When Bill DePriest contacted me and asked me to write a few articles about my experiences commercial fishing the outside banks and grounds, I was hesitant. My first thoughts were about people like Capt. Tim Houser, the “Commander,”now the Captain on Mark Ellison’s Erin Marie ,and other guys way more qualified to be writing this than myself– fisherman who have really been there and done it, literally putting their lives on the line. Many good men lost. I spent the bulk of my harpoonfishing career in the bight, a relatively calm area south of Point Conception. I’m not saying we didn’t push it to the limit – we did – but these guys really pushed it. I admire them. Maybe we can get some of these guys to pass some stories along as well. I tell you, it is good stuff – real fishing.

Swordfish
It was August of 1999. I was aboard Glen Stoller’s Mirage. Jeremy Smith and Ryan Burr were my crew. We already had close to 100 swordfish for the season – not great numbers by standards of just 10 or 15 years ago – but respectable. We were neck-and-neck, numberwise, with Capt. Gary Sanson and Johnny Foster aboard Fred Duckett’s Pilikia, trading the lead several times. Fishing against these guys was brutal. There were many times we fished 40 or more days in a row, unloading, fueling, buying groceries and departing to fish the same day. Our egos wouldn’t let us quit. Every day was like a tournament. It was awesome.

One of our main tools was the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) charts provided by Ocean Imaging. We always studied them carefully, putting a lot of time into them – not just looking at a hard edge and running to it – I mean really zoning on it. At times we could drive right to the fish. Other times we would burn a lot of fuel running to a spot that looked great but just didn’t work. The fish might have been there in great numbers and didn’t want to show, or they might not have been there at all. We had been looking at an interesting piece of water for days, but the weather was only marginal, and we were catching where we were. The weather turned nice (as it often does this time of year), and we were finally able to go take a look.

Most nights the last thing we would do before we went to bed was listen to the weather observations. Then, if we thought the wind was going to crash, we would wake up a couple times in the night and listen to them again. I awoke at four o’clock in the morning, listened to the weather one more time, and it had crashed. We took off. We were pretty close to the 711. The first swordfish was spotted at nine o’clock in the morning. Jeremy hit the fish real good, so Ryan held onto the rope. He really got the tar beat out of him. Nothing like holding onto a pissed off swordfish with 50 feet of rope out. Ryan and Jeremy continued to pull the fish in as I came out of the tower as fast as I could. We always had the shotgun and shells out by the door. I blasted the fish, and the boys got beat some more until it was tail roped and hoisted aboard. It all took only a few minutes. We used this stickand- shoot if we wanted to get to a spot and not get stuck with gear in the water. Typically, after harpooning a fish, you will soak it for a couple hours. On the way to the piece of water, we got a couple more.

The clouds started to break, and we were able to get Brian Jenison and Tommy Bantz, our two pilots, coming. (Sadly, Tommy died last year. He was a good man, and I liked him.) On the way out Tommy called and said that he had a problem. That is one of the worst radio calls you can get. Your heart goes into your throat. His canopy had blown off over his head. Tommy was a stunt pilot. He probably loosened it up with one of his barrel rolls or hammerheads that he used to entertain us with. We sent Brian his way, and I had to turn and head to where Tommy was in case he went in the drink. It cost us about 20 minutes until we got the call saying that he had landed safely.

We finally broke through the edge of water at about two o’clock. It seemed like Jeremy was never off the plank. There were swordfish everywhere. Brian would wrap up, and we would spot a fish or two getting to him. It was our first day in the area, and we didn’t know how to fish it. We got way too spread out. By four in the afternoon, we had 10 fish soaking, and they were all big. Our gear was spread out almost 15 miles endto- end. We sent Brian home early.

After figuring out which fish were swimming the least and marking these with strobe lights and radar reflectors, we began to pull. After finishing pulling all the gear, cleaning the fish, wolfing down a meal and putting the fish down, it was close to midnight. The day had produced 13 swordfish with a 305-pound dressed weight average.

It was hard to sleep that night, even as tired as I was. This is why you fish – to see numbers others can’t imagine. We hatched the boat, filled it up in two more days and headed in with 28 fish in five days. We were tired. These were big, mean fish. Just cleaning them was a workout.
We had this school to ourselves for over two trips. The fish showed even in very bad weather. If you could hang on, they were there. One day it was blowing about 25 knots, and I had tried to work up towards San Nicolas Island. We had pulled the sea anchor around eightin the morning after pulling gear until 1:00 a.m. in bad weather. I gave up and started heading down swell at a dead idle so I could make breakfast.
It was ugly – wind, swell, chop and clouds – absolutely miserable. I told my pilots to forget it, and then Ryan started screaming. He had found a fish. It was almost too dangerous to try to get it – no, it was.

I had to get up swell to run the fish. The 40’ plank was in the storm position at a 45-degree angle to the water. We were still almost burying it in the nasty weather (I had torn a plank off in a huge swell in 1996 and didn’t need that excitement again – pipes and cables everywhere). After getting above the fish, we had to put the plank down in the foul-weather position, a couple feet higher than normal. I could only come straight down on the fish. If it moved to the side, we had to raise the plank and start all over again. If I would turn the boat even slightly, I would bury Jeremy and the plank in the swell. We were battling all this and never losing sight of the fish. We wound up with five that day – with no airplane. Two were over 400 pounds. Unbelievable.

During this trip Jeremy did get badly thrown several feet in the air one day. We found a fish underwater, and the way the glare was, I had to turn the boat up swell or I would lose it. Jeremy was down below and didn’t know where the fish was. I was looking back over my shoulder at the fish, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jeremy going out on the plank. He must have been tired because that was a BAD move. Before I could react, the boat pitched violently off a wave.

It was like being on a 40’ teetertotter. Jeremy got launched into the air. The boat fell out from under him, and he was still in the air as the plank began coming up on the next swell – rapidly. He looked like a cat falling out of a tree: legs and arms straight out to the side. The walkway on the plank hit him in the face, but (luckily) his nose went in between the slats, or it would have broke. He got slammed and was bloodied and bruised – but still got the fish.

Dave Black on the Querida finally busted us. I tried to ditch him in a heavy fog bank, running a different course than where the fish were and going much faster. As soon as I thought I was out of radar range, I changed course back to where I needed to be, feeling pretty smug. Then the fog lifted, and there I was – like a two-pound zit on the end of your nose – pretty obvious. It was over.

About six boats got on it, and I think there were 30 or 40 fish taken each day for several weeks. We got one that dressed over 525 pounds. It swam 18 miles right through the middle of Gary’s gear. He was good enough to radar reflector it for me. It took all three of us to pull it. These were extraordinarily strong fish. It was quite a month. We got close to 100 out of it before heading down to the Bisbee’s.

Marlin
Four o’clock in the morning. Man, the nights are short come tournament time, and we were only pre-fishing. It was the summer of 2004. Pete Groesbeck, Andy Horner and myself had worked our way from San Diego to Cat Harbor the day before. We were aboard Larry Wilson’s 54 Bertram, Trauma. We put the anchor down around 7:30, had some dinner, caught a few baits and went to bed. We were the only marlin boat in the anchorage. We had looked at all the customary banks and ridges on the way. We ran into the usual crowds in all the usual spots. We saw a few fish from our boat, and others were releasing a couple, but most of the crews were just watching and washing off their lures. After dragging ourselves out of bed, we looked out the salon door and saw the mackerel so thick you could literally scoop them. We loaded the tanks in short order as you so often can here. We drank our coffee, pulled the anchor and departed about 15 minutes before gray light.

This is one anchorage you don’t want to leave too early from as sometimes the fish are just outside the harbor. We had only gone about six miles when I spotted the first sleeper. Pete caught that one real quick, and as he was fighting it, Andy had already spotted two more single sleepers from the tower. After we released the first one, we pulled up to the next ones and threw baits at them. They both eagerly chased the baits, but we didn’t want to hook anymore, so Pete wound the baits away from them. We were afraid someone might see us backing down, and besides, we weren’t trying to catch fish – just locate them and see if they would bite.

I had carefully studied the Sea Surface Temperature charts from Ocean Imaging that I had downloaded the night before (Broadband works in Cat). Based on what I had seen, I knew we had a huge problem on our hands. There was too much good-looking water. Now we knew the fish were in it, and they were biting.

Based on what we see on the SST and then what we see when we get there, I will assign an area a given amount of time. Say, a nice temperature or color break cutting across the 499. We get there and see bait on the meter, Terns, seagulls, tropics bird and some kelps with bait or yellows. I’d say it looks pretty good, so we give it 30 minutes or so. Then we are out of there at 18 knots, looking as we run. It is just too hard to glass above 18 knots or so, even in gyros. If it doesn’t look so good, we might only give it five minutes. If it looks good and we are there around the tide, we will usually stay through it. Or, if it looks good in the morning and we don’t get any bites, we might go back and check it out in the afternoon. I always take detailed notes of everything we see. I have a dedicated notebook that all pertinent information goes into. It stays with me on the bridge for the entire season.

After baiting these fish we blasted off towards the southwest side of the 499. It looked awesome – birds, bait, seals and porpoise. Pete was in the cockpit putting out our hookless spread of marlin lures along with his secret squid daisy chain (the thing looks 40’ long from the tower). Andy was in the tower relaying all he was seeing from his lofty perch. I was watching the electronics and glassing close to the boat.

Pete starts screaming like a mad man. I turn around, and there are three fish chasing the lures and one on the squid daisy chain. Poor Pete. He looked like he was in an Olympic ping-pong game – one side of the cockpit to the other. Finally, he couldn’t resist and put a bait out. It was a nice one – 190 pounds plus.

The day continued in a similar pattern to this in several other areas. We only caught four marlin for the day. Every time we found fish, we left, and a number of times we pulled baits away from fish. I still wonder if we had stayed in one spot that day how many marlin we could have released.

We only got to look at half the area we had wanted to because there were so many fish. The next morning we got up even earlier. We headed out to the 267, the one south-southwest of the 499. We were immediately in fish again. Then, off in the distance to the east of us, a tower started approaching over the horizon. We were busted! It was Capt. P-Bod on the Knot for Rent. As soon as we saw him, we headed to the northwest, up the ridge, towards the Osborne bank. We could see in towards Cat Harbor the familiar silhouette of a small yellow-hulled boat; it was Jim on the Ono. He does a really good job of finding fish out on his own. Many times he is offshore by himself in search of marlin and swordfish. I respect him; nonetheless, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him, as I knew he would be competing against us in the upcoming tournaments. When we got below the Osborne, it was the same – lots of Marlin. I had hoped there was going to be enough action on the east end to keep other boats from stretching out and looking at this fertile area. It was not to be. Still, for that volume of fish– to only see two boats in two days – it never ceases to amaze me.

Where am I going with all this? We found a huge volume of fish spread over a very large area, and we only looked for two days. This was one of the years Andy and I were building the new Mirage up in Washington. I was about as fishy as a lizard. I hadn’t spent any time on the water in almost a year. I had no information on the area we were going to; in short we had nothing going when we left. What we did have were some very valuable tools: SST imagery, binoculars, a good meter, etc. But I think the main ingredients that made us successful that day was the work ethic, and, just as important, we weren’t afraid to stretch our legs out and go look. We weren’t afraid of failure.

I am not saying I haven’t been called into an area or onto a spot – I have, dozens of times and I appreciate every one of them. Sometimes, even after all your best efforts, you wind up with nothing. That’s when a call on the radio is like a voice from above. Sure, if you go looking some of the time you are going to fail. But, when you do find an area and you have it to yourself, even for just a short while, it’s worth the risk! I understand many are up against time limitations and they want all the most recent data, and certainly that is a way to catch fish. I just don’t think it’s the best way. This philosophy is what I want to promote. Trust me, there is a lot more fish out there than you think. Most years.

If everybody stays bunched up in one area, how do you know this is the best spot? I can’t start to tell you how many times we know where there are several schools, and we pick the one we want to fish based on weather or pressure. Pressure. That is an article in itself. Pressure and etiquette.

When I was kid growing up, I always liked the articles that had the fishing stories in them – not just “how to.” It was up to the reader to pull the tips from the articles. Those are the ones I still remember to this day. I hope I can pull some of those off.