Go Fish
By Daily Bruin Staff
Nov. 20, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Second-year student Leeor Arshadnia
holds up his catch ““ a dogfish, during a fishing trip.
By Eli Karon
Daily Bruin Contributor
The 5:45 wake-up call came way too early. Stumbling out of bed,
only visions of barn-door halibut and monstrous rock fish prevented
me from regurgitating my breakfast of a stale bagel washed down
with whatever was left in the nearest Dixie cup from the night
before.
Dressed in layers, I splashed some water on my face, grabbed my
rod and reel, climbed in the car, and headed south on the 405
toward Marina Del Rey. Time: 6:45 a.m. The destination was Marina
Del Rey Sportfishing, home of a boat called the “New Del
Mar” and the host of the day’s fishing excursion.
A photographer, 11 friends, and myself boarded the “New
Del Mar” at 7:30 a.m. The forecast called for rain, and it
couldn’t have been more right. It was raining softly as we
boarded the ship.
 Photos by COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin
Sam Slomowitz, a fourth-year MCD biology
student, waits for the perfect moment to catch his fish.
Our group of fellow fishermen was eclectic to say the least.
They included a sixth-grader and his dad, a man named Mr. Lee who
(we later discovered) ate the squid out of the live bait well, a
kid who called himself Jafar and sang the Aladdin theme song
repeatedly, and a group of four who were drinking beers by 7:35
a.m. while playing an intense game of seven-card stud with a one
dollar ante.
The four gamblers were giving worldly advice to the
sixth-grader, telling him to stay in school and study hard. All the
while Jafar sang “A Whole New World” and Mr. Lee ate
the bait.
The boat had two deck hands named Rico and Alabama. Rico is a
loud, enthusiastic, knowledgeable deckhand with a penchant for
practical jokes. Alabama is a rock-guitarist in a band called The
Garage Dogs. His life-long aspiration, however, is to be in the
porn industry under the alias The Alabama Whooping Stick. Oh, and
they’re good fishermen too.
“I’ve worked on boats pretty much my whole
life,” Alabama said. “I love it.” Between telling
me his last name was Hough, “like rough and tough, the women
can’t get enough”¦,” Alabama explained that, when
threading the live squid onto your hook, you have to be careful not
to get bit. Live squid? Getting bit?
At around 8:30 a.m., we dropped our lines down and began
fishing. I grabbed a squid hard by the tail end, earning myself a
stain on my lucky fishing shirt. It was all fun and games until the
squid lost an eye.
The captain, Jeremy Maltz, steered the boat parallel to shore in
a drift, causing our bait to drag along the ocean floor and attract
halibut, the target species of the day. Maltz faced the daunting
task of dodging the approximately 20 other boats surrounding ours.
Luckily for the smaller boats, he is very good at what he does.
“I’ve been doing this for five years,” Maltz
said. “I do it because I love fishing.” In those five
years Maltz has seen things worthy of a National Geographic special
or an episode of The Crocodile Hunter.
“The craziest thing I’ve ever seen is one day we
caught about 18 thresher sharks,” Maltz said. “They
ranged in size from 25 to 150 pounds.”
I caught my first fish at 8:53 a.m, a tom cod weighing in at
about half a pound. When I asked Alabama what it was and if it was
any good, he replied with a straight face: “They’re
really good eating ““ if you like battery acid.”
What did I expect fishing out of Santa Monica Bay?
The boat made several drifts before anybody caught a halibut
that was big enough to keep. The person who finally caught a
“keeper” was yours truly, inciting Alabama and Rico to
scream at the top of their lungs:
“LEEEEGAAAAAAALLLL!!!!!!!!!!!” Meaning my catch
didn’t have to be thrown back. If you frequent any of the
Marina Del Mar Sportfishing boats, the enthused yelling and
screaming can be expected.
“A lot of people come out for the Matt and Rico
show,” Alabama claimed. “Right now it’s halibut
season. The halibut are biting for our boat, but a lot of other
boats aren’t catching anything. Some call it luck, I call it
experience.”
I call it fun, the most fun I’ve had in a long time. It
was cold, rainy, the waters were rough, there was not a ton of
fish, and I still had the time of my life. With the crew and the
other people on our boat, the Marina Del Mar experience is an
affair everyone should have while living so close to the ocean.
Jesse Naghi, one of the boat’s patrons, summed it up
concisely.
“Deep-sea fishing allows both the experienced fisherman
and the inexperienced fisherman to have a great time,” he
said. “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I love
it just the same.”
