ForbesOnTech

Yum Yum Yellowtail-- They're Off San Diego in Quantity

Yellowtail on plastic waiting to be cleaned

 

Growing up in Southern California, I’d wait patiently for the Thursday edition of the Los Angeles Times and it’s Sports Section.  In addition to a regular column by the late sports columnist, Jim Murray, it also had sport fishing catch reports from ports up and down the California coast.

            My belief that San Diego was the place I wanted to drown anchovies from is rooted in those long ago catch reports. And right now—in Mid June, 2008—is all the proof I’ve ever wanted.

            I tentatively launched my boat yesterday mid morning from the ramp at Dana Landing in Mission Bay and motored out to the Everingham Brothers Bait Barge to pick up a half scoop of active big sardines. Given a choice between a $20 half scoop of sardines or the anchovies, I’ll go with sardines every time.

            I left the harbor and steamed for the seaward side of the help beds that line the coastline from Torrey Pines to Imperial Beach on the Mexican border. I plopped an active sardine into the water, cut back the throttle to maintain steerage and watched my unweighted line unwind as my bait made for free water about 50 feet off the port side of my bow.

            I wasn’t exactly ready for the first strike. My line took off and I barely prevented creating a rats nest on the spool of my reel by clamping down with my thumb. I thumbed the reel in gear, reared back on the rod and the fish took off for the kelp. The run for the kelp, and the strength of the fish immediately made me confident I had hooked a yellowtail.  This gutsy, but oh so tasty Thunnoid family member is a school fish, so when you catch one yellowtail, you can be very sure there are others nearby.

            Very soon I had the fish next to my boat, which is when it decided it wanted me to do laps around the deck.  But very soon, after not letting the fish wrap the line around my outboard, I slashed down with the boat hook and brought my yellowtail on board.

            Slowly making my way north on the outside in a flat calm sea, I lost five more sardines to slashing attacks from fast hitting fish. But by noon I had two nice “big schoolies”—15 to 20 pound yellowtail-- on board, and was listening to fishing boat skippers trade reports of limits of barracuda and big legal white sea bass (which are making a strong comeback here on the San Diego coast) as well as fishermen catching limits of calico bass and the infrequent sheepsheads.

            By noon I was beginning to feel the effects of sun burn on the tops of my unshod feet, so I headed back to the ramp, loaded my boat on its trailer and headed home to Escondido to clean the one fish I kept for my household.

            I don’t remember a better yellowtail season in a non El Nino year and as long as the air temps hover around 90, I think the run is going to last through the summer. So, if your travels take you to San Diego, do take the time to go out on an all-day boat. Be prepared for fun but you may also want to pack some soy saice and wasabi in your tackle box. Yum,yum fresh yellowtail sushi for a boat lunch.  It doesn’t get any better for a summer Southern California fishing treat. – Jim Forbes 06/19/2008.

Perfect Trim on the Boat, Yellowtail and Fun Loving Seals-- Your Sense of Humor is as Important as Your Bait.

There is a natural rhythm to offshore fishing in a small boat that resonates with something that’s deep in my Southern California soul. It begins with the slow departure from the launch ramp and but rapidly builds as I leave the basin where the bait barge is anchored and then purr down the right hand side of the channel at the entrance to Mission Bay in San Diego and take a line for the leeward kelp beds that are just visible beyond the waves crashing on the breakwater.

            Going out of the harbor, I gently feed more power to the boat as I slowly push my throttle forward. But where the music really begins for me is when I pick up the incoming swells, kick my outboard up to about 2500 rpm and trim up as I leave the breakwater. Without any trouble, I find exactly the right combination of power and angle on my outboard and the magic suddenly happens; my boat is in perfect trim and I surge effortlessly along the edge of the kelp paddies under a perfect San Diego morning sun.

            Kelp cruising requires attention to detail.  I look for bait breaking the surface in clear parts of the beds or diving seabirds. Both of those things are signs that my favorite sport fish—yellowtail—are feeding below. Once I see evidence that the yellowtail are present, I unhook my trolling lure from the eye on my rod and stream the artificial bait about 100 yards behind my boat, as I chop the power to my outboard to about 1,000 rpm.

            For reasons that are unclear to me, I haven’t developed a preference for using lures or bait. Each has advantages.  If I see other boaters hooking up using lures I troll slowly up the kelp beds and keep one open for the sharp movement of my rod signaling a hit. The sound or sight of line spooling off my reel wakes me up faster than a cup of Yuban and is cause for me to walk quickly to the back of my boat to pickup my rod and reel to see if I have a fish on, or more often, have merely snagged a piece of kelp.

            Over the years, I’ve caught a lot of kelp. But even a four-foot piece of kelp has its purpose in my world. It gets reeled aboard and dropped into a bucket that collects things I add to my compost heap.

            Fishing is a past time of that rewards patient observation. Once I make the turn south of LaJolla and head back down the kelp beds towards San Diego, I keep my eye on the kelp for baitfish breaking the surface.  That’s the cue for me to unlimber my seven-foot rod with it Ambassadeur 9000 bait casting reel and impale a lively green sardine or wiggly anchovy on a sharp hook and then gently lob it into the kelp to swim unencumbered by weight. With any luck I’ll get a hit with 15 minutes as I bob about the ocean letting the bait swim through the kelp.

            The feel of a lightning quick hit on my bait and hearing the line spool off my reel is what keeps me out on the water. I don’t muscle fish to the side of my boat. I prefer to let them run and tire as I slowly keep pressure on the fish and recover line on my reel. If it’s meant to be, I soon glimpse color out beyond the point where my line enters the green gray Pacific inshore waters.

            If I’m fishing alone, I’ll take a moment to identify the species of fish and then reach down with my short handled gaff if I want to take it. Yellowtail are keepers, so are barracudas and big sand bass.

            But the one thing that can ruin an otherwise perfect experience is to sense something large cutting through the water, then hear a big exhale and witness the slashing attack of a seal ripping a 20 pound yellowtail off your line and then swimming happily away to enjoy its fresh hamachi.

            There are days when I really hate seals! But at the end of my time on the water I can’t help but smile at an animal that’s figured out how to enjoy the benefits of someone else’s luck in catching fish in the morning sunlight of a perfect day on the Pacific.—Jim Forbes m06/02/2008/

Booming Barracuda Run Kicks Off 2008 Fishing Season-- Suggestions for a Tasty Treat

Here in San Diego, the water temps are coming up nicely, the bait fish are inshore and abundant and the sound coming out of most fishermen’s tongues on the boat ramps is a plaintive “Ba Ba Barracuda.” That’s right the 2008 season started out this week with sport fisherman cruising the outside of inshore kelp beds and watching their rods jink and dive with barracuda hook ups on live anchovies of lures that mimic big chovies.

My lord, there a lot of barracuda out off Pacific and Ocean Beaches and right off LaJolla. Hanging around the launch ramp at Dana Landing in Mission Bay late this morning It was hard not to notice anglers coming back with limits of ‘cuda. And the morning and evening cattle boats are coming back from five and six hour excursions with up to 95 legal cudas per boat. It’s been decades since I’ve seen a noteworthy barracuda bite of southern California, and I can’t remember ever seeing an inshore bite like the one happening on the southern California coast now.

I’m not a specialist fishermen, but I do love catching ‘cudas on the California coast they hit like freight trains, run forever and you have to fight all the way to your boat. There’s enough tussle in a legal barracuda to produce lifelong memories.

Most of how I fish for ‘cudas was passed on to me by a family friend, master fisherman, named Joe Cornejo and an Uncle, Bill Grandell, who owned a commercial fishing boat that was home ported in Wilmington harbor.How I was taught to fish for cuda was to use an extremely sharp hook, about 12 inches of wire leader and big active anchovies (or sardines if they’re available at the bait receiver). I use a six foot rod with a limber tip, an Ambassadeur 9000 bait casting reel and try to get the bait into clear water in kelp beds.  I don’t use any weight on the terminal tackle and let the bait take line from my reel, which I keep in it’s free spool mode.

I keep my eye open for bait on the surface, which generally means there are cudas hunting below.  There’s no mistaking a barracuda hook up. The line takes off as the fish scoots away. I prefer to set the hook firmly and fight the fish using minimal drag on my reel. What I love most about barracudas is they will fight you all the way to the rail of your boat, and they are lightning quick.

Cudas are school fish, so if you catch one, you should try to get your line back in the water as soon as possible.

I also enjoy throwing iron for barracudas.  I use an old Rapalla in an anchovy pattern and a variety of other shiny lures with dark green patterns that I throw  into open water in kelp beds and retrieve at a moderate speed—stopping occasionally to let the lure sink back down. My spinning rod is seven feet long and my reel is loaded with 10-pound test low visibility Stren line. Serious ‘cuda fishermen here in San Diego often use fresh water spinning outfits, which makes catching a 24-inch 8-pounder something you’ll remember for a very long time.

So, what do you do with the two or three cudas you bring home?

Start by removing the dark stripe of flesh you find along the fish’s side, then clean it as you would any other toothy fish. Barbequed or smoked barracuda is something many people enjoy, but to many southern California fishermen, the real joy of a ‘cuda is frying up tasty barracuda burgers, just like you had on the charter boats as a kid.

Here’s how you make barracuda burgers.

Catch and clean the fish. Remove head and dark flesh on sides. Mince up the meat from one or two fish. (Note, one fish makes four to five patties).

            Place minced fish meat in bowl.

            Crack open and mush in the contents of one lightly beaten egg per fish.

            Add several tablespoons of breadcrumbs to mixture at the rate of three tablespoons per fish.

            Medium dice one-quarter onion per fish and mince one stalk of celery.

            Add vegetable mixture to minced fish product.

            Season with one tspn salt and several big dashes of white pepper. (note, I like t o add one tbsp of minced fresh jalapenos to my patty mixture.

            Add three tsp fresh lemon juice (per fish) and one tsp each of olive or vegetable oil, one tbsp minced dill, 1-2 tbsp tartar sauce.

Thoroughly mix ingredients and form one-half-inch patties

            Cook in hot oil in a frying pan. Brown both sides of patties, serve on hamburger buns and enjoy.

            Tight lines and remember Barracudas have nice sharp teeth so have fun—Jim Forbes, wirelessly from the launch ramp at Dana Landing in Mission Bay, San Diego, CA on 05/11/2008 using an incredibly rugged ThinkPad X300..

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2008 California Salmon Season Cancelled--Major Bummer

In addition to $3.50 per gallon gas, and the fact that when I tow my boat behind my massively manly Toyota V6 4Runner I get about 9 miles to the gallon, here’s another damn reason why I won’t be going up north to fish for salmon later this Spring: fishing for salmon in California’s coastal waters has been cancelled this year see here.

            This is the first time in my memory when an entire salmon season in all of California’s coastal waters has been cancelled. The decision to close California’s coastal salmon fishery was made early this week and follows a federal closure of the salmon fishery that extends 200 miles from the coast, the edge of our international maritime boundary.

            A decision to close the inland Central and Northern California 2008 salmon season will not be made until early May. However the inland waters season is likely to be cancelled as well, according to reports in today’s Sacramento Bee.

            The reason for the closure is to protect remaining stocks of wild salmon that migrate up stream to their natal inland waterways to spawn and then die.

            Commercial and sport salmon fishing is a multimillion-dollar industry in California and over the last several years the number and size of salmon caught by commercial and sport fishermen alike has declined. Likewise, the number of wild Chinook (aka King) salmon counted by Fish and Game biologists, passing through fish ladders on the Sacramento River and its tributaries, has also fallen.

            As a sport fisherman who really enjoys chasing salmon off the Golden Gate, or further North off the Humboldt Coast, I have very mixed feelings about the salmon fishing closure.  On one hand, I will really miss tussling a slab sided King to the side of my boat, however, taking the pressure off the remaining salmon stocks for one or two seasons may result in my being able to catch free running wild salmon at a later date.

            I do feel sorry for members of the commercial salmon fishing fleet on the San Francisco coast. Until the albacore appear late this summer, there’s just no way they can make any money.—Jim Forbes 04/15/2008/

Spring Fishing and Brown Plant Food From the Sea-- Yelp, Kelp!

Warm air and rising sea temperatures drove me to hitch up my panga to the back of my massively manly SUV and head for the launch ramp at HM Landing in San Diego earlier this week. Armed with a small net full of wiggly green back ‘chovies, a pack of just sharpened #6 saltwater hooks, some new leaders and a couple of ounces of various sized weights I bounced my way out of the break water, and steered north by northwest to the kelp beds just south of La Jolla.

            Baited up, and gently tossed my line at the edge of the kelp where I could see the anchovy making a quick dash for the safety of some nice brown kelp leaves.  He didn’t make it.

            So sorry, Mr. Bait fish. A streaking bonito hit the ‘chovie, frantically spinning the spool on my light weight rod and reel. Ah spring bonito runs fishing with trout tackle on the inshore side of the kelp beds off the San Diego shore. This is part of the joy of my youth growing up in Southern California. I don’t eat this Thunnoid relative, but I respect their sizzling runs and rod bending fights.

            But the real reason I was out in the boat wasn’t to catch fish, it was to cut and harvest about 20 pounds of rich smelly kelp as an additive for my growing mulch pile. I was back at the ramp, getting the boat back on its trailer and headed up I-15 to Escondido well before noon.

            Pushing the boat back up my half-mile long driveway to my mountaintop, I set the parking brake, hoped out and put the kelp on the driveway to give it the first of about 15 freshwater rinses needed to remove salt.

            I bet you may have though this post was about fishing. Surprise, it’s not.

            It’s about organic vegetable gardening. One of the additives I use in my tomato and potato patches is mulched and rinsed kelp. The reason I’ve been using kelp for the last two years is because it’s loaded with micronutrients as well as nitrogen, all of which is great for heirloom tomatoes and tasty Yukon Gold potatoes.

            I underwent a kelp conversion three seasons ago when I visited another Escondido gardeners plot and was amazed by the condition and size of his beefsteak tomatoes. He attributed the overall great condition of his garden and the excellent taste of his produce to his use of kelp.

            Preparing kelp for compost is pretty easy. I spread it out on my driveway and wash it off with my garden hose.  The scrub jays and mocking birds that hang out here seem to like it. They swoop in and scarf down the salt-water insects that gget washed off.  The small shrimps flowing down the driveway in the runoff seem to be especially prized by the raucous gathering chorus of scrub jays.

            Two wash downs later, I haul the kelp to a worktable by my driveway and pull out my keen edged machete. I chop the kelp up and throw the diced pieces onto a framed screen where it gets another couple of wash downs. That process completed, I ad the kelp and a couple of shovel scoops of beach sand to my compost pile, which I turn over ever several days.  It doesn’t take kelp very long to break down and I use kelp-enriched compost very sparingly— on the order of one-bucket load for each 3x3-foot potato mound or 6 by 4-foot tomato patch. The addition of sand seems to work quite well in building lose soil for my potato mounds.

            Sea weed plus sand is one of the ways rural irish have grown spuds for hundreds of years. The only other organic supplement I’ve seen produce the same results in my garden is a liquid worm casing supplement I buy at my local organic nursery.  Kelp is a lot cheaper than the prepared liquid worm casing supplement and besides, I can always get a fishing line wet while I cut kelp from the back of my boat. Gardener Jim says “give kelp a chance, your garden will thank you and its micronutrients make for nice tasting produce.” –Jim Forbes, 03/13/2008.

            

Tis The Season to Catch Flatties-- Fa lala la Zing Zing Zing

Growing up in Southern California catching a halibut seemed to be a hit or miss affair for me. Mostly I missed. But as I got older, I noticed a couple of things: there are fishermen on the west coast who specialize in flatties; To consistently land tasty flatties, you need to be observant, patient and willing to learn a little about what the species feeds on and where they’re most likely to be found.

            Today, I am a dyed-in-the-wool fool for flatties. And as the days and hours count down on my 2007-fishing license, the two species I pursue are inshore halibut and freshwater rainbow trout.

            Fall halibut fishing is a delight. It’s also the time of year when I consistently get hook ups.

            Some general observations:

            I have the most success with a long, nine-foot rod, a medium sized combination reel,  sub ten-pound test, wire leaders and very sharp hooks.

            If I’m going to use bait, I scour the fish counter in Asian markets for good looking fresh dead squid. I buy three or four squid, load my tackle box and try to hit the beach at the tail end of an outgoing tide.

            It helps to understand that halibut love sandy bottoms, often at the edge of inshore kelp beds. I rig up with a sliding sinker and three or feet of leader attached to a wire leader and heave my squid baited hook out as far as I can beyond the surf line. Then I stick my rod in a sand spike, sit down and suck up some coffee a I wait for the tell tale pulls signaling a flatty at my bait.

            For the most part halibut are opportunistic feeders, striking bait from behind.  If I’m impatient and need some reassurance, I crank my line in and check the bait. If I can see “rake” marks or missing tentacles on the squid, I know my rig is in the right place, so I try to throw it back in the same general area.

            With luck, the rod begins moving again and my spool begins clicking as the fish takes the bait and moves away.  I wait a couple of seconds and set the hook.

            Then comes the pay off, tussling a nice flatty through the surf line, past some very smart seals. I really like the rhythms of bringing a halibut in through a surf line. It doesn’t take very long to learn how to use waves to move the fish inshore, despite its frequent runs to the bottom and dashes towards deeper water.

            Another useful strategy for catching halibut in and near a beach is to look for rip channels and fish those channels at ebb tide. I’ve been pretty successful using this strategy with lead head hooks and hula skirts with long white or very pale green fringes. The point of using this type of lure is to imitate a squid (although why any self respecting cephalopod would be in the surf line still escapes me). If that doesn’t work, I switch to lures like broke back salt water Rapallas. I make sure I can present at least four feet of leader and always use a sliding sinker.

            My best results throwing or trolling a lure for halibut, has always been when I use imitation squid devices.  Halibuts seem unable to resist them.

            Halibuts are present year round on the Southern California coast. A couple of final thoughts: getting caught with an undersize halibut is an expensive thing; sticking your hand down a large halibut’s mouth to retrieve an inexpensive lure is a good way to end up with a nick name like “stubby” or “Two Fingered Jim.”

            Know that you know the flatties are out there waiting, go out and get rigged up for late year halibut.  Tight lines—Jim Forbes 12/18/2007

Yellowtail Finning Into the Sunset--Seasonal Strategies and the Whimsical Wahoo

    The schools of yellowtail ( a subspecies of tuna I chase off the San Diego shore) are thinning out and heading for warmer waters. The yellowtail begin to clear every year about Mid-September but my fondness for yellowtail fishing lasts long into the October.

    The end of the Yellowtail season here is a regular occurrence. I can tell it's about to happen without reading the several data feeds I get from offshore buoys that record sea temps and states. The most obvious sign is the condition of the line on my Ambassadeur casting reel. First off, the amount of line wound on my reel is down by about a third. Second, the first 50 yards of the remaining line has been stretched pretty thin. And that's the most obvious proof of why I like Yellowtail fishing.  They run like out of control freight trains, slashing through the kelp beds and they don't come willing to the side of the boat.

     Catch a 20-pound yellowtail and you end up seeing the same 50 feet of expensive fishing line repeatedly come on and off your reel over 20 minutes. As a rule of thumb, the bigger fish try to fight you from deep inside a kelp forest where they instinctively know how to run your line several times around a thick stalk of kelp. So, the more you try to pressure this fish, the greater your chance of hearing your line break and seeing a about $10 worth of expensive monofilament go limp at the tip of your trusty rod. That explains where a lot of the line on my reel went this year, oh that and several hookups with Wahoos south of the Coronado Islands.

     Wahoos are appropriately named.  It's the sound you make when you catch one, look down and see a 100 yards of line ripping off your reel at about 25 miles an hour. Like most fishermen, I try to turn the fish in a vain attempt to get some line back on my reel and get the fish close enough to bring it onto my boat. And, like most fishermen all I see for my effort is a gradual reduction of line wound on my reel and the loss of  yet another lure. Wahoo aren't easy to catch, but are they ever fun to try and get into the boat. Twice in my life, I've had Wahoo spool and damage my reels. Seeing the backing zip off your reel and then hearing the line break as loud as a pistol shot is as exciting as it is disappointing. It's also a sign that you've lost another battle with a Wahoo and proof that you maybe need to think bout both improving your fishing skills and adding a better reel to your Christmas or birthday wish lists.

    Wahoo, which occasionally show up among yellowtail schools, are the reason why I have a succession of bigger reels, attached to hand crafted trolling rods out in my garage. I normally keep an extra rod rigged for Wahoo (25 pound or stronger test line, sturdy swivels and carefully tied leader material) on my boat. I don't get to use it very often, but as soon as I suspect one of the boats near me has tied into one. I attach and stream what I think is an appropriate lure or bait (a small mackerel or big sardine). And then I wait.And wait. Worse case scenario:I catch a big ass Yellowtail rather than a Wahoo, and horse it into the boat Either way, I've had fun, gotten a little more tan or sun burned.

     But the changing season means the thunnoids are on their way back down the Baja Peninsula or out west in really deep water. So in order to feed my passion for fishing I either make arrangements to fish the Sea of Cortez out of Mulege (recommended), head up north to Fuller Lake for a couple of days, or tow my boat and fresh water gear out to the Colorado River for a couple of days fishing for Striper and Catfish.

     If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: Your fishing strategy needs to adapt to the season, and you need to buy good fishing line, as well as make sure your hooks are sharp.  Tight lines!-- Jim Forbes, 09/13/2007.

Catfish, Lessons Learned on a Hot Day-- the Relief of "Found" Money!

Took my boat out to a local lake today to drown some worms. Turned on the fish finder and saw scads of targets near the bottom of the inflow concrete feed pipes that supplies this lake with my water that has somehow made it’s way underneath the dirt of my good friends in Northern California.

            Given my luck and intuition I knew a couple of things:

1.                  the targets on my fish finder were most likely catfish;

2.                  to catch catfish during the day you need to softly put the bait in front of them.

3.                  Catfish axiomatically rest in shaded swales on the bottom of a lake, facing the flow of water (if there’s a current present) and away from the  sun.

4.                  Swales (think small valleys on the back side of rippled earth) are created by the flow of water into a lake or pond.

5.                  Catfish are pretty tasty and MaForbes likes fresh catfish. A lot.

6.                  I learned all this by being Tom Sawyer to my grandfather’s Huck Finn.

So, I rigged up with a sliding  sinker on my freshwater spinning outfit loaded with clear six-pound test line, hooked a juicy night crawler on the hook at the end of the leader and softly cast out to the right suide of the boat. I let the line settle, did a soft retrieve until I felt my bait encounter slight resistance and reeled in until I felt the tension ease out. (note, th tsnion is most often the bait going  up a swale and it eases up when you pull your rig into a valley on its otherside.

Within two minutes I had a nice hit, so I let the fish take line before I set the hook.  I quickly caught two other nice keepers in the 99 degree fore-nnon heat. Without a chair in my boat, I rest my butt against a leaning post as I watch for tell tale twitches at the end of my line. After about a hour I noticed that my wallet made me feel uncomfortable, so I moved it to a secure spot on my boat’s center console. After another 45 minutes the fish stopped biting, so I went back to the boat launch, loaded the panga back on it’s trailer and made ready to make the 10-minute drive back to my house from the lake.

I got about half way home, to a gas station that happens to always have cherry slurpees when I remembered my wallet.

I Reached over my boat, snagged my wallet and went to the gas pump. Opened my wallet but noticed my ATM card had been partly melted in the sun.

      Quickly realizing that without my ATM card I’d have to pay cash for my gas and the much-anticipated cherry slurpee. Bummer, no cash in either front pockets of my short pants so I frantically started looking under the front seats of my massively manly 4Runner. “Aha” I yelled as I found a soiled $20 wedged against the right side seat rail. Bought $7 worth of gas for the boat, a $2 slurpee and had walking around money left over.

      Southern story telling and trick endings.  And you thought my wallet might have been lost, right?

No, I learned from my own private Huck. He was born in rural, Duenweg,Missouri, spent his professional life surveying the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, moved to the desert in retirement but passed  before I came home from Viet Nam almost 50 years ago.

      He was such a credible story teller that at one time I actually believed him when he told me with a poker face that trout living in cool desert pools actually walked on their fins to get to the next pond.  Carrying canteens on their backs!

I really was gullible, but I picked up some of his rhythms of his speech and much of his humor.

Oh, the two catfish I brought home are alive out in my large birdbath, which I cooled with about 10 ice cubes.  I’ll deal with them before my next trip up to take MaForbes shopping. In the meantime, those fish swimming in the birdbath will give the birds something to think and chirp about as they hang out at Farmer Forbes’ birdy day spa, and tomato buffet. —Jim Forbes, Escondido, CA, 08/04/2007.

(editor’s note: please don’t  tell my friends in CalTrout  that I openly admit to using bait from time to time.  Oh the shame!

This entry is for SFC Paul Sele, Huck’s other fisherman grandson and the last one of us to serve the Constitution of the United States as well as the citizens of his home state.  Have a safe deployment, Paul, we’ll get a line wet when you come home-- Jim)

WHy I Love My Panga--It's also a Long Surfboard

Technically my 19-foot panga is boat 2.1. You see, like a lot of recreational fishermen I've learned that it takes a while to find a hull that really works for you. In my case the panga design fits the bill exactly.

    Pangas have a high bow, bloat in 6 to nine inches of water and are used as single person open-ocean fishing boats.  They have built-in flotation, are easily bilged, and most of the Pangas you see here in San Diego are center console designs. Also, they are designed to be powered by outboards in the 40 to 75 horsepower range, which makes the design inexpensive to acquire and just conservative enough to keep weekend skippers on the safe and sane side of recreational boating.

    Pangas are also not very heavy, which means you can easily tow one with an truck powered by a V6 engine, like my massively manly Toyota 4Runner.

    Their light weight, economical and safe design greatly contribute to spur-of-the-moment fishing expeditions to known albacore and tuna gathering places that are five to ten miles off shore. Something I've been known to do (to the consternation of my family (who uniformly say "you went how far out in that boat?)

    But generally the comments are made between forkfuls of tasty albacore yellow fin tuna, or halibut that I use to buy them off.

    The other thing about Pangas that make them a lot of fun is that they have a hard chine forward, which makes them easy to stay on course. Oh, and providing you know some fool who will take your trailer across the beach in their old tractor, they're easily launched and recovered from the beach--which is what most people do with their Pangas in Mexico.

    Now that I give it a lot of thought; I think of my Panga as a kind of long surfboard. It's a real hoot to sit quietly out to sea off some beach with a nice break, wait for a lull in the sets, pick out an emerging medium-sized breaker, power up, perch on the slope in front of the swell, and run like hell for the beach.

    The trick to this is to get the outboard drive raised high enough to avoid scarping it on the sand, which causes the front of the boat--mysteriously called "the bow"-- to pitch abruptly into the sand, 10 to 15 yards short of your objective on the beach.

    It'd s lot of fun to roar through the inner-tidal zone and scoot your boat 20 feet up on the sand. It also cuts the time you spend at the end of the season sanding and scraping your hull. It's also instructional to push your boat back into the breakers on the tide and then glance at your outboard on the back of the boat-- which salt like to call "the stern" to make sure your propulsion system is down, still attached to the boat and not spitting a river of sandy mud out its cooling vent.

    The other thing that's fun in the Pangas-as-a-surfboard category is, at the end of a fishing trip, to stand out in front of a long channel entrance to a harbor such as Mission Bay here in San Diego, pick a swell, and ride the swell as far as you can. My record so car (on a day with 5-foot waves out of the NW at 15 seconds) was a 350-yard ride past the breakwater and into the harbor.

    My Panga is about proletariat fishing. it's safe basic water transportation than takes me five to eight miles off shore, or 20 miles down to the Coronado Islands off Tijuana, where the yellow tail play in the spring and fall. It lacks seats but has a leaning cushion on the front of its 30-gallon bait tank and two nice dry storage hatches for keeping my Coca Colas and lunch cool. It lacks a sunshade, but I have a selection of supposed "good luck" baseball hats and a big container of SPF 50 sunscreen right there on top of my center console.

    It's fun and when it gets broiling hot late in the summer, I've been known to pump my bait tank to its brim and drive the boat while standing in three to 3.5-feet of nice cool water as i troll lures hoping for a bite.

    Me and my Panga.It's not about catching record numbers of fish, it's about enjoying the outdoors, learning to be a peace with the hydraulic power if currents, swells and rivers and turning a gorgeous shade of violet when SPF 50 sunscreen fails.

    Oh, and to make my family happy, I have Vessel Assist membership. And they'll get you back on your trailer, even if your hull is dripping molten fiberglass as you drive home.--Jim Forbes on August 04, 2007.

Seals--Master Bait and Known Fish Thieves

NEWPORT BEACH, California (AP) -- A fisherman accused of stabbing a sea lion with a steak knife after the animal stole his bait has been arrested.

The sea lion, a six-foot female weighing about 150 pounds, was stabbed in the heart and was euthanized, said Dean Gomersall, animal care supervisor at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach.

"It's a horrible thing," Gomersall said. "My crew is extremely upset, and we're just glad the person was caught."

Hai Nguyen, 24, was fishing off a Newport pier about 12:30 p.m. Friday when the sea lion snatched the bait from his fishing pole.

"It was close enough so he could just reach out and stab it in the water," said Sgt. Evan Sailor, a police spokesman. "A number of people witnessed it and called police."

Nguyen was arrested without incident at the pier and held at Newport Beach Jail on $20,000 bail. He was expected to be arraigned next week on a charge of felony cruelty to animals, authorities said.

NEWPORT BEACH, California (AP) -- A fisherman accused of stabbing a sea lion with a steak knife after the animal stole his bait has been arrested.

The sea lion, a six-foot female weighing about 150 pounds, was stabbed in the heart and was euthanized, said Dean Gomersall, animal care supervisor at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach.

"It's a horrible thing," Gomersall said. "My crew is extremely upset, and we're just glad the person was caught."

Hai Nguyen, 24, was fishing off a Newport pier about 12:30 p.m. Friday when the sea lion snatched the bait from his fishing pole.

"It was close enough so he could just reach out and stab it in the water," said Sgt. Evan Sailor, a police spokesman. "A number of people witnessed it and called police."

Nguyen was arrested without incident at the pier and held at Newport Beach Jail on $20,000 bail. He was expected to be arraigned next week on a charge of felony cruelty to animals, authorities said.

Hey, I understand the the guy's frustration. Over 50 years experience fishing on the Pacific coast has left me with mixed feelings about seals. Ive had them follow hooked salmon right to the side of the boat, taking the fish just as i was ready to put it in the net. More common now is the experience of losing a 14 to 20 pound yellowtail boatside or worse yet, a big Pacific halibut just as I'm ready to gaff it and hoist it over the side of my boat.

Losing a big game fish to a seal that's figured out he can eat regularly by waiting for fishermen to anchor next to a kelp paddy is as frustrating as it is common. But I can't begrudge a seal or a sea lion a tasty meal. I can get angry at them, but I laugh it off. Especially when I sense a seal holding it's breath, hovering just under my boat as I horse in a yellowtail, yanking it into the boat just as the seal charges out from under the hull. The hurt look on the seal's face makes up for previously lost fish, almost.

I hope they throw the book at the guy who stabbed the seal. I really do.

Hungry,, spiteful seals are part of the fishing experience on the Pacific Coast. They make life interesting and force me as a fisherman to think how I'm going to land the fish I've just caught without having it ripped off my hook, just as I ready my net for a quick scoop. Seals, Sea Lions, sharks and porpoises. They all make fishing fun. And with that, I'm off towing my boat down I-15 to Dana Landing at Mission Bay, where a $20 bill buys me a half scoop (50 or so fish) of fresh green anchovies that I hope a couple of nice yellowtails will find enticing.--Jim Forbes, plug in the back of my boat on 07/29/2007.