Chapter 5 The Coronado Islands My Father became a successful real-estate broker in a thriving Southern California economy. John Bowen arrived in my life in the fall of 1953. He was a carpenter working on one of Dad’s projects, converting an aging motel to an office building on Citrus Avenue in Covina. I was eleven, old enough to help after school if I wanted to earn money to pursue my passion. A few weeks later, I arrived at the jobsite to find John working on a boat. Dad showed up a few minutes later to help turn it over and set it on blocks in order to sand and paint the bottom. Dad traded my narrow ten-foot boat with the five-horsepower Johnson off for a twelve-foot-run-about with a twenty-horse Mercury. It had a steering wheel and controls on a dash in front. Instead of plowing through the water, it would get up on plane. My job was cleaning the jobsite after school. If I showed up for work every day, John would work with me one afternoon a week and help me rig the boat. It took all winter, but there was a bonus working with John. He belonged to a fishing club that met once a month. John cleared it with Mom and Dad; I met John’s fishing friends who let me join the club. I was the only kid, more mascot than a member, club members were veterans, some, Rangers who served in World War II, and who reenlisted when fighting broke out in Korea. The Korean War ended in July of 1953 and was a fresh topic of discussion. The men compared war stories on the frozen shores of the Korean Peninsula to their scorching African campaign during the Second World War. To an 11-year-old, they were all heroes. Some stories are still vivid memories, but I will leave out the burning barracks, frostbite, and onsite burials of frozen bodies cut in half to fit in a short grave dug in frozen ground. This was a group of grown men recovering from the trauma of war who took an eleven-year-old kid under their wing and taught him how to fish the open oceans and to survive in what could turn from a calm sea to a hostile, deadly environment in a matter of minutes. Fisherman’s Landing in San Diego, California was the jumping off point to the Coronado Islands, which are scattered fifteen to fifty-miles south of San Diego, and eight-miles off the Baja, California mainland. Yellowtail Amberjack schooled around the islands from early spring until the ocean currents started cooling in the fall. Yellowtail is a voracious fish. I’ve caught them on live bait, cut bait, trolling, and by casting iron jigs. The method of choice was to circle the Islands looking for birds diving on bait. Diving birds meant bigger fish driving smaller fish to the surface. Deck hands chummed a school to the boat with Anchovies. When the fish started boiling we switched from bait poles to poles designed to sight cast Jigs. It probably did happen, but until that day, I don’t recall Mom and Dad ever leaving me anywhere for more than evening. I do remember one half-night when Uncle Mickey and Aunt Betty were babysitting; they were somewhat newlyweds and left four of us alone downstairs. From vegetables to canned milk, ravioli, and pork and beans, most food came in cans. I remember; it was fun; we tore the labels off all the cans and piled them in the middle of the kitchen floor. For the next few months, it was potluck unless Mother recognized what was in it from the shape of the can. Spam was a big thing, she usually got that right. It was an overnight and one-day trip, and when I think about it, my first full day away from both Mom and Dad. John and two others picked me up at 8-pm on a Friday night. Mom packed enough fried chicken and potato salad to last a week. There were a dozen fishing poles of various lengths strapped to the rack on the roof. The trunk wasn’t big enough for the boxes of fishing gear, which overflowed into the back seat. It was crowded, but I was too excited to care. It was a three-hour drive to San Diego; we stopped for dinner, it took four. Top speed on a cattleboat was ten-knots. Depending on where the fish had been the day before, it was a three to four-hour boat ride to the Islands. Getting bait could take an hour. Fifteen members of the club and I boarded the forty-four-foot open boat with a fly bridge, small cabin, head, and a makeshift galley between midnight and 1-am. The bait tank took a third of the deck space. We left the dock at two-am among a flurry of others racing toward the bait dock. Trawlers netting bait in the open ocean worked around the weather and with migrating schools. Success was hit and misses; there was never a guarantee there would be enough to go around. Fishermen’s landing had a contract with the bait boat. Private sport boats got left overs when bait was scarce. That night there was plenty. The deckhand on the bait dock relayed a dozen scoops of Anchovies mixed with Sardines to the deckhand on the boat as we moved along making room for sport anglers holding ten-dollar bills in their hands, vying for attention. Eleven-year-old curiosity overwhelmed caution. John grabbed me by the shirt as I crowded my way through to get to the bait tank. “You’ll get drenched, and we don’t want him to spill a net of bait. We’re only allowed one scoop per passenger.” Mesmerized by flipping five-inch Anchovies, Sardines to eight, and Green and Spanish Mackerel to fourteen spilling out of the net and slithering under foot, my mind raced back to the schools of planted Trout in Lake Arrowhead. The bait was bigger than some fish I caught. It didn’t registered the bait had to fit in the mouth of the fish we would be targeting that day. I was too excited to sleep; John made me go to a bunk where I lay for the next few hours bewildered by the adventure, finally dozing between sleep and wakeful recognition until the boat started slowing when we approached the Islands. John was at the rail with two baited rods. He propped his against the bait tank with a hooked sardine circling in one of the wells, the other was leaning against the stern trailing an Anchovy in the prop wash behind the boat. Level wind reels are the choice for a novice who doesn’t understand that when a fish is running against the drag you stop cranking on a spinning reel handle because it twists the line into a tangled mess. Screeching gulls were diving on bait. The deckhand climbed to a perch on the bait tank to start a chum line. Within minutes, shouts of, “Fish on,” rang out above squawking gulls diving on bait. John put the reel in free spool and dropped my bait in the current. When thirty-feet of line passed through the guides he flipped the drag closed and let the Anchovie trail behind the boat. John handed me the rod without another word, and then lifted his nine-foot-pole above the fray and flipped a sardine into a swirl of feeding fish. John hooked up almost at once and disappeared, following a retreating thirty-pound Yellowtail to the bow of the boat. Big fish were swirling around the boat; other anglers had fish on, or were rebating as the deckhand bagged their fish. I watched Yellowtail flopping on deck with my back to my bait; something tugged hard on my line, but it was gone before I realized I had a bite. I retrieved my hook; I was trying to clip a slippery sardine through the nose when the deckhand moved to my side. “The early morning bite is always hectic. John asked me to keep an eye on you.” “What do I do?” “Watch me; I won’t have time to do this more than once.” The sardine in my hand was dead, he grabbed a fresh one from the tank and hooked it through the nose. “Don’t try to cast, you’ll backlash the reel. Drop it over the side, let out about thirty-feet and let it swim in the current behind the boat.” I watched as the line spooled slowly off the reel; a fish picked up the bait fifteen-feet behind the boat. The deckhand controlled the speed of the reel to match the retreating fish by using his thumb to slow it down. He was counting aloud. When he hit fifteen, he threw the drag in gear and lifted on the rod pulling the hook out of the sardine setting it firmly in the jaw of the retreating fish. He handed me the rod, “I have to go, count to ten when using Anchovies, with a Sardine put it in gear and set the hook at fifteen.” The advice was lost on an eleven-year-old with too loose a drag and more fish than he knew how to handle. I was holding a bucking pole watching line disappear when an arm reached around and steadied the pole. “The drag’s too lose, it’ll spool you if we don’t tighten it.” The fish slowed and then headed for the bottom. “Now pump the rod up and down; reel on the down stroke.” My prior record was a fifteen-pound Bonito. I was having a tough time holding the pole with one hand and cranking with the other. The man steadied the pole as I pumped the fish toward the boat and the deckhand waiting with the gaff. Tony was a Ranger who served in Korean and came back to a life of turmoil and pain. He crawled in a frozen foxhole waiting for morning after a bullet smashed through bone in his left arm. Frostbite and infection left him with permanent damage. Doctors suggested removing it, but he wanted to give it another year. Tony lost dexterity, but the strength in his right arm grew in proportion to the loss in his left. The boat carried sixteen-passengers. It was difficult for him to fish with one useless arm, but he loved the fresh smell of salt air and the camaraderie of the men on the boat. He came along for the ride when there was a cancellation and they needed someone to fill the slot. The deckhand brought my first Yellowtail onboard and shook it from the gaff. Tony lifted the twenty-five pound fish from the deck and slid it in a burlap bag tied to the rail. He then grabbed a sardine and handed it to me. “You bait the hook; it’s easier with two hands.” The action continued, but slowed when the sun settled on the water. John came by to check on me, but left me in the hand of my new friend, together we boated four more Yellowtail that day, one over thirty-pounds. It was not big enough for the boat jackpot, but it earned me my first button in the club. The club awarded buttons by species for fish according to size. John gave me a bill cap to pin the button on when the deckhand weighed the fish. I was a convert, and although fresh water game fish would always be a great outing, saltwater was in my blood. I fished with John and the club for three years. It was a varied experience. We chased Yellowtail and log Barracuda near the Coronado islands, Yellow Fin Tuna and Albacore further south. We made a trip to the High Sierras to fish for ten-inch Golden Trout, to Parker Arizona on the Colorado River for Bluegill and Largemouth Bass, to the beach at Oceanside to pluck spawning Grunion from their nests in the surf under a full moon, and to the jetties at Balboa and long beach for whatever was biting. Tony was mostly at my side; he always came along, and he realized that by that time I could handle the pole by myself. One day he gave in and a let the doctors take off his arm. It gave him a new lease on life. They fitted him with a prosthesis that let him hold a pole with his left and crank with his right.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 01:53:30 +0000
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