The Allure of the Pier : Sometimes the People Outnumber the Fish, but There’s More to Catch Than Dinner--Like Peace of Mind

On good days, when the bonita or halibut or mackerel are running, the fishermen line Belmont Pier like horse players who crowd the rails of a race track.

On slow days, when it’s a good bet not much will be caught, the pier is less populated. The regulars will be there, though, sitting in lawn chairs and, regardless of their success, enjoying the scene.

Early on a recent Saturday morning, the scene was timeless:

The moon was still out. The sun had just come up, setting apartment tower windows to the west ablaze with orange. Gulls cried, and were chased by little girls. The sea was pale and still, and people of all ages were dropping fishing lines into it.

If only more fish had been taking the bait.

“I’ve been out here since 5,” said Harry McFerren, who was feeding pigeons. “If you don’t get ‘em early in the morning, you don’t get ‘em at all.”

There have been two Belmont Piers that have jutted out over the beach from near 39th Place. The current concrete one--1,450 feet long and capped by a 336-foot Y-crossing at the seaward end--opened in 1967, replacing a shorter, wooden pier that was 50 years old.

McFerren, 81, had more luck off the old pier. “There used to be a lot of fish,” he said. “Now there’s more fishermen than fish. It’s the pollution in here.”

And the seals. He looked down in the water and saw one eat a fish.

“But if the sardines come through here,” McFerren added hopefully, “you can catch any number of fish.”

Some of the anglers marched onto the pier carrying their poles like guns. Others came overloaded with enough paraphernalia for a weekend camping trip: buckets, tackle boxes, plastic bags full of food, coolers, blankets, radios--all of this piled atop carts.

Out on one of the seaward wings, a woman was prepared for the weather that changes as the day progresses. She wore a straw hat, a red kerchief, a plaid shirt over a blue sweat shirt, a skirt over long pants, and tennis shoes. She drank coffee from a paper cup and fished for dinner.

“This pier has fed a lot of people,” said Frank Hale, 80, the former manager of the pier’s concessions and a fixture there for 35 years.

His wife, Willi, a semi-retired pediatrician, now runs the concessions. She works at the end of the pier out of a two-level building whose copper roof the salt air long ago turned green. The building contains a snack stand (hamburgers, fish sandwiches and crabs are the popular items) and a bait-and-tackle shop. At the bait shop’s window, arrangements are made for trips on three fishing boats the Hales operate.

The pier is under the jurisdiction of the Long Beach Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine, and the city gets a percentage of what the Hales take in, which they say is about $1 million a year.

Most of the money is made in the summer. “When school starts there’s a big drop-off,” Willi Hale said.

Some of the pier’s trappings have vanished over the years. The Buoy restaurant, which once sat atop the tackle shop, never was successful, according to Frank Hale. “Women didn’t like walking down the pier to get there because their hairdos got blown all apart,” he said.

Electrical outlets were taken out years ago. Frank Hale said they encouraged all-night camping, and the campers were inclined to build fires.

Hale used to operate his flatbed truck as a tram, ferrying fishermen along the pier for a dime. But high insurance costs and vandalism (the truck’s tires were often slashed) brought an end to that venture.

A building that housed restrooms also became a target of vandals and was taken down. Portable toilets now sit in the middle of the pier for those who don’t want to make the long walk to the restrooms in the bait shop.

McFerren recalled when “they had nice orchestra and big-band music” playing over loud speakers strapped to the light poles. But most of the speakers are gone; over the few that are left come only announcements, such as the time of departure of the next boat or reminders that bicycles are not allowed on the pier.

The pier was open all night until the early 1980s when sleeping transients became a problem. It is now fenced off from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Willi Hale said the pier has become more family-oriented in recent years, and, as a result, is more peaceful. “We haven’t had any break-ins in the tackle shop or snack bar in a couple of years,” she said. “We do have a good alarm system, however.”

Later on that recent morning, on the side of the pier that faces the downtown skyline, J.C. Hanks, 64, of Carson baited a hook with salted anchovies. He wore blue overalls and a cap that read: “Old fishermen never die, they just smell this way.”

“Not much luck,” he said. “Fishing ain’t what it used to be,” he said. “I guess nothin’ is.”

His two poles were stuck into holes in the wooden railing, allowing him to sit in his lawn chair and wait for a bite. He nibbled on nachos, then he yawned.

On the opposite railing, Bonnie Hill of Azusa and her daughter, Karen Griffin, had begun a long day of fishing. They had laid towels over the rail and a blanket over a concrete bench that held their fishing tackle, coolers and thermos jugs.

When Griffin set off for the bait shop, her mother called to her: “Get razor clams. If they have butter clams, get them. If you want to fish for perch, get a few shrimp.”

But she knew none of that would probably work. “Right now,” she said, “you could try filet mignon and they wouldn’t bite.”

A dyed-in-the-wool professional angler like Jack Dunster, 68, who grew up on Belmont Pier, blames the poor fishing on pollution and overfishing.

He said the federal breakwater, which was finished in 1949, turned the once-churning ocean into a relatively mild bay that retains the pollution from the Los Angeles River instead of washing it out to sea.

In 1985, the state Department of Health Services found unsafe levels of toxins such as DDT and PCB in fish near the pier. The advisory was reissued two years ago, said Gerald Pollock, a toxicologist with the California Environmental Protection Agency. “We still recommend that people eat surfperches only once every two weeks,” Pollock said this week.

But there are no restrictions, he said, on bonita, halibut and mackerel, fish that showed the lowest contamination during the 1991 study.

Whether it is the pollution, the competition from the seals, water that’s too cold, or just that the fish are hiding, this has been “a super lousy year for fishing,” not only at the pier, but just about every place from Santa Barbara to San Diego, Dunster said.

He quickly amended that to, “The catching has been super lousy. The fishing is always great.”

A fog had developed near noon that Saturday, temporarily obliterating the view of downtown buildings and even parts of the nearby beach. An hour later, it lifted to reveal a sunny, blue-water afternoon.

Now everything could be seen clearly--the oil islands, sailboats, Santa Catalina Island, pelicans perched on the light poles.

“Another day in paradise,” said city custodian Anthony Meyers, who was picking up debris.

The wind had picked up enough to be heard, and this sound mixed with the haunting bellow of a distant foghorn, the creaking of the floating docks and, from a radio, the voice of Leslie Gore.

One of the fishermen, 72-year-old Gimmie Jaques, who comes to the pier almost every day from Anaheim, looked like he had stepped out of a Hemingway novel. He had a long gray beard, a weathered face and hair the color of steel wool that spilled in tangles from the back of his green Army cap.

He wore a purple tank top that allowed his shoulders to become browner with each passing hour. A holster that held a knife and pliers was attached to his jeans.

His wife, Chonita, fished between trips up the pier to collect cans.

“I got four bonita, he’s got two,” she said. “Mine are the bigger ones.”

Her husband would not concede that she is a better fisherman.

“Pretty good luck,” he said.

Gimmie had just reeled in a mackerel and was trying to grip it with knobby fingers that betrayed his many years of pushing wheelbarrows full of cement. He plopped the fish into his bucket.

Hours later, at 6 p.m., Gimmie stomped on the cans his wife had collected in a burlap bag. When all of them had been crushed, he loaded lawn chairs and a mountain of gear onto a little cart.

With Chonita bringing up the rear, he pushed the cart down the pier toward the parking lot. Their shadows fell on the beach below as the other regulars called out, “See you tomorrow.”

The Belmont Pier will get a $1-million face lift that will include replacement of a floating dock, new restrooms, new public address and alarm systems, renovation of security and navigational lights, and new benches and fish-cleaning sinks. The money is part of more than $23 million the city of Long Beach is getting as its share of a $540-million ballot measure that Los Angeles County voters approved last November to improve parks, beaches and recreational facilities.