FISH WARS: WHO HAS CLAIMS TO COORDINATES OF FISHING HOLES?

Byline: Brett Pauly Angling

In this push-button world, few old-school traditions seem safe - not even secret fishing holes held near and dear to skippers of saltwater sport-fishing boats for years.

Out with triangulation and visual landmarks to locate a clandestine rock or pinnacle that has produced a bounty of game fish. In with the Global Positioning System. Better known as GPS, the precise computerized navigational luxury eliminates the hard work.

But a debate is brewing over how to acquire the coordinates that lead anglers to the promised land: Should party-boat passengers carrying hand-held GPS units on fishing trips copy the data for their own purposes?

Some say it is tantamount to stealing, an act of piracy that compromises the livelihoods of skippers, deckhands and other crew members.

``Nobody else knew the spots, because they were so hard to get on, to find,'' said Bill Cavanaugh of San Diego, a skipper on the long-range boat Excel who cut his teeth as a deckhand in Ventura during the mid-1980s. ``That stuff was sacred; that's how I considered it. But there were backstabbers who stole spots and that opened it up to everybody. (Other skippers) would have little spies who would come out.''

Some say it's a free sea and such information should be available to anyone who pays the price of the boat ticket.

Both camps offer compelling arguments, but ultimately it's an issue of ethics and etiquette that will be bandied about until - and likely long after - the next navigational technology is ushered in.

Those who feel they have the most to lose are the captains - the parties responsible for putting customers on fish, often by visiting angling hot spots that few others may know about. Having an angler punch in the spot on a personal GPS unit to be used for future trips on private boats - or, worse, pilfering the coordinates for competing party boats - is nothing less than a violation of trust, they claim.

It's one of the reasons Cavanaugh pulled up stakes in Ventura in favor of the San Diego multiday fishing fleet.

``These guys on private boats want to go out and fish these coordinates on their boats,'' Cavanaugh said. ``On the other side of the coin, you got a guy trying to make a living - and it's becoming more difficult.''

He was taken aback by the brazen behavior of anglers he claims were out to nab his skipper's fishing havens.

``These were the guys in the wheelhouse, our buddies, the guys feeding us meatball sandwiches,'' Cavanaugh said. ``They would look at the Loran (a navigational tool developed prior to GPS), memorize the coordinates and there you go. It was a slow progression, but nothing is sacred anymore.''

GPS is of lesser importance in the open tuna grounds to the south, where pelagic fish migrate throughout a water column far too deep for anchoring. Up north, careful monitoring of coordinates is critical to structure-oriented fishing, where schools of many species can hold on a single rock, a wellhead, a shipwreck or slabs of riprap; finding a prolific angling site - no matter how unscrupulously - can make or break a day's outing.

``That's why I'm down here fishing on a long-range boat. I got disgusted with what was going on locally,'' Cavanaugh said. ``These are spots where you can't fish two boats at once - way too small. There was too much competition with other sport-fishing boats in that region, overpressuring the area and private boats fishing hard.

``It's gotten out of hand.''

Many sport-fishing enthusiasts are on board with the logic.

``Unequivocally, a small boater should not be really sponging off party-boat or charter-boat operations,'' said Ronnie Kovach of Huntington Beach, who hosts ``Fishing Expeditions'' on sports-talk radio KXTA-AM (1150) and a national cable-television show of the same title.

``I think the recreational angler should try to find (productive spots) on his own. I think it becomes almost unethical to steal spots that party-boat and charter-boat skippers have worked so hard to find and to cherish in order for them to basically come up with successful catches for their paying customers.''

Yet the jury is out, as others close to the issue offer different viewpoints.

``I've been on boats where we'll be on a wide-open bite and there is a guy with a hand-held (GPS unit) and he puts in the coordinates, so he's not even stealing them from up there (in the wheelhouse),'' said Joe Contaldi of La Canada Flintridge, manager of the Oxnard Sport Chalet who has organized many sport-fishing charter trips. ``He's just getting them from being there (on the water).''

But he's on the skipper's boat.

``He has paid to be on there,'' Contaldi said.

How secret are these locations anyhow?

``They're not, they're not,'' he said. ``With today's technology, all the electronics we have, everything that's out there, there are no secret spots. Most of the coordinates are in books already.''

So why are skippers so incensed about losing their special fishing holes?

``Most of them are probably the old-time guys, who, back in the old days, didn't have GPS to help them out,'' Contaldi said. ``Maybe they're bitter because skippers nowadays have easy access to information.''

Ernie Prieto in Granada Hills has seen both sides of the situation as a salesman at Bob Sands Fishing Tackle in Van Nuys and a deckhand aboard the Chubasco out of Long Beach Sportfishing.

``I don't think there's a problem. It's a big ocean, but there are few secrets,'' Prieto said. ``To be opposed to (copying coordinates) is a waste of energy, because people are going to do it. It's a free ocean.''

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