California dreaming

San Diego fishing trip a great diversion

Jack Slemp of San Diego, an assistant on a charter boat that operates from a marina in San Diego Harbor, shows off a calico bass he caught near the mouth of the bay.

Jack Slemp of San Diego, an assistant on a charter boat that operates from a marina in San Diego Harbor, shows off a calico bass he caught near the mouth of the bay.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

— Arkansas sends a lot of young men to the Marines, and their parents often go to San Diego to watch them graduate from basic training.

That was the case Oct. 3 when my wife and I visited that great city to watch our son Daniel graduate from boot camp. There were so many other Arkansans on a similar mission that a spontaneous Hog call could have erupted at any moment.

One thing we discovered is you can enjoy some surprisingly good fishing off the California coast for a surprisingly low price. I sampled a little of it the day after Dan’s graduation ceremony. I wanted him to join me, but he’d had his fill of San Diego. He caught the first available flight back to Little Rock after commencement.

I arrived at H&M Landing at about 5:30 a.m., rented my tackle, bought a California fishing license and purchased a ticket aboard the Premier, one of the big charter boats that operates from several marinas in San Diego Harbor. The total price was less than $100.

I have always fished from small boats with a few good friends. Fishing on a large boat among a big crowd of strangers was a new experience. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I was mistaken. It was community fishing at its best.

While waiting to depart, I listened to the captain on a nearby boat giving instructions to a large gathering of passengers. It was an odd conversation, and the lack of rods on deck was conspicuous, so I listened closer. They were birdwatchers going out to look at sea birds.

The Premier left her berth at 6:30 a.m. Our first stop was the San Diego bait barge, a big wooden island in the middle of the inlet where all the charter boats stop to get their day’s supply of live bait. It is a popular gathering spot for sea lions, seagulls and cormorants. About a dozen sea lions were on the dock, but they didn’t allow us to get too close.

My first acquaintance aboard the Premier was Jack Slemp, a salty assistant to the Premier’s captain, Todd Green. Slemp’s odd jobs aboard the boat include cleaning fish and rigging customers’ lines and general deck maintenance. His pay, he said, is the privilege of going fishing, which he does with zeal. In fact, he caught the first fish of the day at the bait barge. There, he caught a beautiful calico bass with a big chunk of bacon.

I first noticed Slemp as he rigged his own rods. His dropper lines employed a unique knot that would be ideal for some of the fishing I do in Arkansas, so I asked him to show me how to tie it. That sparked a conversation that lasted, on and off, the entire outing.

“Bacon!” I exclaimed. “That’s awesome.”

“You can’t beat it,” Slemp said. “It never goes bad, and the birds won’t have anything to do with it.”

That’s a big problem because pelicans, gulls and other birds love bait. Sometimes they’ll take it right off your hook when it hits the water. In fact, two cormorants followed Slemp’s bacon all the way to the surface but they wouldn’t touch it.

“I used to use bacon all the time when I was a kid,” I said. “That’s the only bait I could get, but it was great. A fish hits, and it just slides up the hook. One small piece will last all day.”

Slemp beamed. He’d found a kindred spirit.

He took me to the wheelhouse to meet Capt. Green, an easygoing but intense man who looks and sounds very much like a young Clint Eastwood. Our quarry for the day, he said, would be rock bass and snapper from deep rockpiles.

Green said that sport fishing is under siege in California because preservationists are lobbying to have the waters off California declared an international biosphere preserve where fishing would be prohibited. The other barrier, he added, is the Mexican government. Green explained that for many years, American charters fished in peace off the Mexican coast, but recently Mexican authorities insist that charter boats first clear customs. The nearest port with a customs office, Green said, is about 60 miles south. Getting there and back takes all day, so American charters avoid Mexico’s near-shore waters.

We stopped at the international boundary, just a few miles offshore. Directly across the water was Tijuana, Mexico. The American community of Imperial Beach was slightly to the north.

Slemp settled in beside me and got ready to cast his big saltwater rig.

“I like to get my bait away from everybody else’s bait, but it kind of upsets the balance of things,” Slemp said. “I can cast, so everybody else thinks they can, too. But a lot of them can’t, and it can cause a big mess.”

He flung his big rig out, and it landed with a splash. The other passengers simply opened their reels and let their baits fall to the bottom.

I loaded up my rod, too, made sure the weight and hook wouldn’t hit the big light tower behind me, and pitched my shoulders forward.

“Hey, man, you shouldn’t …” Slemp warned, but he was too late. My rig sailed out to sea. I feathered the spool to tame the unraveling coils, and the rig landed tamely near Slemp’s. I hauled back on the rod to let out slack so that the rig would fall straight down instead of pendulum back to the boat.

“You’ve done this before,” Slemp said.

“It’s the same kind of stuff we use for catfish on the Arkansas River,” I said.

“You must have some bigass catfish!” Slemp said.

“That we do.”

Seconds later, I felt a jolt and yelled, “Fish on!”

“Arkansas is first on the board!” someone shouted down the deck.

A minute later, I reeled in a nice red snapper. Shortly after, I landed a California scorpion fish, an ugly thing with venomous dorsal spines. I also landed a couple of small rock bass.

A couple of guys from Georgia standing beside me reeled in one snapper after another, as well as a decent sheepshead. It’s different from what they call sheepshead in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s basically a drum. The California sheepshead is long, cylindershaped fish with a bright red torso and square teeth, hence the name.

The bite slowed at about 10 a.m., but by then we had an impressive mixed bag of multiple species. We were back at the dock by noon. I got a delicious fried scallop sandwich from the restaurant next to the pier and spent the rest of the day touring the city with my bride.

Fishing from a head boat is a different style of fishing from anything else I’ve ever done, but for the price, you can’t beat it.

Sports, Pages 33 on 11/04/2012