Fishing Trip a Success All the Way to the Bank

When Hurricane Kenna spun eastward and slammed into the Mexican mainland, Andy Cates knew he would have clear motoring to Hurricane Bank, a high spot rising from an otherwise seemingly bottomless ocean.

His only real worry was sharks.

Located 1,000 miles south of Point Loma and more than 300 miles west of Mexico, the seamount is one of the more remote destinations on the charts of San Diego sportfishing captains. It takes four days just to get there.

“It’s only one spot in the middle of nowhere so it’s a real gamble,” said Cates, skipper of the Red Rooster III, which runs from Lee Palm Sportfishers. “You always have the weather to worry about. Then the fish have to be there and sharks have to not be there.”

For Cates and his 22 passengers, on a 14-day trip that ended Sunday, the gamble paid off. The weather was good, the sharks were conspicuously absent and the fish, in this case giant yellowfin tuna and highly prized wahoo, were there in numbers enough to make the first long-range trip of the season a notable success.

The passengers boated only 145 tuna and 135 wahoo, but the tuna were dream size, most weighing 100 pounds or more and seven topping 200 pounds.

Tim Farrell, a carpenter from Oceanside, brought home 650 pounds of fillets for the smoker and barbecue, and traded the rest at the landing for processed tuna.

“We each got 164 cans,” said Farrell, who took the trip with Chuck Forester, a friend from Montana. “I’ll be eating tuna salad for quite a while.”

Farrell and Forester were among those boating 200-pounders. Their fish, weighing 201 and 203 pounds, respectively, were caught on squid fished under a kite. The jackpot went to Joe Stickles of Tustin, whose tuna weighed 228 pounds.

If there was a downside, it was the arrival midway through the trip of a commercial purse-seine boat, which made a significant haul before moving on.

“We scratched for our fish after that,” Farrell said. “But they were all quality fish, weighing more than 100 pounds.”

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Cates is among a dozen or so long-range skippers embarking on an uncertain season. Midway through last season, the Mexican government banned fishing at the bountiful Revillagigedo Island chain.

An equally remote destination 160 miles east of Hurricane Bank, the Revillagigedos have long been the mainstay of the highly specialized fishing boats, which were designed to offer passenger comfort for weeks on end.

Vessels were built almost specifically to fish the Revillagigedos, which are within a biosphere reserve and were closed to fishing last year after a push by environmental groups.

Now, as the fleet’s representatives continue to argue that it poses no threat to the resident sea life at the islands and is interested only in catching migratory tuna and wahoo, the captains and crews are left with few alternatives.

“The interest beyond Hurricane Bank is basically Clipperton Island,” Cates said of the French-owned atoll off the coast of Central America. “But it’s the same gamble and it’s another 800 miles farther away.”

Some have added Clipperton to their schedules this season, while at the same time shortening some of their trips to eight or 10 days to catch mostly smaller tuna at the banks off southern Baja California.

The most creative altering of schedules, however, was done by Tim Ekstrom and Randy Toussaint, owners of the Royal Star.

Their boat, which books out of Fisherman’s Landing, is traveling to Panama in January and will stay through much of February. It has already sold out its three eight-day trips for 2003 and has added five for 2004.

“We’ve always felt [Revillagigedo Islands] were on thin ice and had our sights set on Panama for quite a while,” Toussaint said.

The Royal Star will fish the prolific Hannibal Bank but will also venture offshore to target tuna known to reach nearly 300 pounds.

“From what we hear, the offshore fishery there has never really been tapped,” Toussaint said.

As with some of the Revillagigedo Island trips, customers will fly down and fly back.

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Ten-day trips off Baja can be highly productive but the tuna usually run smaller. Three boats returned this week from the shorter excursions with fish averaging 60-90 pounds.

The top three fish aboard the Excel weighed 175, 162 and 131 pounds. A 107-pounder was caught aboard the Polaris Supreme; a 97-pounder was put on the Qualifier 105, and a 103-pounder was logged by the Apollo on a five-day excursion to Guadalupe Island.

Quitting Time

A change in the weather throughout the Eastern Sierra -- from cool and tolerable to white and wintry -- will effectively bring an end to the general trout season.

In Mono County, the season was extended by 15 days through Nov. 15 this year to provide a boost for businesses during the lull between summer and winter.

Business on recent weekends has been fairly brisk, and fishing has been good, but many concessionaires have pulled their boats and docks and stopped stocking their shelves.

“We’re going to stay open hopefully until the 15th, unless the snow around the lake gets really bad,” said Pam Schneider, manager at Gull Lake on the June Lake Loop. “We have only a minimal amount of boats available but we can always put more in [the water] if we get busy.”

She was more optimistic than most. John Frederickson, manager at nearby June Lake, pulled his fleet Wednesday afternoon while eyeing an ominous darkening of the sky.

“We’re closing down,” he said. “In fact, that’s the problem with this experiment. If we don’t get our equipment stored before there’s snow on the ground, it’ll be that much more difficult to move it around.”

Top catches on the loop this week included a six-pound brown trout by Greg Larson of San Pedro at Grant Lake; and a 4 1/2-pound brown landed by Josh Levasheff of Redondo Beach at Silver Lake.

Fishy Business

Among winners of last week’s Los Cabos Billfish Tournament at Cabo San Lucas, unless they get caught, were three gunmen who made away with more than $100,000 intended for the winning anglers.

The unmasked bandits reportedly ambushed organizers inside the office of the hotel association, which has run the tournament since its inception four years ago. Nobody was seriously hurt and the association made good on tournament payouts. Authorities are investigating.

Reuben Sanchez, the Los Cabos Hotel Assn. bookkeeper who was present during the robbery, did not respond to an interview request made through his office.

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For the record, the winning team, out of 51 entries, earned $289,925, thanks largely to a 323-pound blue marlin -- the tournament’s only billfish meeting the 300-pound minimum -- landed by Yuri Shida of Hidalgo, Texas, aboard the vessel Finish Line. A Newport Beach team aboard John Pentz’s Reel & Deal won $22,250 for releasing the most marlin -- five.

In all, the tournament paid out $400,000 in cash and prizes.

Blasting Off

Duck hunters could hardly wait to begin another season Saturday. In fact, some jumped the gun by pulling the trigger before the legal shooting time of 5:31 a.m.

“One guy starts shooting and everyone else figures, ‘Well, it must be time,’ and then they all start shooting,” said Jim Chakarun, manager of the Imperial Wildlife Area’s popular Wister Unit near Niland, Calif.

At Wister, wardens issued citations for early shooting, for not turning in permits and for shooting pintails, a species off-limits until Nov. 28. Otherwise, things went smoothly there and at most of the Southland’s top public areas.