A Day in Sun for Some Special Anglers

Hilda Dolphin is beaming after getting her hooks into a couple of plump rainbow trout, and rightly so.

Dolphin is elderly, confined to a wheelchair and requires round-the-clock nursing care, so the opportunity to enjoy a day of fishing, and to celebrate by gobbling down a hot dog, doesn’t come around too often.

“This is just lovely, I got two,” she says with a broad smile, raising her catch for all to see. “I can’t wait until Thursday. That’s when we have a cooking class and we’re going to have these fish for dinner.”

Nearby, Sammy Gonzales is reeling in a feisty rainbow of his own, getting some help but doing as nicely as can be expected. Gonzales, 13, was born a quadriplegic, with cerebral palsy and various other disabilities.

But this is his day in the sun, and he seems to be making the most of it.

He lacks the ability to say as much, but you can tell by his smile. And seeing this young man smile is all the proof anyone needs to know that this is a special day.

It’s the annual Cartwright-Hays Fishing Event for Persons With Disabilities, held on the grounds of the Kern River Fish Hatchery, alongside the Upper Kern on the outskirts of Kernville, which is located about an hour north of Bakersfield at the southern edge of the Sequoia National Forest.

The driving force behind the event, which is free and usually attracts more than 200 people, is a group of volunteers called Friends of the Hatchery.

On this day, their friendship extends well beyond a mere facility. It reaches out to the developmentally disabled, to those with poor vision, to those dependant on walkers and wheelchairs, and to those dependant on other people to help them make it from day to day.

“What we like about this event is that it allows the whole family to do what a typical family does,” says Toni Gonzales, Sammy’s mother and executive director of Families Caring for Families in Lancaster. “It gives us a chance to do something together and that’s really nice.”

It also gives volunteers such as Jeff Hale and his wife, Cookie, who came all the way from Covina, a chance to help make life more enjoyable for those who are less fortunate.

“This makes them so happy, which gives us a real warm feeling inside,” says Hale, while passing out samples of smoked albacore and salmon. “We look forward to this event every year.”

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Doing things together is pretty much a way of life for Friends of the Hatchery. It has been since the group of about 70 volunteers, mostly from Kernville and nearby communities, was born of necessity in 1994, to fight the impending closure of a facility that had been a local landmark since opening in 1928.

The California Department of Fish and Game, having already downgraded the hatchery to a fish-planting base, made plans to pull out altogether as a means of cutting costs. But community opposition caused the DFG to experience a change of heart.

As a result, the Kern River Fish Hatchery was allowed to remain open, as a planting base, with only one year-round employee, manager Greg Kollenborn, who is getting by quite well with a little help from his Friends.

Kollenborn, who lives on the grounds with his wife and two young daughters, spends his work days traveling up and down river planting trout he receives weekly from the San Joaquin Hatchery north of Fresno. He gets 120,000 pounds of rainbow trout a year, which he uses to help ensure the angling success of tourists and locals.

Kollenborn takes pride in his work. His planting schedule is rigorous, taking him along vast stretches of the Upper and Lower Kern, down the canyon to Bakersfield’s Lake Ming and Hart Park Lake, and into the high country to the Tule River.

His methods are unique in that he doesn’t merely pull his truck to the same general location at about the same time every week, then dump his load of fish and return to the hatchery. Instead, he keeps local fishermen guessing by stopping at different locations at different times, often hiking to remote areas to empty a bucket of fish here, another there.

That way, he says, fishermen walking the river never know when they might find a pool full of fish.

Sometimes Kollenborn takes volunteers from the youth detention facility across the street on his fish-planting forays. It enables them to do something positive for the community, he says, while experiencing the wonders of nature. Other times, he takes a Friend.

One of them is Mike Cunningham, president of the volunteer group.

“We’ve got a year-round fishery up here and a lot of people don’t know that,” Cunningham says. “I’ve even caught some nice trout when it was snowing.”

Thanks to the Friends, Kollenborn says, the hatchery always has a neatly mowed lawn and brand new picnic tables. It has volunteer docents who enable the gates to remain open Friday through Monday, who give tours of funky little wildlife and fishing museums featuring donated stuffed animals and antique fishing gear.

“Basically, my main job is covered by the department,” Kollenborn explains. “They send the fish and fund the growth of the fish, and pay my salary relating to this catchable trout program. But when it comes to keeping the hatchery looking good and keeping the public aware of what we’re doing and keeping the gates open, [the Friends] are instrumental.”

Friends of the Hatchery, which is funded by memberships and donations, hopes to accomplish more in years to come.

Projects on the horizon include the construction of a nature trail in the wilderness between the hatchery and the river, and the creation of a large pond to fill with fish for events such as the one for the disabled.

That would give the guests a more natural and aesthetic setting than the concrete raceways in which they now must cast their lines.

Not that any of them mind.

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Supervising their “extended families” from a picnic table on the lawn are Calvin Sheppard and Gary Creott. They’ve brought a group from Mercie’s Day Program and Kern Adult Program in Bakersfield.

Their disabilities range from autism to Downs Syndrome. All enjoy an occasional break from their highly structured lives.

“This event is special to a lot of them simply because it’s on a Saturday,” says Creott, a behavior consultant for both facilities, who also has a private practice specializing in mental health issues. “This offers, in addition to what is offered at the centers, a meaningful socialization experience and it gets them out of the community and lets them enjoy what we call a natural experience.”

Sheppard adds that his group knew of the fishing trip three weeks beforehand. One of the more aggressive individuals was told he could go if he behaved, “and he had a clean slate” right up to the morning of the trip.

During their daily programs at the centers, the wakeup call comes at 5:30 a.m. and the clients rise reluctantly. On the day of the fishing trip, many of them got up on their own--at 4:30 a.m.

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It’s not long thereafter, and Eric Luque, 25, has gotten his hooks into a particularly large rainbow trout. New at this sort of thing, he rears back a bit too hard and sends his fish flying out of the water. In flight, the fish shakes loose and splashes back into the raceway.

Luque isn’t deterred. He drops in another bait and promptly hooks, and reels in, his first fish. Beside himself with joy, he turns and tells a nearby observer, “This is my first time doing this, but it’s fun and I want to come back. I want to start fishing now.”

News and Notes

* Storm watchers: Already reeling from a lack of tourists, southern Baja California resort and fleet operators on Thursday were dealing with another problem called Hurricane Juliette.

On Thursday at 2 p.m., the storm was about 100 miles south-southwest of Cabo San Lucas, moving northwesterly and delivering to the resort city torrents of rain and powerful waves.

Juliette has claimed at least one life, that of a Colorado surfer who drowned Wednesday while attempting to ride 10-foot storm surf off Land’s End. The waves were much bigger Thursday, said Paul Siliceo, manager of Picante Sportfishing.

Siliceo said the port had been closed since Wednesday and probably will not reopen until Saturday at the earliest. He confirmed reports that several rows of docks were destroyed.

About 400 of the area’s poorest residents were forced to evacuate as flooding threatened to destroy their makeshift homes of cardboard and wood.

Juliette, with wind gusts to 90 mph, was expected to skirt Cabo San Lucas early today, before moving offshore and to the west.

* Border line: Tourists returning by automobile from Baja into the United States report that the wait at INS border checkpoints is back to normal. On Thursday at 1 p.m., the approximate wait at San Ysidro was 30 minutes, and at Otay-Mesa only 18 minutes, according to https://www.fronteratij.com/garitas.

* Tour-stopper: The prestigious Wal-Mart FLW Tour bass-fishing championship, originally planned for Sept. 12-15 in New York, has not been rescheduled. Operation Bass, which runs the tour, said the $450,000 purse will be divided among the 100 anglers who were to have competed.

* Cleared for takeoff: The Torrey Pines Gliderport in La Jolla on Tuesday was given the go-ahead to resume flights of paragliders and hang-gliders, as long as the vessels remain at 500 feet or lower (pilots had previously enjoyed soaring to heights of 2,000 feet or more). The park, which offers lessons to the public, had been closed by the FAA since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

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Fish Report D14