lift the lure up and then let it fall. The little tail’s going to wiggle. The reason for moving it when you fish calico bass, if this was a rock or kelp, they’ll hide way back in there. Especially in the winter, the calico bass won’t chase their food. In the summer they will. They’ll wait in there, and as the bait falls in front of them they’ll come out and swallow it.

“For this type of fishing today, for bonito and mackerel, you can use the same lure, cast it out, let it sink maybe 10 or 15 feet and then slowly wind it in--not real fast. The tail will vibrate and the mackerel love it.

“As soon as you get bit, set the hook. These aren’t fly rods. We’re fishing the ocean. Take all the slack out of your line and swing as hard as you can.”

The iron jig, he said, is especially effective for barracuda and larger fish, and the technique is similar, “except we’re not going to go down to the bottom. We’re going to fish right on the structure and in the structure. You’re going to throw it to the fish that are holding around the structure.

“This is going to imitate the larger bait, (such as) those small mackerel we’ve caught today, and the big sardines. Fish like yellowtail and calico bass would eat those.

“The common mistake people make with this lure, though, is they wind too fast. They throw it out, let it hit the water and wind in as fast as they can. It’s the worst thing to do. You want to let it hit the water, let it sink a little . . . especially fishing calico bass, your lure should swim.

“For bonito or mackerel, you can go a little bit faster. If we were fishing yellowtail, like out at Rocky Point in a structure maybe 80 feet deep, you would fish a heavy jig, go straight down and then grind it--wind as fast as you can.”

Hernandez’s seminar was abruptly ended by an outburst at one end of the barge. Someone had caught a small thresher shark.

Don Sanchez of Boyle Heights brought his son, Donald Jr.

“He loves fishing,” Sanchez said. “Every week he looks forward to it.”

Dwight Stephens, a podiatrist from Los Angeles, brought his son, Kristopher, 6.

Frank Casas said shortly after he boarded the barge with his sons Frankie and Adrian, who had never been fishing, that “they asked, ‘When are we going home?’

“(Later,) I asked them, ‘Do you want to go home now?’ They said, ‘No, we’ll go home when it’s dark.’ ”

You would have thought they were at Disneyland.