Anglers Spring for Halibut Catch

Don Ashley may not be the most profound person on the waterfront, but as the longtime owner of Long Beach Sportfishing he usually knows what he is talking about, no matter how it comes out.

Asked Thursday to assess the local fishing situation, he answered, “It’s been a pretty good early spring, considering it’s still winter.”

What he means, of course, is that it feels like spring, no matter what the calendar says. Days are getting longer, milder and, for those wetting their lines from the Santa Monica Bay to San Clemente Island, a whole lot wilder.

In the bay, halibut have arrived for the spawning season in numbers not seen in five or six years. This has significantly livened up things on the decks of bay-based party boats because, well, other than the occasional gray whale passing by, not much else has been happening.

“We did have a good run on the sculpin and sand bass,” said Rick Oefinger, 40, owner-operator of the Del Mar and the bigger, faster New Del Mar, both of which run out of Del Rey Sportfishing.

Oefinger acknowledged, however, that there is nothing like a good run of halibut to get people out on his boats.

“The great thing about halibut is that almost anyone can catch one,” he said. “The guy with a rented rod from Illinois has about the same chance as the guy who has lived and fished here for 30 years because, in most cases, it’s not too much of a finesse fish. It doesn’t require that touch you need like, say, flipping a lure into the kelp for calico bass. You basically just drop a bait to the bottom and hope for the best.”

The best Oefinger has seen this season was a 38-pounder, but the average halibut has been in the 10- to 12-pound range, with a few fish in the 20-pound class being landed daily.

And now that the halibut are here, it is hoped that they will stay awhile, what with derby time just around the corner.

The Southland’s biggest and most popular saltwater tournament is the Santa Monica Bay Halibut Derby scheduled April 12-13. Last year, nearly 1,600 anglers competed in the two-day event held between Point Dume and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Despite rain and wind, they bagged nearly 300 legal-sized halibut--the largest being a 36.3-pounder--and tagged and released a few hundred more.

During a recent “press trip” promoting this year’s event, aboard the Happy Man out of In-Seine Sportfishing in Marina del Rey, writers posing as fishermen--and vice versa--spent five hours catching 59 halibut, 48 of which fell short of the 22-inch limit.

A much bigger halibut might have been hooked, and it may still be dragging a $500 rod and reel around the bottom of the bay. Derby volunteer Leonard Ikeda learned the hard way that one should never leave a rod unattended at the rail with the reel in gear.

Derby chairman John Bourget, capitalizing on the popularity of these hard-flapping flatfish--with both eyes on one side of their heads, they spend most of their lives half-buried in the sand, looking up for something to eat--recently spearheaded the publication of a cookbook entitled “Just for the Halibut,” featuring everything from banana leaf-wrapped halibut to halibut enchiladas to halibut head soup.

“There are 314 ways to cook halibut,” Bourget said, adding that proceeds from the book, as well as the derby, help support a youth fishing program and a halibut tagging effort to study the little-known migration patterns of California halibut.

Bourget, 59, who set a line-class world record last year by pulling up from the depths a 50-pound halibut on 16-pound test, said he has tried only a few of the recipes.

“But I have one gentleman that calls me . . . he said he was on his 22nd one,” Bourget said. “And he said he hasn’t found one yet that hasn’t satisfied his buds.”

For details on the Santa Monica Bay Halibut Derby, call (310) 450-5131. Books cost $13 and orders are being accepted at Santa Monica Bay Halibut Derby, 2117 Ashland Ave., Santa Monica, 90405. For information on the Marina Del Rey Halibut Derby May 3-4, call (310) 822-7090.

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Beyond the bay, at San Clemente and Santa Catalina islands, the early signs of spring Ashley spoke of have to do with the zinging of line from fishing reels.

Actually, they have to do with the forces of nature at play, which is making the reels scream.

Squid have flooded into island waters, as they usually do in late March or April, and as every angler knows, where the squid go, there are voracious predators eager to fill up on them.

Most notorious among these are two of the Southland’s most powerful and delectable game fish, white sea bass and yellowtail. The yellowtail bite began last Friday, when fishermen on boats at San Clemente were able to deck 20-50 fish weighing 10-20 pounds.

The next few days produced little action at San Clemente, but on Tuesday a large school of squid was found at Catalina and fishermen using squid as bait were rewarded with stout pulls and the subsequent trips up and down the rail.

The Phantom, out of Long Beach with 12 people aboard, returned Tuesday night with 36 sea bass weighing 11-40 pounds. The fishermen could have landed much more, Ashley said, but the limit is three per person, and that will be reduced to one on Saturday, the reasoning being is that these fish become particularly vulnerable in the spring.

The reduction is not expected to hurt business, though, because as Ashley said, landing one huge sea bass is still better than pulling up listless bottom-dwelling rockfish, which is what anglers have been doing all winter.

“The response to this bite is huge,” he said Thursday. “Like tonight, the El Dorado is running with a lot of people and, well . . . the phones are ringing off the hook in other words.”

SALMON COUNTDOWN

Anticipation for Saturday’s recreational opener on Chinook, or king salmon, couldn’t be higher, mostly because anglers in the Ventura-Santa Barbara area are already fairly certain this will be a productive season.

“People have already been out there, trying to catch them,” said Capt. David Bacon of WaveWalker charters in Santa Barbara. “Yeah, maybe they are jumping the gun a bit. They say they’re trolling for white sea bass and thresher sharks, and I say, ‘With silver flashers?’ ”

Flashers are used by many during the salmon season but even those without flashers have been hooking salmon, as close as a mile from shore.

Whether this will rival the season two years ago--the best on record--remains to be seen. But even if it comes close, landing operators and charter-boat owners figure to be in the pink for the next few months.

“The Santa Barbara Channel is about as far down as you’ll find salmon in appreciable numbers,” said Bacon, 45. “So that means big excitement. There are not many more fish around here that are more impressive than a big chrome salmon.”

MARCH MARLIN MADNESS

After two months of cold, green water and little in the way of billfish other than the occasional swordfish, the ocean off Cabo San Lucas has turned a sparkling blue again and the striped marlin have returned.

“The hot spot now is the lighthouse canyon on the Pacific side,” Jeff Klassen of Los Cabos Fishing Center said Wednesday via e-mail. “My captain, Juan, on Mako I, has six days in a row with billfish, including three days of two fish and yesterday he had five marlin. I had one boat out Sunday that had eight.”

AROUND THE SOUTHLAND

The Fred Hall Western Fishing Tackle and Boat Show, which was in Long Beach two weeks ago, is in progress through Sunday at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Cost is $8 for adults, free for children under 12.

The “Floating Fiesta,” an all-day whale-watching trip sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society, is scheduled Saturday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. aboard the Monte Carlo out of 22nd St. Landing in San Pedro. Cost is $35 for ACS members, $40 for nonmembers. Details: (310) 437-4376.

The Jeep Cherokee Wildlife Challenge, the first of a national series of recreational sporting clays events, will be held Saturday from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. at Pachmayer International Shooting Sports Park in South El Monte. Details: (800) 211-6326.