Long-Range Pioneer Poole Passes the Test of Time at 78

The great thing about being in the great outdoors is, it tends to make people feel younger. Or it can kill them.

“Those bluefin just about killed me,” said the venerable Bill Poole, who at 78 proved last week that he still can handle a rod and reel with the best of them.

Poole, an avid sportsman, is one of only a few surviving pioneers of long-range fishing, having brought numerous luxury sportfishers to the San Diego waterfront over the years.

His latest treasure is the Excel, at 124 feet the largest and arguably the most luxurious commercial party boat in the world. Poole goes on three or four trips a year, but mostly to “check out the operation” and rarely to fish.

Last week was an exception. “When you get to be my age, you like to test yourself once in a while and see if you can still do it,” he said. “It’s like when you go sheep hunting. You say, ‘Am I going to make it to the top of that mountain or not?’ ”

The Excel returned from its five-day voyage last Saturday with a mountain of tuna--15-fish limits for 18 passengers. Included in the haul were not only bluefin but albacore, yellowfin, skipjack and bigeye tuna, and some yellowtail and dorado.

The summer of 2000 has since officially begun and things are sizzling off the Baja and Southland coasts. . . .

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To some, particularly sashimi lovers, bluefin tuna is more highly prized than albacore. These people might consider booking a trip aboard the Legend, an overnight vessel out of Seaforth Sportfishing in San Diego.

Capt. Shawn Trowbridge, fishing an area 60-70 miles southwest of Point Loma, has logged impressive bluefin counts every day for the last week, and on Wednesday his group plopped 58 of the fatty tuna on the deck.

Trowbridge was at sea again Thursday, but Seaforth manager John Yamate said of the skipper, “He has either been very fortunate or extremely good.”

The bluefin have been averaging 20 to 30 pounds, with a few topping 60. Mixed in are schools of albacore averaging 15-25 pounds.

“The meat is still down below a little farther,” Yamate said of the smorgasbord being targeted at 200-plus miles by the multiday boats. “And the bluefin are mostly still in Mexico, but there are a lot of albacore making their way into the U.S.”

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It’s shaping up to be a record yellowtail season--sort of. Earlier this month, Linda Hicks of Norwalk, while aboard the Excel, boated a 17-pound yellowtail with eight-pound line, which will probably qualify her for a line-class world record.

It took two hours to land the fish at Alijos Rocks off Baja. The existing women’s record is a 16-pound 6-ounce yellowtail caught last year off San Clemente Island.

North of the border at Santa Barbara Island, Kwang Nam Lee of Hawthorne last Sunday landed a 63-pound 1-ounce yellowtail aboard a private boat. He’s submitting his catch, made after a one-hour battle, as a 30-pound line-class record. During the fight, two others on the boat reeled in four white sea bass.

ZULU SURF

Northern California has Maverick’s, Oahu’s North Shore has Waimea Bay and South Africa has . . . Dungeons.

The inaugural Red Bull Big Wave Africa contest was held recently at the remote extreme surf break, where the waves reached heights of 20 feet from the backs and more than 30 from peak to trough.

The winner was South African national champion Sean Holmes, whose triumph was based on a perfect 10-point ride in the final, “when he dropped down the face of one of the biggest waves, executed a bottom turn and then emerged out of a huge tube,” an event news release said.

Holmes won nearly $4,500, a Sector wristwatch, a magnum of Champagne and an authentic Zulu shield and spears, “which epitomized the courage and commitment required to take on the ocean at the height of its power.”

The lone Californian was Maverick’s regular Grant Washburn of San Francisco.

In a report filed to the Internet site https://www/quokka.com, Washburn, who won a prize for making the largest wave, commented on a crusher he failed to negotiate:

“It shifted cruelly as I made my attempt, and tossed me into oblivion. I was tumbled over the reef for an eternity and surfaced 200 yards inside, with my jersey tied around my face. I didn’t see much of the next heat, as I was making my way back to the boat, where I let a few gallons of the Atlantic pour from my sinuses.”

MOTOR CITY MADNESS

The July issue of Field & Stream offers a well-written profile of Ted Nugent, a 1970s rock star known for his wild stage shows and ripping guitar riffs. The “Motor City Madman,” as he was called, is now better known as a fiercely outspoken advocate of hunting and hunters’ rights.

The Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America is 30,000 strong. It sponsors camps for kids and a bowhunting school. It publishes Adventure Outdoors magazine and Nugent hosts two Detroit radio talk shows and appears on many others.

His audiences, if nothing else, usually are entertained. In the Field & Stream article, a friend of Nugent’s recalled the time Nugent was asked by a caller, “Why do you hunt? How can you kill all those beautiful animals?”

Nugent responded by giving her “an eloquent explanation of his role as predator, the noble and historic relationship between man and animals, how he fed his family with wild game--just an intelligent, passionate description of the sport.”

But, Nugent being Nugent, he went on to tell the woman, “And you know, lady, if you’d get off your fat . . . and get into the woods, you’d know what I’m talking about.”

That’s Nugent’s way of saying he wants more women involved in the sport. He also wants children, as he so, uh, tactfully explains:

“You wanna know where we really blew it with kids? We let skateboarders coin the term extreme! You want extreme? I give you a 400-[score Boone and Crockett] elk at 20 feet, after you’ve had to wallow through his estrous-stench city on a stalk.

“This industry has avoided me because I’m too intense, and they don’t know how to interpret intense, which means they don’t know how to interpret extreme, which means they don’t know how to get that young boy’s attention. Let’s get crackin’ here. Let’s let bygones be bygones and roll up our sleeves in a unified effort to use the resources available, and let’s throw out a treble hook and start snaggin’ the youth of America!”

So, he’s a fisherman as well as a hunter.

QUICK CASTS

* Whale of an opportunity: The Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society has a public trip scheduled Saturday aboard the Condor in Santa Barbara. Chapter president Bernardo Alps went on a scouting trip Tuesday and said the charter encountered two species of baleen whales, humpbacks and blues; four species of dolphins, three species of pinnipeds, four species of fish and 22 species of birds. Highlights were a breaching humpback and lunge-feeding blue. Details: (310) 519-8963.

* No arguing allowed: A couples-only overnight fishing trip is being offered June 23-24 by the group Reel Women Connect and Long Beach Sportfishing. The trip, on the Eldorado, is an attempt to get families involved in the sport. Cost is $275 a couple and includes breakfast, lunch, jackpot and giveaways. Details: (714) 846-9492.

* Let the Games begin: Sydney has the Olympic Games. Hood River, Ore., has the Gorge Games. The 2000 Subaru Gorge Games, featuring more than 2,000 pro and amateur athletes with specialties ranging from mountain biking to trail running to kiteboarding, will be held July 8-15 in the Columbia River Gorge. The “weeklong celebration of outdoor sports” will be televised by NBC Sept. 3 and 10 at 1 p.m.

* Let the Beach Games begin: The Panasonic ShockWave Beach Games, with the U.S. Open of Surfing as its centerpiece, is July 24-30 at Huntington Beach Pier. Skateboarding, bicycle motocross, freestyle motocross, wakeboarding and in-line skating also will be featured. The festival will be preceded by the men’s and women’s Bluetorch Pro--a World Championship Tour surfing competition, July 19-23.

* Fine friends of the feathered: Ducks Unlimited held its annual convention this month in, of all places, Honolulu, and the conservation group announced this week that California raised more money this year than any other state, $16,218,111. California won similar praise last year after raising more than

$14 million.

* Some friends: Drawing applications for a series of special fall pheasant hunts are available from the Department of Fish and Game. More than 4,000 farm-raised Chinese ring-necked pheasants will be purchased and released for hunts at rural Southland locations. The limit will be two birds per hunter. Names of 2,000 applicants will be drawn for 45 family hunts, 12 junior hunts and four women’s hunts. Applications must be received no later than Sept. 1 and can be obtained by calling (562) 590-5100.

WINDING UP

Tourists visiting Buena Vista Beach Resort in southern Baja California earlier this month probably didn’t care too much about the fishing. The real beauties were at the hotel, site of “Senorita Mexico,” a preliminary to the Miss World 2000 pageant.

Thirty-two contestants from 32 Mexican states were vying to win the first phase of the contest--other phases will be held at other resorts--for the traditional gown that best represented their respective states.

The winner, as one might suspect, was Miss Baja California Sur, who wore a gown covered with tiny crystal balls that “when she walked represented the color and sound of the ocean,” hotel spokesman Axel Valdez said in his weekly fishing report.

Coordinating such an event--the overall winner gets to represent Mexico in the Miss World pageant--was difficult, Valdez said, “But the other hotel guests seemed to enjoy it.”