Surfers Learn to Catch Waves, Then Catch Fish

Other surfers often snicker when Mike West paddles his board out into the lineup at Trestles or San Onofre wearing a fanny pack and toting a rod and reel.

But their laughs turn to amazement when they see West’s rod bending in half and his surfboard spinning as he reels in a 40-pound halibut, as he did recently at San Onofre State Beach.

“I usually get a shout, a yahoooo, or something like that,” said West, 45, of San Clemente, a veteran surfer and former lifeguard. “They think you’re kind of nuts at first, but the halibut changes their minds.”

West is one of a small but growing cadre of fishermen who use surfboards or kayaks as vehicles to get them into a prime but potentially dangerous halibut gathering and feeding area: the churning surf zone.

Landing a fish is a challenge in a boat, but it takes an even more serious effort when wrestling with a combative halibut while balancing on a surfboard amid the breakers.

“These surfers, they’ll do anything,” said Joan Burson, for 22 years the owner of The Jig Stop, a popular bait and tackle shop on Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point. “Most of the guys are good fishermen before they try something like this. But it seems to be getting more popular.”

State fish and game officials say the California halibut, a predator, likes to gather beneath the breakers to feed, particularly when the grunion are running. So that’s where to find them, West said.

“The bass are all right, but the halibut, that’s the one. That’s the table fish,” he said. “About 70% of its body weight is fillet.”

The California halibut, which frequents the Southern California waters, is flat, has a green or sandy colored body and can get as large as 70 pounds, according to Steve Wertz, a marine biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game. Legal size for catching is 22 inches wide, and West uses the width of his surfboard as a gauge.

Pulling in a fish that size is not for amateurs. Expertise at both surfing and fishing is essential to avoid trouble.

“It’s really tricky because you don’t have any traction,” said West, whose father-in-law, Con Colburn, was an early California surfer who originated Con Surfboards in Santa Monica. “When I caught that 40-pound fish, it spun me around in a circle on my board. You have to have it hooked really well . . . and then it’s a balancing act.”

At the same time, surfers must negotiate the breaking waves, which can knock them from the surfboard if caught off guard, West said. For those lucky enough to land a fish, then there’s the challenge of getting back to shore with one hand holding the fish and another paddling, West said.

“You have to wait between sets [of waves]. It’s a matter of good timing,” West said.

Despite its reputation as a powerful predator with trademark sharp, lethal teeth, the California halibut has a very light “trout-like bite” on the bait that is easy to mistake, West said. Once it gets ahold of the bait, it will also swim toward the angler, so there is no noticeable pull on the line, he said.

Burson said most of the halibut anglers who shop in her store buy “plastics” for bait, the light wiggly lures that cost anywhere from 30 cents to $2 and are equipped with glitter for an underwater glow that resembles fish scales. They are weighted with “lead heads” that keep the plastics near the bottom where the halibut gather.

“You don’t want to be worrying about hooks and sinkers on a surfboard. You don’t want to be carrying a lot of things with you,” Burson said.

The favored rods for this kind of fishing are lightweight for the sensitivity necessary to notice the halibut’s light bite. West uses 10-pound line, considered lightweight for saltwater fishing but strong enough that the halibut’s powerful teeth can’t easily cut through it.

Those teeth also make hauling the fish out of the water a difficult proposition, West said. Once he gets the fish to the water line, he grabs it by the gills to pull it on his surfboard, he said.

“You don’t want to be putting your hands anywhere near its mouth,” West said.