Fishing’s Fall Classic : After a Slow Summer, Tuna Anglers Are Having a Ball This Autumn

There was no alarm, only the slowing of the boat and an announcement by captain J.J. Gerritsen.

“Come on, get up,” he said, his voice crackling over the loudspeaker. “We’ve found a kelp paddy and it seems like a good one. It’s loaded with fish.”

He might as well have announced that the boat was sinking.

His passengers scrambled out of their bunks and stumbled about in the dark, searching frantically for shoes and shirts.

Some bumped their heads. One stepped on a can opener. Another kicked something hard and requested that a . . . light be turned on.

All this because the Tracer had slid up alongside a small clump of kelp, floating about 70 miles south of the border in what seemed the middle of the ocean.

All this, it turns out, because such clumps of kelp have been providing cover for massive schools of voracious yellowfin tuna for several weeks, making this one of the more memorable autumn fishing seasons.

“This has been a killer, killer fall season,” said Gerritsen, who fishes out of Fisherman’s Landing. “I think we’ve had limits [five tuna per person] every day for the past month. We’ve gone a day or two in between with less than such, but it’s been pretty excellent fishing.”

*

Ron Dotson, a La Jolla marine biologist, was the first to reach the vessel’s lighted deck, the first to cast a sardine-baited hook and the first to watch his line go streaking down into the blackness.

He was alone in the stern, his rod bent to the sea, his eyes still sticky with sleep.

It was 6 a.m.

Rick Oefinger, skipper of the Marina del Rey-based Del Mar, on a busman’s holiday and hoping to catch his first yellowfin tuna, was next. Using a custom rod and a reel spooled with heavy line to get his fish in faster, he set the hook on a yellowfin and chased it up the port rail, grinning like a madman.

Then came the others: Dotson’s girlfriend, Ania Becker, on only her second tuna trip; Eddie Pacilio of Mission Hills, who seemed to be walking in his sleep; Philip Friedman, the charter master from 976-TUNA, muttering something about the O.J. verdict, and Betty Steward of Redondo Beach, still so foggy she had put on her expensive suede shoes instead of her old sneakers.

Sound asleep only a few moments earlier, they and the rest of the passengers suddenly found themselves in a battle with some of the strongest swimmers in the sea.

Yellowfin tuna, most in the 20- to 25-pound range, had them running up and down both rails.

Gerritsen, and deckhands Patrick Finucane and Mark Hanna, had their hands full, untangling lines and answering cries for the gaff.

Oefinger didn’t wait for the gaff, muscling the tuna out of the water and over the rail. Later, he swallowed the heart of his first fish, claiming to be following a longstanding tradition, that it would bring him good luck.

He didn’t need it. Gerritsen’s deck was littered with tuna.

Steward, feeling the wet, gyrating fish flopping up against her legs, finally realized she had the wrong shoes on.

“I meant to change before I came up here,” she said, looking at the mess at her feet.

Things had happened too fast, too early.

They had traveled through the night, listening to the noisy drone of diesel engines. They had slept in their clothes on strange bunks. Suddenly they found themselves practically fished out at only 7 o’clock on this clear, cool morning off the Baja California coast.

“I feel like I’ve been at home all day doing yard work,” said Pete Hoffman of Manhattan Beach, rubbing his shoulder.

Not that he was complaining. He had come to catch tuna, and he had experienced a phenomenal bite before the sun had even begun to inch over the horizon. Anyone who fishes for tuna regularly knows that such voyages can be long and fruitless.

There were plenty of “dry runs” earlier this season for San Diego’s huge overnight fleet, during a summer marked by strong westerly winds and rough seas--and only a smattering of tuna within range of the one-day boats.

Such hasn’t been the case this fall, a season marked by gentle offshore breezes and an influx of tuna well within range of the fleet and even into Southern California waters.

Business hasn’t been that great, though, because most people consider the Labor Day weekend the end of the tuna season. Gerritsen says people are only beginning to realize what they are missing.

“I think that in the last few years, October has been one of the best months of the year,” he said. “And no, most people don’t realize it, but more of them are starting to get accustomed to that.”

Of course there are no guarantees. Not every kelp paddy is as loaded as the one he had just visited.

“There are a lot of dry paddies too,” he said. “I’d say that every 10th paddy has fish on it like this. This one? It was holding probably 10-15 tons of fish.”

Fifteen tons?

Dotson, who works for the National Marine Fisheries Service, was asked what it is about kelp that attracts so many tuna.

He said nobody knows for sure. There are theories, the most obvious one being that they consider floating objects as possible sources of food. Smaller fish seek cover under kelp paddies, thus they are bound to attract larger members of the food chain.

“But there’s no way a 6-foot clump of kelp can hold enough bait fish to sustain 15 tons of tuna, so I can’t see that many fish gathering under the kelp to eye such a small amount of bait,” Dotson added.

Another theory is that tuna, which roam the open oceans of the world, merely consider floating objects and the shade they cast as gathering spots.

In any event, that they do gather beneath kelp and logs and anything else that floats, is a boon to both commercial and sport fisheries, because the fast-moving fish would be extremely difficult to locate otherwise. (They are also commonly located beneath pods of porpoises.)

Dotson said commercial purse seiners once worked a 6-foot log for days, netting 50-100 tons of yellowfin.

In the waters off Baja California, where the huge San Diego sportfishing fleet takes advantage of the fish migrating from Mexico and Central America, crews constantly scan the horizon for kelp that has torn loose from the bottom in coastal waters, because the first vessel to reach a paddy usually experiences the best run on the fish.

Competition is fierce, because it usually takes at least a day, and sometimes several days, before kelp paddies, once fished out, become productive again.

Gerritsen, 29, keeps track of the general location of kelp with his electronics. He says they can move as little as a mile and as far as 15 miles a day in the currents.

He said, and Dotson agreed, that they should continue to produce until cold water moves in from the north, sending the fish back into the subtropical and tropical waters from which they came.

That could be next week, or next month.

“We’ve had them stick around well into November,” Gerritsen said.

*

About 9:30 a.m., Gerritsen’s crew spotted another paddy, a small clump about 500 yards off the bow. Another sportfisher had also found it and was closing in fast from about 1,500 yards away.

Gerritsen got first crack at it. He pulled up alongside the amber mass and said it seemed to be as “loaded” as the previous paddy.

His passengers flung their sardines into the sea, and soon they were reliving the fury they had experienced only a few hours ago.

Only this time they were better prepared.

Oefinger now knew what it was like to catch a yellowfin. Pacilio’s eyes were finally open. Hoffman’s arms no longer ached, for the time being, anyway.

And Steward had her fishing shoes on.