Now There’s Dial-a-Fish : This Telephone Tip Service Helps Southland Saltwater Fishermen Find Out Where the Action Is

The saltwater fishing report that appears every day in this section gives the fisherman-reader a pretty good idea of what’s hot and what’s not.

But sometimes numbers in a fishing report, like figures in a baseball box score don’t tell the whole story. A landing may report a catch of albacore, for example, but the number doesn’t tell you if they were 15-pounders or 50-pounders. It’s like the single shown in the box score--it could be screamer down the line or a dinker off the fists.

Enter a couple of longtime Southland saltwater fishermen, Matt Kerster and Philip Friedman. They have started a telephone tipster service for fishermen. Just call (213) 976-TUNA, and you’ll get what Kerster calls “the whole picture” on saltwater action, from San Diego to Morro Bay.

“Philip and I get together every day about 5 at his house in Torrance, and we spend about an hour talking to party boat skippers from San Diego to Morro Bay,” he said. “We get a good picture of what the fishing’s like up and down the coast, throw in a tackle tip or two from an expert, and put it on a two-minute tape.”

One recent call to 976-TUNA revealed that 176 fishermen on seven San Diego party boats caught 41 albacore.

“This is a very misleading figure,” the voice on the tape says, in a Jim Healy-paced delivery. “These fish are in the 35- to 45-pound class and skippers report most of their fishermen are coming on board under-tackled. . . . They recommend 40- to 60-pound test line. . . . Many times more albacore are being lost than are being caught.

“Meanwhile, on the local scene, the picture is generally slow. . . . An exception are good catches of bonito and rock fish at some landings. . . . Albacore have dropped off slightly at Morro Bay, where seas are running 3 to 5 feet. . . . Good numbers of yellowtail off Rocky Point, but make sure the boat you’re going on has live squid.”

The tape concludes with a big-albacore tackle tip by Southland fishing writer Nick Curcione: “ . . . These (fast-swimming) albacore are real chow hounds . . . if you’re rod is at a 45-degree angle, that in itself is enough to set the hook, when you drop your reel into gear . . . “

Calls to 976-TUNA from the 213 area code cost 95 cents. Kerster and Friedman lease their line from a telephone communications firm that also supplies 976 lines for skiing conditions, sports scores, horse racing results and football odds.

“It varies, but we’re getting maybe 50 to 100 calls a day,” Kerster said.

“Philip and I have fished together on party boats for over 10 years and we knew a lot of skippers,” Kerster said. “They’re the best source of information. They’re out there everyday. But what we’re trying to do is try to paint a picture of the fishing conditions, to go behind the numbers a little bit.

“Phil came up with the idea. He bounced it off a couple of people we know who liked it, and when he hit me with it I loved it. We’re doing some advertising, we think it will grow.

“We think a guy who’s considering going fishing can save time and money by dialing our number. I mean, if you were to call all the landings along the coast, trying to figure out where to go fishing, you’d run up a phone bill a lot bigger than 95 cents.”