MUD MARLIN AND THE CHARTREUSE GRUB; LURE A WINNER ON BAT RAY, OTHER INSHORE FISH.

Byline: BRETT PAULY Angling

Is that a marlin?

Usually that question gets an unintelligible response from a frantic angler readying for the battle of a lifetime.

Not this time. Only chuckles, ribbing and profanity followed.

For this opponent - the much-maligned bat ray - has long been thought to be unworthy, the laughingstock of inshore marine specimens. But because of their habit of peeling off line - often in screaming fashion when lightweight tackle is employed - with their powerful ``wings,'' they are unaffectionately dubbed mud marlin.

But I quite disagree with the lousy assessment of this unusual and prehistoric species, and - very likely to the dismay of grizzled veterans - I am not alone.

``They're fun,'' said Will Akins, a Grover Beach skipper of a sportfishing charter-boat out of Morro Bay. ``When the halibut aren't biting, you go into the back bays to catch bat rays and leopard sharks.

``Of course, I never tried eating them (rays). I heard someone saying it was good, but they also had about 15 beers, too.''

Too ugly to be sampled by most sportfishermen and often unsavory due to a high urea content in their muscle, Myliobatis californica has a reputation as a trash fish. However, it is considered fine fare in some Asian cultures and was a staple of ancient American Indians here. Yet it isn't even thought to be a game fish, earning no line-class-record consideration by the International Game Fish Association. (Curiously, it does warrant an all-tackle category; a 181-pounder taken from the Huntington Beach Pier set the standard in 1978.)

But few other fish pull on 6- to 10-pound line quite like the bat ray, as I discovered on a sunny Friday in late spring when more than 200 fish in a variety of species were caught and released by four anglers in the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors.

``We need to praise the mud marlin,'' said a somewhat facetious Larry G. Allen, a biology professor at Cal State Northridge who accompanied me on the private boat of Placentia fishing guide Mike Gardner. ``They are really tough fighters.''

On a day when fish are practically jumping in the boat, as they say, there are many stories to tell, and the bat ray was just one of them.

The real star of the day was the bait - a three-inch stick of dynamite in a plastic mold called a chartreuse grub. It fooled a remarkable assortment of targets - yellowfin croaker, sand bass, calico bass, shark, ray, sculpin, halibut, barracuda - proving to be simply irresistible.

So, inshore anglers take heed: You can use any color lure you want, as long as it's yellow-green.

``I know that if the fish are there, I'm going to get them on one of those colors,'' said Allen. ``In those green-water conditions, most days that will out-fish anything else you throw 3-1.''

Nobody really knows why chartreuse works so well, Allen explained. But against the green-tint, plankton-blue color that is common for nutrient-rich back bays, estuaries and inner harbors, it seems to be highly visible to these fish. And the grub - a curly-tail, or shrimp-tail lure frequently fished on a 3/8-ounce, football-shaped leadhead with a size 3/0 hook - appears to mimic a variety of green baitfishes, including the giant kelpfish. Gardner believes that when sent to the bottom, the artificial grub resemble the bivalves of clams - tasty fare for many fish, especially sand bass and the infamous bat ray.

While there may be no science to explain its success, experience certainly does, and I'll take that any day.

``The chartreuse works 24-7, all year long,'' Gardner said. ``It's the most productive lure I got. I have caught fish from Washington all the way to Baja on this lure. And if I only could take one lure, that would be the one that I would use.''

Gardner was fooled on more than one occasion into thinking a bat ray he hooked was` a revered white seabass. ``This is a fish. This is a fish,'' he proclaimed. But it was just a ray. Poor bat ray; it's not even considered a fish.

But Gardner would later recant. ``They're fun,'' he said. ``But they hurt my shoulder. I have arthritis in my shoulder. So I hand them off.''

And I was more than happy to oblige, taking a couple of 40- to 50-pound gift bat rays and cranking the reel handle for all I was worth.

It's awfully tough to bring these unsung heroes to the boat, because once they see the vessel those wings act like propellers with line in tow. Many are inadvertently snagged in the wing, making for a stronger tussle. Therefore, Gardner maintains, you may be relegated to only ``counting coup'' by touching the ray with your rod tip.

The biology of the bat ray is of interest. They have crushing plates in their mouths that are used like vices to break open clams and oysters, Allen explained. They have such a passion for shellfish that oyster farms up the coast are enclosed by fences. The habit of using their wings in hunchbacked fashion in search of buried meals by disturbing sand and sediment is considered an important element in helping to maintain the diversity of the organisms that live in ocean bottoms. Like most sharks and rays, they are very long-lived and slow-growing and have low reproductive output. They can be found swimming alone or in large groups numbering to the thousands.

``Oh, here we go, another mud marlin,'' Allen joked on the next hookup. ``We have found bat-ray central.''

Just my type of place, thank you.

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) The unheralded bat ray, above, and many nearshore fish considered more worthy game often are fooled by small, curly-tailed plastic lures in a shade of yellow-green.

Jay Carroll/Special to the Daily News

(2--Color) California halibut

(3--Color) Yellowfin croaker

(4--Color) Brown smoothhound shark

(5--Color) Barred sand bass

(6--Color) Pacific barracuda