A Catch-22, Indeed : Anglers Are Finding the Bonito Fishing Superb in King Harbor, but to Their Dismay, So Are the Voracious Sea Lions

It was a valiant fight put up by the little bonito, but after several long runs it could fight no more and was brought up alongside the skiff.

The angler, fishing solely for sport, carefully removed the hook, then reached down to help the tuckered fish on its way.

That’s when the torpedo struck.

A massive sea lion came shooting out from beneath the boat, snatching the bonito from the angler’s fingertips.

The angler yanked his arm from the water, shouting something not fit for print, checking his hand for fingers.

Could this bizarre occurrence have been a fluke?

The fisherman cast again. In an instant he was hooked up again, this time to a slightly larger fish that sped across the surface as if it were possessed.

A moment later it was possessed, by the same marauding sea lion that had stolen the other fish.

This time the huge mammal came crashing out of the water in a dramatic display of power, thrashing on the surface until finally it had shaken the lure from the mouth of the doomed bonito.

The angler reeled in and sat down, shaking his head.

The sea lion, the fish still in its mouth, seemed to be jumping for joy. Then it popped its head out of the water and shot the angler a glance, as if to say “Thanks for the snack.”

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And so it goes these days for anglers in busy little King Harbor in Redondo Beach. Bonito are flooding into the marina, attracting anglers by the hundreds.

Some are having the times of their lives, fighting the feisty little tuna-like fish. Others aren’t faring as well, losing their catches to the “dogs,” a not-so-affectionate term applied to the free-loading sea lions.

“We used to come here to catch bonito, and we would catch plenty of bonito,” said a frustrated John Carbajo of South Gate, who had only one bonito to his credit and had lost two others to the sea lions.

King Harbor presents an interesting situation. Anglers there enjoy probably the most consistent and reliable bonito fishery in Southern California, thanks largely to the Edison hydro-electric power plant on Hermosa Avenue across the street.

Two outflows from the facility, located inside the marina, provide a steady supply of warm water, so that even in winter months, it is five to 10 degrees warmer than the ocean, and attractive to the fish.

Then there is the Redondo Canyon, a large deep-water valley that begins almost immediately outside the entrance to the harbor.

“Right outside the mouth it drops off over 2,000 feet,” said Rocky Post, owner of a marine fuel service and skiff-rental operation. “Right at the harbor mouth you have a lot of upwelling, bringing nutrients into the harbor.

“The bonito are offshore, and just a little warm water in the harbor is not going to make them detour and come in this direction. But they see that canyon and follow that to the harbor. Then they like the warm water and stay.”

But with all the fish that follow the canyon to the harbor, come the sea lions, which quickly learn that a fish attached to an angler’s line is a lot easier to catch than one that is not.

And once they discover the source of the fish--in most cases a particular boat--they tend to follow that source all day.

“They marry you,” said Bennett Mintz, an official with the Federation of Fly Fishers and a regular at King Harbor.

Some marriage.

In one highly publicized and particularly messy divorce case, an angler in 1989 hid a small bomb in a sardine and fed it to a sea lion known as Bobo.

Bobo was blown up and the demolition expert, a former employee at the bait receiver inside the harbor, was sent to jail.

Since then, the wrangling sides seem to be getting along better, the sea lions being a nuisance some days, and letting the anglers alone others.

“This year is not as bad as last year,” Post said. “Last summer it got real bad. We had these huge big males, bulls or whatever they’re called, and then a bunch of females and little babies . . . and it seemed like whenever one of my skiff guys would get hooked up with a bonito and get it within arm’s length, the sea lion, which would be hanging around underneath the boat, would come up and just take everything but the head. We had guys who hooked up 20 times come back here and say they hadn’t landed one fish; all they got was 20 heads.”

Scott Tuttle, Post’s manager, said the best way to avoid the sea lions is to keep moving, staying away from the bait receiver, which seems to attract them.

“Customers have come to learn how to deal with them,” he said. “You have to fish around them. If the sea lions are bothering you, move. You might also bring in the fish a little more quickly than you normally would. Get the fish to the boat before the sea lion gets it.”

Anglers seem to have caught on. Some of Post’s customers have had 100-fish days. It’s not uncommon to catch 20 or 30.

So you feed a sea lion or two. If fishermen are discouraged, it doesn’t show. Reservations for skiffs have been pouring in and private boaters have been getting into the act as well.

“This past Labor Day weekend, I came to harbor wall at 1 p.m. and I counted 65 boats fishing in the harbor,” Tuttle said.

All targeting bonito, a sleek and slender relative of the tuna, but known more for its speed and strength than for the taste of its flesh.

Anglers using ultra-light spinning gear find the fish will attack almost anything, and run like crazy when it feels the sting of the hook.

Fly-rodders find the calm water in King Harbor an ideal place to bone up on their casting and find that “boneheads,” angler slang for bonito, provide a more than formidable challenge on their delicate gear.

“People who have only caught trout, or traditional fly-caught fish, and they hook up to a bonito for the first time, they simply can’t handle it,” Mintz said. “They make these long runs. It’s really exciting.”

Said Tuttle, “It’s in the tuna class and tuna are the strongest fighting fish in the ocean. Anything in the tuna family is going to fight. People come in and soon realize that a four-pound bonito is equivalent to a 20-pound trout, as far as bending the rod goes. Everybody is surprised when they first catch a bonito.”

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True enough, but bonito aren’t the only game fish in King Harbor.

Mackerel thrive in the nutrient-rich water and are sometimes so prevalent that they, like the sea lions, are considered pests. Barracuda, sand bass, spotted bay bass and halibut are also caught in the marina.

But the harbor attracts more exotic species of fish as well. Yellowtail, white sea bass and even skipjack tuna have been known to make appearances.

Not that many are caught, what with all the structure in the marina. Two winters ago, a school of yellowtail swam in and stayed for days, causing a lot of chaos.

“These were 20-, 25-pound yellowtail,” Post said. “These guys would hook ‘em, but then get sawed off by all the boat pilings.

“We knew they had to pass the fuel dock and come by here to get back to ocean and thought, ‘What the heck?’ We were throwing live squid out there and, boom! I got hooked up and two, three minutes later I had a big beautiful fish.”

In August of 1992, a young swordfish, a species that normally stays well offshore, wandered in and stayed nearly a week in a far corner of the marina, attracting curious onlookers whenever it surfaced.

Tuttle videotaped the swordfish from underwater for the local media and soon tourists were flocking to the harbor to rally behind the billfish, which Tuttle said appeared to be injured.

“The tape made four news channels, The Times and [the Daily] Breeze,” Tuttle said.

The four-foot swordfish, which could easily be seen beneath the boats in their slips, suddenly disappeared one day, and popular opinion was that it had made its way not back to the sea but to someone’s dinner table.

One thing is certain. The sea lions didn’t get it.