Sea-Worthy Cause : Members of Youth Groups Are Winners During L.A. Rod & Reel Club’s Annual Event

Patrice McGriffin is as excited as the next person, but she shudders a bit at the thought of what the day might bring.

“It’s pretty out there, but I’m kind of scared because Jaws might come on the boat,” she says, flashing a nervous smile while looking out over the ocean, seeing nothing but gray.

McGriffin’s fears are unfounded, but who can blame her? She’s only 11 and, like many others being ferried to the fishing barge near the outer entrance of L.A. Harbor, she has never been on the ocean.

Dominique Jenkins hasn’t either, but he’ll be the first to tell you, “I’ve been by it.” Jenkins, 12, is bold enough to say that although he has yet to reel in so much as a minnow, he wants to actually catch a shark. “I’m going to try,” he says.

Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez, 13, wants to put his hooks into stickier prey.

“I want to catch an octopus. Are there any octopus down there?” he asks, wide-eyed and hopeful.

Rodriguez is told not to expect to catch any octopuses, but he no longer cares. Staring into the murky green water, his mind, too, begins to conjure up images of that old favorite, the shark, who eats octopuses for breakfast.

“Are there any sharks right here ?” Rodriguez asks, pointing straight down. Told there could be, his eyes light up. “Hey, there could be sharks right here! “ he yells out.

McGriffin, in a bright red sweater, doesn’t want to hear it.

“I don’t want no sharks on the boat!” she says, as if giving an order.

Elsewhere on the Billy V, as it slowly approaches the Annie B barge, similar conversations are under way. The dozens of youngsters being taken farther into a wonderful, watery world--and ever farther from the mean and violent world in which many of them live--seem intoxicated by what is clearly a sense of adventure.

They are soaking up everything, from the giant white cruise ship floating by en route to its berth, to the sea lions lounging on a nearby buoy. From the flashing light marking the entrance to the harbor to the Billy V itself, not much of a boat but a two-level one with stairs and hallways to explore.

The ride is a short one, though, and the Billy V soon glides up alongside the Annie B, a huge fishing platform, where other children who have made an earlier trip are already tangling with some of the creatures of the deep, rocking and reeling the day away, seemingly without a care in the world.

The new group steps from boat to barge and blends in immediately.

Joel Steinman can’t help but smile. This is exactly what the Los Angeles Rod & Reel Club had in mind when it started the annual Kids’ Fishing Day 45 years ago. Now nearly 500 kids from various youth groups in and around Los Angeles are participating in the annual event, being ferried to and from the barge in shifts and basically having the run of the place.

“There are gangs and drugs all around most of these kids, and many of them come from bad homes,” says Steinman, president of the LARRC. “If one or two of them turn out all right because of what we’re doing, then it is well worth the trouble.”

What the volunteers from the fishing club are doing is providing the tackle, untangling the lines, baiting the hooks, cleaning the fish, cooking the food--an average of 1,500 hamburgers and hot dogs a year--and basically making sure everyone has the time of their life.

What the youth counselors and guardians are doing is another thing.

“We hope this will show them a different way of life,” says Steve Miller, a supervisor with Pacific Lodge Boys’ Home in Woodland Hills, which houses 76 children with troubled backgrounds. Twenty of them were picked for this year’s trip on Monday, based on their behavior at the home. “They get really anxious when a trip like this is coming up,” Miller says. “They count the days.”

Roy Roberts, director of the Watts Willowbrook Boys and Girls Club, has been bringing children to Kids’ Fishing Day every year since 1969.

He says many former members of the club are now avid anglers, thanks to the event.

“And the first thing they always ask me when I see them is, ‘Do you still go fishing?’ ”

McGriffin, Jenkins and Rodriguez are from the Boys and Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley.

Says Dan Felger, 64, a LARRC member since 1950 who has been to every event since, “Many of these kids have limited opportunities. It’s just nice to see their faces light up.”

And light up they do.

Nashid Ali, 10, from the Watts-Willowbrook group, has hooked a large and lively mackerel. He tucks in his lips and grimaces as his rod bends and the fish gyrates violently. He tucks the rod butt under his arm and reels as best he can. When he finally brings the fish over the rail he can hardly contain himself.

“That fish almost pulled me in the water ,” he says, rushing to get another anchovy from the bait tank.

Others are matching Ali fish for fish, grimace for grimace and smile for smile.

Others aren’t faring as well, reeling to no avail with drags so loose that the fish are gaining more line than they are, or trying to let line out after it has wrapped around the tip of their rods, letting it spin into hopeless tangles from their spools. The volunteers are trying to keep up.

McGriffin and her 9-year-old brother Patrick, after a slow start, are seeing who can catch more fish. Patrick is up, 3-2.

Jenkins is having a tough time. An hour has passed and he has caught only one, “a small one, a puny one,” he says, holding his hands about five inches apart. Rodriguez is still skunked.

But then, he and Jenkins have been busy elsewhere.

Encountered in the galley, Rodriguez, grasping a cheeseburger in both hands, is asked if he is getting enough to eat.

“I’ve only had one of each . . . well, now I’ve had one hot dog and two cheeseburgers,” he says, putting garnish on the burger. “But Dee (Dominique Jenkins) has already had four hot dogs and three cheeseburgers.”

Back on the deck of the Annie B, Shauna Blakely, 9, is fighting her first fish.

“It’s hard to roll up the string,” she says, finally bouncing a large green mackerel, smiling at her achievement.

Megan Grant, 9, is tugging on her first fish, too, ending more than an hour of frustration. Vaughn Dent, 9, lands his third mackerel and high-fives Matt Alpert of the LARRC for the third time.

Ben, from Pacific Lodge, has pulled in a keeper halibut that shows its teeth and flops at his feet after it is plopped onto the deck. Ben isn’t about to touch the angry fish.

On the rail outside the galley is 6-year-old Brian Lee Mahfet, the son of one of the volunteers. Mahfet is showing the stuff of a future volunteer, having already mastered the art of catch and release.

Plucking an anchovy from the bait tank and grasping the tiny fish in his tiny hand, Mahfet reaches up over the rail and says he is going to turn the anchovy loose.

“He has a friend under this water so I have to put him in the water,” Mahfet explains.

Asked if the friend has a name, Mahfet says it is Tommy. “He has lots of friends named Tommy and his name is Tommy.”

Mahfet then confesses that his self-given nickname is also Tommy.

Several hours have passed and the Billy V is back on the scene again, bringing another group of children and ready to take one back.

Patrice McGriffin, still trailing her brother in the fish count, doesn’t want to go.

“I want to stay here and do this some more,” she says, having forgotten all about Jaws.