WISCH LIST ANGLER SHARES KNOWLEDGE FROM DECADES OF SALTWATER FISHING.Byline: BILL BECHER HUNTINGTON BEACH Huntington Beach, city (1990 pop. 181,519), Orange co., S Calif., on the Pacific coast, across from Santa Catalina Island, in an oil-producing area; inc. 1909. It manufactures aerospace vehicles, aircraft parts, optical instruments, and heat transfer equipment. - Mark Wisch has a little black book full of numbers, and he's sharing them. Wisch is an expert saltwater angler, and the numbers he reveals are the latitude and longitude latitude and longitude Coordinate system by which the position or location of any place on the Earth's surface can be determined and described. Latitude is a measurement of location north or south of the Equator. of some of his favorite fishing spots along the coastline of Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, . But that's not all he's sharing. I talked with Wisch about his book on a fishing trip out of Huntington Beach. He showed me some of his ``bearing books'' that mark his favorite spots, the product of decades of fishing. ``I've been blessed to fish a phenomenal amount,'' said Wisch. It started early. At home, he has a faded photo of himself at about 5 years old, trying to catch fish in a rainy street gutter A street gutter is a depression running alongside a road and parallel to it, designed to collect rainwater flowing along the street and divert it into a storm drain. Where a sidewalk is present, a gutter may simply be formed by the convergence of the road surface and the vertical with a piece of string tied to a branch and a cup hook Noun 1. cup hook - hook (usually on the underside of a shelf) for hanging cups hook - a curved or bent implement for suspending or pulling something . He's gone from string to 50-pound Spectra line and tree branches to Calstar rods, but the focus is the same. Now Wisch wants to give something back to the fishing community. The result is his new book ``Between Two and Twenty Fathoms,'' a 294-page guide to catching more fish along the coast of Southern California. The book provides private boaters the kind of information Wisch says wasn't available when he started fishing. He's focused on the water between 12 and 120 feet deep because that's where most local coastal fishing is done. Like any good hunter, he starts out by knowing his quarry - barracuda barracuda, slender, elongated fish of tropical seas. Barracudas have long snouts and projecting lower jaws armed with large, sharp-edged teeth. They are ferocious, striking at anything that gleams, and are considered excellent game fishes. , bonito bonito: see mackerel. bonito Swift, predaceous schooling fishes (genus Sarda) of the mackerel family (Scombridae). Bonitos, found worldwide, have a striped back and silvery belly and grow to about 30 in. (75 cm) long. , calico bass calico bass n. See black crappie. [From the colored spots on its body.] , halibut halibut: see flatfish. halibut Any of various flatfishes, especially the Atlantic and Pacific halibuts (genus Hippoglossus, family Pleuronectidae), both of which have eyes and colour on the right side. , sand bass, white seabass and yellowtail - and has devoted a chapter in his book to each species. Wisch, who looks a bit professorial with his steely-rimmed glasses and salt-and-pepper goatee, is the owner of the Pacific Edge tackle shop in Huntington Beach. The most common question he gets from anglers who visit his shop is, ``Where do I go to catch something?'' The answers are in the book. He originally sketched in landmarks and compass bearings. Then came Loran, which allowed him to more precisely mark the good fishing spots. Now he's pinpointed locations with GPS and listed them (with ratings) in his book, places like Newport Beach Hard Bottom Area, Haystack, Double Bubbles-W and Big Rock. This is part of the revolution in marine electronics that's made ocean fishing more productive, said Wisch. Now private boaters have access to moving chart GPS, color depth finders and radar. The next thing anglers want to know is what tackle and bait to use. Wisch has supplied answers by species of fish and time of year in a series of tables in the chapter ``Gear at a Glance.'' You find out that white seabass like mackerel mackerel, common name for members of the family Scombridae, 60 species of open-sea fishes, including the albacore, bonito, and tuna. They are characterized by deeply forked tails that narrow greatly where they join the body; small finlets behind both the dorsal and in summer and that you should fish them on Owner Gorilla 4/0 to 6/0 hooks using a 25-pound line on a Shimano TLD (Top Level Domain) The highest level domain category in the Internet domain naming system. There are two types: the generic top level domains (gTLDs) such as .com, .org, and .net, and the country codes, such as .ca, .uk and .jp. See gTLD and Internet domain name. 15/30 Trinidad 20 mounted on a Calstar 800L rod. Years spent on the water means that Wisch can correlate time, tide, weather and water patterns with catching fish. He talks about these topics, too. Because Wisch's techniques depend on placing the boat precisely over structure, he's devoted an entire chapter in his book to anchoring techniques. And because you have to go home sometime, the next chapter is on ``Pulling the Hook.'' Wisch writes like he talks, illustrating his points with anecdotes from his years of fishing. Wisch demonstrated his techniques on our trip, anchoring us right over some subtle structure. We were metering lots of fish but couldn't coax one to bite. Party boat captains were reporting the same thing on the radio - the water had turned cold, and the bite was off. Many anglers might give up at that point, but Wisch had a Plan B. We went back to the harbor, and I got a lesson in halibut fishing. Most anglers drift for halibut, but Wisch likes to fish structure, and even a sandy bottom can have structure. He explained that previous dredging in the harbor had left mounds of sand that attract halibut. Wisch positioned his boat over a spot that had produced a world line-class record halibut. Pretty soon he was attached to a 25-inch halibut that filleted into a fine dinner for four. I managed to land some sub-legal flatties. My assignment: Reread Verb 1. reread - read anew; read again; "He re-read her letters to him" read - interpret something that is written or printed; "read the advertisement"; "Have you read Salman Rushdie?" Chapter 5 on fishing for halibut. CAPTION(S): 3 photos Photo: (1 -- 2) Angler Mark Wisch, above, used years of experience to write ``Between Two and Twenty Fathoms,'' which shows his favorite places to fish along California's coast. At right he uses a light touch on the line to feel what his bait is doing when fishing. (3) When fish weren't biting on this trip, Mark Wisch went to Plan B. The result was this 25-inch halibut, caught on light tackle. Bill Becher/Special to the Daily News |
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