Catches of the Day : Children Reel ‘Em In During a Free Day of Sportfishing

Thomas Mendez was holding on for dear life. “This one’s a runner!” the 19-year-old from Santa Paula yelled as he was pulled from one end of the boat to the other. “I’d better bring it in because I’m getting tired!”

Mendez’s battle with his unseen foe scattered fishing poles and entangled lines that had to be cut. Nearly 10 minutes later, a 50-pound stingray broke the ocean’s surface.

“Nice catch,” deckhand Jerred Olsen told Mendez, the athletic director of the Santa Paula Boys and Girls Club. Olsen deftly hooked the winged ray and displayed it to a stunned crowd of about 30 children. “But you have to throw it back.” The fish was too dangerous to have on board, Olsen said, and they make poor eating anyway.

The fish were biting Tuesday as Mendez and 37 other members of the Ventura County Boys and Girls Clubs gathered for a free day of fishing aboard the Speed Twin, a sportfishing vessel donated by the Channel Islands Sportfishing Center in Oxnard.

Everyone, it seemed, was landing bright-orange sculpin and steel-backed whitefish.

Everyone but Seth Johnson. Seth was not having a good morning. “I’d better catch one soon,” the 8-year-old Ventura boy said as he watched a friend land a wriggling sculpin, or scorpion fish. Like many of the children on board the 65-foot boat, this was his first fishing trip and he wanted to come back with a prize for his grandparents. “Maybe I’m not holding it right,” he said, looking at his pole.

Meanwhile, Christian Shull was displaying the first catch that he’d ever made. “My first fish ever,” the 7-year-old from Ojai said, pointing to a 14-inch sculpin. “It was easy.”

Even Lizzie Jones, 51, of Port Hueneme was having an easy time as a chaperon aboard the boat that gently rocked in relatively calm seas. “This has been a lot of fun this time,” she said.

Her last fishing trip 20 years ago made her miserably seasick. “I told myself I would never do it again,” she said. “But Jonathan wanted so badly to go,” she said of her 10-year-old son, well on his way to catching a total of 10 fish.

Back at the stern of the ship, Seth thought that he had a bite. But he wasn’t sure. “If I had pulled it in better I’d have had it,” he said. “See? My sardine is gone.”

Most of the lost bait was attributed to the gulls, shearwaters and pelicans that hung around the ship to steal a quick snack. During the course of the day, dozens of birds were hooked and had to be pulled in for beak or wing surgery by a deckhand with nimble pliers.

“I caught more birds than fish,” said Brook Belgun, 12, of Santa Paula, who hooked five birds and only two fish.

Yet neither fish nor bird had graced Seth’s hook--catching the attention of Ed Ramirez, a trip organizer and official with the Santa Paula Boys and Girls Club. “The next ones I catch are yours,” he told Seth.

Within a few minutes, he handed off two poles with fish tugging on the lines. Seth beamed.

By midmorning the sun had burned off the fog and Anacapa Island poked its rocky head through the mist. The fish were biting less frequently, so skipper Pete Bardini asked the children to raise their lines as he went in search of more bountiful fishing grounds.

Using a fathometer, a radar-like device that searches the depths for suitable spots, Bardini moved the Speed Twin a bit south, then a touch west.

“OK kids, you can drop them again,” he yelled over the loudspeaker, and some 35 squid- and sardine-laden lines hit the water.

The change was good for Seth, who hooked his first fish, but then lost it just before a deckhand came to his aid. Five minutes later, he hooked another and brought it in for good. “Now I have three fish,” he boasted. “And one of them I caught.”

As the Speed Twin headed in, deckhands Olsen and Shawn Stewart gutted and fileted the day’s catch. Olsen estimated that the 38 youngsters caught almost 140 fish. “A pretty good day by any standard,” Olsen said. “Sometimes we come out here and don’t get anything.”

“The kids always have a ball,” said Rick Grant, president of the Channel Islands Sportfishing Center. He said the center often offers fishing excursions to underprivileged children. “Every child should have the opportunity to be out on the ocean.”