My last season on the Mustang

It was the mid-1980's, and one of the last banner years for albacore. It June, and I had gotten a job decking on the Mustang. Now I was going to make BIG sidemoney. Around that time, the albies were already biting in San Diego, but it was not yet time for us to go yet. One day, we all had a trip off and we were all itching to go fishing. Danny Kadota called Islandia in San Diego to see if there were any boats available that we could commandeer. The Pursuit was available - however, the steering was shot. There was a couple of guys that hung around Ports'O'Call at the time - Tom Vernor and a friend of his, they were welders. So, off we all went to San Diego - Danny, Marty, Ed, Tom, Target, Timmy and a couple of others I don't remember. Once we got down to San Diego, the welders went right to work. Within a couple of hours, the steering was fixed and we were on our way to the bait receivers. The steering was not the only thing not working. The loran was not working either. Oh well. We were underway around 2 in the morning. By daylight - we didn't really know where we were. Some of us had a bit of whiskey the night before and were not in the best of shape. We proceeded to put out the jigs and BAM. We were into the fish. WIDE OPEN. The rest of the fleet were having a tough day - and wanted to know where we were. We could not tell them where we were. By around noon, we had more albacore than we knew what to do with - well over 100 fish for 10 guys or so. We started towards home - and I remember Tom had this meat stick of a trolling rod he was trolling with. We all decided not to fish anymore - except Tom. He had his jig in the water as soon as we started for home. Well, while he was not paying attention to his rod - he gets bit. We all see it, but decide not to tell Tom. It took him a couple of minutes - but once he realized he was on, neither Timmy or Danny would stop the boat. All of us laughed our heads off while Tom struggled with the fish. We were back to the docks by 1 or 2 in the afternoon with 0ver 100 albacore. What the heck were we going to do with it all? Off the back of the boat, we would give an albacore to anyone walking by that wanted one. This trip started thing off for the upcoming season. By the time we took the Mustang to San Diego, the bite was WFO. Most of the boats were reporting 150+ fish daily. The Mustang was a very popular charter boat at the time and was booked almost solid with charters from the time we got down there in early July to well into September. A normal day would start at around 8 or 9 at night when the charter group would start to arrive. The excited people would ask the same questions every night - what time did the fish start biting, what pound test should they use, what size hook should they use, how big were the fish, etc etc. After a while, you would not have to pay attention to the questions - the answers were programmed in our heads. At around 10 pm, we would leave the docks and head for the bait receivers. After loading bait, we were out of the harbor by 11 or so. Normally, the fish were out 60 to 80 miles or more sometimes. Which meant 6 to 8 hours of driving the boat. Since the pinhead wasn't allowed to drive, the three deckhands would have to drive until daybreak. Every third day was the reprieve - 5 to 6 hours of sleep! It was amazing that we would all function. We would fish until 2 in the afternoon or so, and start our way back to the docks. A couple of us would scrub the boat while the other two would cut fish - fileting and head/gut. Most days when we had over 150 fish, the scrubbers would finish and help finish cutting the fish. By 7 or 8 at night, we would be pulling into the docks and help the passengers unload their fish and tackle. And the whole routine would start all over again. After two weeks of this, I remember calling around to see who had the day off and wanted to work relief. The Fortune - which parked next to us was also busy with charters, but not like us. DeWayne Fox - who is now a respected professor in Delaware, would work relief for me sometimes. Brian Kiyohara - who is now a respected owner/operator of the American Angler used to work relief too. I recall begging and pleading with Brian on the radio - please work for me!! Sometimes, we would get lucky and get to the docks while there was sunlight left. Bonus time!!!! We got to take showers. My favorite thing to do with what little time I had was to sit in the dark behind the tackle shop with a wine cooler. Sometimes we had a couple of minutes, sometimes we had an hour or two. Most of the time it was an hour or less. And on really rare occasions, the boat would break down and have to cancel a trip the next day. OH BOY!!!! We got to go the friendly neighborhood bar and get shitfaced. It might still be there - across the street from the Islandia Hyatt. I was into gin gimlets, Moose was into Whiskey Sours. Yucch. How can anybody drink those. The boat broke down one time and we all went to the bar. We had already been working for a while by then and had plenty of cash. Each of us must have taken a few hundred dollars - and made some waitresses very happy. Somehow, we all made it back to the boat and passed out. The next morning, we all woke up one by one - except Moose. And Danny - being the worst prankster of us all, had an idea. He said - 'when Moose wakes up, what's the first thing he's going to do? He's going to walk around the boat a bit, fill the bucket full of water and go to the head for his morning ritual'. Now a couple of things to mention here - when the boat is tied up at the dock, the shore power is plugged in so that everything works, except the toilets. The toilets usually have running water when the generator is running - but not when we are tied up at the dock. So, you had to take a bucket of water with you if you wanted to go 'number two'. Also, we did have showers on the boat - however, they were in the same room as the toilets. Now, we pointed the shower heads right at the toilet - and shut off the power to the water pump. Get the picture? Now all we had to do was wait for Moose to wake up and go to the head for his morning routine. A while later, Moose wakes up. While the rest of us sat in the galley and watched - just as Danny said, he walked around a bit, then filled up one of the buckets with water and slowly made his way to the head. OH BOY!!!! We made sure to give him plenty of time to pull down his pants, sit down and start concentrating. And then.........'click' - we turned on the water pumps. Moose came out a minute later - thoroughly soaked and cursing at all of us. 'Payback's a bitch!!!!!'. This was one of the most memorable moments during the time I spent on the boats. Hell, this may have been one of the memorable moments in my LIFE!!. All in all, I think we all had a great time working on the Mustang. Another one of the guys we worked with - Mike Frank, went on to get his license, buy a crew boat and converted it to a fishing boat - 'New Image' he called it. After that, he and a partner bought the Freedom from Fred Carrozzo.

working on the boats / 1969 - 2001

I'm not sure about the timeframe. I do know it in the late 60's when I started pinheading on the Freedom - and the last time I worked was on the Royal Polaris on a 10 dayer some time around 2000. I mentioned it a bit on an earlier posting, but the first time I worked on a boat was the 'Freedom'. Scrubbing the boat for a free trip. As a kid, you just couldn't beat it. One of the deckhands at the time - John....I don't remember his last name, and a tall red-haired guy with the mirrored ski sunglasses. I subsequently ran into John on the Royal Polaris, the last time I worked on a boat. He didn't remember me, but I remembered him. He looked pretty much the same, just a bit older. The galley guy was 'Moose'. Now that I think about it, he had the same name as a good friend who I was to work with later. Moose would feed me leftovers after we got done scrubbing. I say 'we' because a lot of times I would work with a guy I went to school with - Mel Mitchell. One particularly memorable meal on the boat I remember was tamales and chili, which I promptly hurled. Funny how my mind works. Some things I remember with amazing clarity, while others are barely a thought. I don't remember how often I worked - but, I remember going quite a bit. Around the late 60's when I was really starting to like fishing, my dad would challenge me to do things after which he would take me fishing. One of the memorable ones was jump-roping 100 times without stopping. If I could accomplish that, my dad would take me fishing. After my stint in the late 60's and early 70's as a pinhead, I would not work on a boat until I started going to college. I moved around a bit after I got out of high school. In a nutshell, I moved out of my folks' house into an apartment complex - 'Friday USA Apartments' it was called. What a party place!! Then I relocated to Las Vegas and the south rim of the Grand Canyon for a few years. I came back to LA and started to work for my parents at their health food stores and eventually started a small takeout restaurant. I fished a lot during those years. When I turned 27, my mother dared me to go to college. I took her up on it and started El Camino Junior College. Then to Cal State Long Beach. But this is the time I worked on the boats a lot. I worked on the Fury out of Ports'O'Call Sportfishing. Every night, we would take out a load of people and fish either Catalina or Santa Barbara. We didn't go to San Clemente much. Timmy Ullon ran the boat, John Haas owned the boat and on deck was Frank Garcia Jr. - and we had our own pinhead. A kid belonging to a rich family - I think the folks just wanted to get him out of their hair. This work was mainly in the summer. Every night at 11pm we would leave, get bait and anchor up at Catalina in the dark waiting for sunrise. One of us would always be up on deckwatch. During the winter and spring, we would have a lot of company at Catalina - the charter boats....namely the Mustang. Danny, Moose, Mark, DeWayne - and them guys always made the 'BIG' sidemoney. As deckhands, we survived on sidemoney - tips and fish cleaning money. On a good trip - Timmy, Frank, the maggot(our pinhead) and I would split $300. Them guys on the Mustang always made $100 or more each. It was irritating. And Moose would needle me all the time. What a miserable individual he was!! We would leave about the same time - and talk to each other on our wheel watches. The ride across the channel to Catalina was not very long - but, we split it up anyway. So, from 12am to 6am was split three ways - 2 hours each. The first watch was cool. You were already awake anyway, and a couple more hours was a piece of cake. The second watch STUNK. After loading bait, you get cleaned up and go immediately to bed, only to be woken up at 2am for your wheel watch. At the end of your watch, you had to wake up the guy on the last watch - and then get another couple of hours before the day started. The third watch was the best. After the bait ordeal, you go immediately to bed for an uninterrupted five to six hours. It was pure heaven. So every third trip - you got the third watch. There was more to the bait ordeal than most people saw. You had to be careful and put the bait into the tanks gingerly and softly. Otherwise, the bait would roll - die in other words. And there is nothing worse than trying to make a day at the island with no live bait. Yeah, we did have frozen squid in the freezers. But with the frozen stuff - you were pretty much limited to what you were going to catch. I'm going to fit in a side story here. The jig sticks of choice were the Sabre 540's - with just a bit cut off the tip so you could fish 40 lb. I don't remember which reel I was using. I think it was the original 300C Newell, but I don't remember. My favorite jig became the CandyBar - the 112, the big one. They came in three sizes, but the one to use was the 112. The color of choice was the GM green - called that because the GM Diesels which powered many of the boats were painted this color. Everywhere we went at Catalina - I threw the CandyBar on the 540. The calico bass fishing at times was awesome. One of the spots we did particularly well at was 'Isthmus Reef'. There were a few spots you could park - our favorite was the west edge of the reef. During the spring, a large portion of the bait was chummers. By that I mean the anchovies were very small - 2 to 3" in size. Not much for putting on a hook - but OH BOY were they good for chumming. You could throw handfuls of the chummers for hours and the fish would continue to bite. So, we would slowly make a chum circle at the west edge of the reef and anchor up. The current had to be going east - otherwise this does not work. So when the conditions were right, the big calicos would bite the jigs....really good. Until mid to late June, the Mustang would remain at Ports'O'Call and fish at Catalina. I remember sitting side by side at Isthmus Reef. Us, the Mustang and even the original Shogun. There were not very many people that fished the longer rods for jigs and much of the time we had this type of fishing to ourselves. Norman Kagawa was running the Shogun. I worked for him a few times too - with Vince Otani and Allan.....an all buddha-head crew. Norman had this jig stick I always wanted. For some reason you couldn't get it anymore - a Lamiglass 6909. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I tried to talk Norman out of that rod. Anyway, by early summer - the charter boats would take off for San Diego for the albacore fishing, and we would have Catalina all to ourselves. I worked on the Fury for a couple of seasons, and I eventually hit the big time.......a job on the Mustang! After the winter/spring season at San Pedro, we were off to San Diego. We parked at Islandia Sportfishing's docks in Mission Bay. The last year I worked on the Mustang was the last year I was at Cal State LB. And what a albacore season it was! For a good portion of the three months of summer, the boat had 150+ albacore every day. This is getting too long. I will continue this story on my next posting.