North Country Times
Anglers, surfers compete for space at Oceanside pier
By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer
October 12, 2006
OCEANSIDE — Mackerel, croaker, surfers — all are species regularly caught by anglers fishing from the Oceanside Municipal Pier. While the fish just flop on the pier gasping, the surfers tend to fight back.
“Sometimes they will bite the lines so the hooks and the bait are gone,” said longtime fisherman George Fonseca of Oceanside. “They (yank the fishing line and) flip the poles right over the edge. And the fisherman, he loses his pole. That happens once or twice a week.”
Though surfers and anglers have long been at odds over their surfing and fishing spots at the pier, tensions flared recently when surfers started drifting inside the structure's 100-foot fishing zone to get better waves, regularly getting hooked by unhappy fishermen.
Fonseca said he personally has seen several conflicts migrate from the surf to the beach. “They get in a lot of arguments, and a lot of fistfights happen on the beach,” Fonseca said.
Wayne Larson, who said he has surfed every day at the pier for a decade, has had his share of run-ins with fishermen. The surfer said he regularly paddles close to the pilings, weaving in and out of fishing lines to snag a good wave. Over the years, he said, he has been hooked, and admitted occasionally to biting off a line, but only when he was hooked and there was no other choice.” I try really hard not to break their lines. If I do, I make sure that I buy them a new lure,” Larson said, adding that he was friends with an employee at the small bait shop on the pier who would help him reimburse the fishermen.
But he added that some fishermen seem to see surfers as targets. He recalled one angler who intentionally cast a heavy hook and sinker directly at his head, hitting him just above his eye. “The guy intentionally threw it at me,” Larson said. “I had to go to the VA hospital and have it cut out.”
Capt. Joe Bingham, an Oceanside lifeguard, said the Oceanside Police Department has been called in for violent confrontations between fishermen and surfers. “The police have been called when there's incidents like that,” Bingham said. “It's the police who have to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not to write a ticket or make an arrest.” Police records on arrests resulting from conflicts between fishermen and surfers at the pier were not immediately available Wednesday.
The problem has gotten serious enough that the city’s Harbor and Beaches Department has begun to look for ways to separate the two groups who compete for the same space. Bingham, a Oceanside lifeguard with 20 years of experience within the city, said there has always been conflict between the two groups. He said there has been some talk lately of restricting fishing to an area west of the pier’s bathrooms, but he added that the idea is not in all likelihood to be popular with fishermen, and it may not be legal. “It's not clear whether you can curtail fishing on a fishing pier,” Bingham said.
Rebuilt and rededicated in 1987, part of the pier was paid for with state fishing funds. Bingham said the Oceanside city attorney's office is looking at what changes, if any, could be made to pier fishing, given that the city took state funds to create a fishing pier.
As he watched four large croaker, caught by one of his friends, flop in a bucket, Fonseca said pushing fishermen out of the surf zone would be unfair. He said fish such as croaker prefer to swim in or near the surf, not in deeper water farther west. “That's where the fish bite,” he said.
A city ordinance forbids surfers from coming closer than 100 feet from the pier. And fishermen are not allowed to cast their poles overhead in an attempt to put their hooks beyond the pier’s fishing zone. The city has also devised a clever system for letting surfers know if they are drifting too close. Two large signs, planted on the beach a few feet apart, with one closer to the water, provide a visual warning. Looking from the water to the beach, the signs will read OK if a surfer is outside the fishing zone and KO if he or she is too close.
But those signs are seldom enough to keep surfers away from the pier pilings. Sitting in his truck after a decent morning riding his yellow-and-white long board, Wayne Larson explained the pier’s siren call. “The pier just causes the water to jack up,” Larson said. “You bet a bigger, more consistent wave.”
Wednesday morning, Larson could be seen waving to the fishermen on the pier. He later explained that he has gotten to know many of the regulars and considers them friends. He said that conflicts between fishermen and surfers tend to be between weekend visitors who come to the pier “from wherever.”
“They don't know what’s going on. During the summer, on the weekends, I try to come really early to avoid it,” Larson said.