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.