Slater Looks for Joyous Return to Tour

Hurricane Hernan came through spectacularly, delivering large rolling swells that peeled beautifully over a point break as legendary as some of the surfers who have paddled out over the years at Lower Trestles in San Clemente.

Some of those legends were on hand Thursday, as part of the traveling band of superstars known as the Assn. of Surfing Professionals World Championship Tour. But none was as notable as Kelly Slater, the sport’s most successful athlete, with an unprecedented six world titles.

Slater helped kick off the Boost Mobile Pro, the sixth of 12 tour events this year and the only one being held on the U.S. mainland, by drawing the first of 16 opening-round heats.

And while he showed immediately that he still has the brilliant moves that made him such a dominating champion, afterward he revealed a side not seen during his early years on the tour.

The result didn’t seem as important to him.

Slater took a commanding lead in his heat against Paul Canning of South Africa and Luke Egan of Australia, scoring 7.75 out of a possible 10 with his stylish, sweeping turns on the face of a long right-breaking wave; then posting an 8.5 with a series of backside off-the-lips that drew applause from the 200 spectators lined on the pebbly beach.

But Egan edged Slater in the final minute, catching a large right-breaking wave and snapping off a series of off-the-lips and cutbacks that impressed both the crowd and the judges. They gave him a 9.25 and that, added to his next highest wave, a 7.25, gave him the heat.

The triumph propelled Egan to the third round, while Slater and Canning must compete in today’s second-round elimination heats.

“When he took off I just started laughing because I knew it was a good wave,” said Slater, who is from Cocoa Beach, Fla. “But that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

That’s the way it has gone all season for Slater, 30, who is back on tour after a three-year hiatus, and whose best finish through five events is ninth.

When he burst onto the scene 10 years ago, he became the youngest to win a world championship at 20. He finished third the following year, in 1993, then ran off a remarkable string of five consecutive championships.

But that was a different Slater, the one with a steely glare and the drive and determination of a great athlete at the top of his game. His peers know it. “Once you lose that burning desire it’s hard to get it back,” says Pat O’Connell, 30, a 10-year tour veteran from Laguna Beach and the winner of his heat Thursday.

And even Slater acknowledges it. “It doesn’t matter as much as it did when I was trying to get all the accolades, back when I was a kid,” he says. “Before, contests meant everything to me. Now that has changed.”

Now Slater has nothing left to prove, and it shows. Now he’s trying to enjoy life on the tour rather than burn out on it--again. Now he’s keeping his sponsors happy by maintaining a prominent place under the international spotlight.

Now he has an Activision game due in the stores any day, which will further immortalize the surfer and put a few more million dollars in his pocket. Keeping a high profile can only help sales.

That’s just one of the things distracting Slater, who acknowledges as much while hinting that he is planning on making a charge during the second half of a tour that culminates at the famed Banzai Pipeline on Oahu in December.

“I’m still struggling to get back to where I was mentally,” he says.

In any event, the tour is happy to have Slater back.

“It’s fantastic,” Egan says. “Every guy in the top 44 [on the WCT] has lifted their levels of surfing because of Kelly’s presence”

Slater can chalk that up as a victory.

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A dropping swell will greet surfers for today’s two-man elimination heats--Slater will go up against Lee Winkler of Australia--but another big swell, generated by a storm in the South Pacific, is forecast to arrive before competition resumes Sunday morning. The finals are Tuesday.

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Fun While It Lasted?

For many, the summer fishing season is over. The rods and reels are back in the closet and the focus is on school and work. “They’ve had their money allocated, spent it on fishing and used all their sick days, so it’s over,” said Don Ashley, owner of Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach. “It’s dead.”

Ashley is more fatalistic than most when referring to the annual post-Labor Day phenomenon, which brings sportfishing to a near halt along much of the waterfront.

But it’s a point well made. Some of the landings have already canceled some of their half-and three-quarter-day trips. And the offshore overnight boats are carrying an average of only 12 to 15 anglers, about a third of what they carried during the busy weeks of summer.

And therein lies the attraction for those who prefer this time to any other. The albacore grounds are still teeming with fish, from San Quintin, well below Ensenada, up to and beyond Morro Bay off Central California. And many believe the yellowfin tuna will move to within range of at least the San Diego fleet before the season is over.

“Fall is the best time because we usually have the flat calm weather and the fish typically move closer to shore,” said Gary White, a spokesman for Fisherman’s Landing in San Diego. “The fact that we’re getting out with smaller loads is bad for business but great for the anglers.”

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Go Figure

Such an abundance of albacore and, to a lesser extent, bluefin tuna, is somewhat unusual for this time of year. Typically, the albacore are long gone by now and the yellowfin are the catch of the day for those aboard San Diego overnight boats.

But this season has been anything but typical. Offshore surface temperatures, although having warmed considerably during the last few days, have yet to take hold for any length of time, leading some to wonder what has become of the El Nino everyone had been talking about a few months ago.

Ashley said his captains earlier this week, fishing east of San Clemente Island, have had to search for water warm enough to hold albacore, rather than cold enough. They found readings as low as 60 degrees at a time when 70-degree readings are more common, even during non-El Nino years.

Unseasonably cool water is being found deep into Baja California. Gene Allshouse of San Quintin Sportfishing reported this week, “I don’t ever remember catching albacore in September. But we are.”

Allshouse, however, said that the water 12 miles offshore was 69 degrees, too warm for albacore, and that he anticipated a changing of the guard within a week or so.

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Dove Opener: Hot

How hot was Sunday’s dove-hunting season opener? In southeastern California and southwestern Arizona, the hotbeds of dove hunting, temperatures soared as high as 115 degrees.

Fortunately, most hunters bagged their 10-bird limits in the cool of the morning, if there is such a thing down there at this time of year.

“By our nonscientific calculations, 98% of the hunters got their limits and had good hunting for the opening two days,” said Richard Sprague, owner of Sprague’s Sports & RV in Yuma, Ariz. “The second day was slower, as is usual, but on the field that I shot, that meant an extra 15 minutes or so to get our limits.”

Hunting was as good or better across the border in the Blythe and Imperial Valley areas, and fair to good throughout most of California. Ed Sandell of Somis, Calif., participating in a DFG special hunt in the Bakersfield area, reported limits by 7:20 a.m. for his son, Todd, and himself. “But most of the hunters were scratching out half-limits by mid-morning,” he said. “Finding the feed and getting away from other hunters seemed to be the key.”

The early season--another is scheduled this fall--runs through Sept. 15.

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Winding Up

The “New American Sportsman” will debut Monday at 5 p.m. on ESPN2. The weekly show is a “reimagined” version of the highly popular “American Sportsman” of the 1960s and ‘70s.

The host is actor and outdoorsman Rick Schroder, who said in a news release, “It’s a fun way for people to get to know me.”

The real fun is reserved for the celebrities. Segments of the first episode include tarpon fishing off Key West with golfer Jack Nicklaus; tracking and darting a 5,000-pound rhino in South Africa with actor Greg Kinnear, and snorkeling with sharks off Key Largo with former “Baywatch” actress Simmone Jade Mackinnon.