By LEN BOSE
While watching a video the other day posted on the Balboa Angling Club’s Facebook page reviewing the Lilly Call Tournament, I noticed the speaker was Jimmy Decker. I had grown up with the Decker family all through school in Huntington Beach and thought it would make for a good interview.
Decker was the oldest of three sons all born a year apart from each other. His grandfather owned a summer home on “The Silver Coast” now referred to as the Rhine Channel.
“As soon as I was out of diapers and able to walk, my grandfather would take me out fishing and give my parents a break…he was always on the water. Back by the Cannery when the Cannery was active, I would fish off the dock. We went out with his buddies and I was the 5-year-old deckhand. I fished with my grandfather up until my earlier 20s,” said Decker.
It just so happened that Decker and I were both born in Arcadia, Calif. and our parents moved to Huntington Beach in the early 1960s.
Decker’s mentors growing up in Newport Harbor were, of course, his grandfather and Mike Gardner. “Mike Gardner was the first inshore saltwater bass guy; he was the one that started two guys on a small boat fishing in the shallows for spotted bass. I fished a lot with him, he passed away three years ago. Mike was ‘the guy’ when it came to fishing spotted bay bass in Newport Harbor,” Decker recalled. I then asked about the kids coming into the sport. “There are a lot of kids fishing, fishing is a cool thing now. There are a lot of kids 8-15 years old on their bikes, with fishing rods and backpacks. Nothing can be better,” Decker said.
“I really got into light tackle fishing about 20 years ago and became a member of the Balboa Angling Club. I’ve been a past president and on the board of directors a couple of times. I enjoy the camaraderie of the club and find being a member is one of the best values on our harbor,” Decker said.
Decker has his 100-ton captain’s license and worked Davy’s Locker boats for eight years. Today he has his own 243 Everglade Center Console boat and will provide fishing guide half-day runs for two people inshore, or full-day Catalina and San Clemente Island runs when the weather is permitting. He does offshore tuna and marlin runs later in the fall.
Decker is on the water more than anyone else I know and I wanted to get his observations, as he is one of our harbor’s best fishermen. When asked how our harbor reacted to the last dredging of the lower bay, he said: “The first dredging they dug out the shallows and it really silted out the eelgrass, you remember the harbor was brown for months. I target the spotted bay bass. If they don’t have conditions that they like, they will migrate north to the other harbors until they find more suitable living conditions. It was just getting back to be reasonably good,” he said.
Then I asked if the harbor got cleaned out from the last dredging. “The water quality has greatly improved, over the last couple of years, dude. On a clear day with a little bit of sun you can see the bottom, 17 feet down. When that happens, you know you are not going to catch anything, it is just too clear. When it’s really clear like that you know it’s going to be a tough fishing day. You can tell the water quality has really improved as all that eelgrass in the BYC moorings is really good there all the way to the back near the Coast Guard station,” Decker said.
When discussing this summer’s dredging project Decker said, “We are going to run into the same problem with silting up as last time. In five years, it will be nice because we will have a much larger flush of clean water, as we are going to have more cubic feet of water on every tide. It’s going to take a long time for the silt to get flushed out. It will make the harbor better, in the long run, more water movement gets more fish activated. Once everything gets cleaned up and settled down it will improve the fishing. We might get more species as sand bass like deeper water so we might get more sand bass in the bay from the Pavilion outwards. I am sure things will improve for the better, it’s just going to take a while.”
I asked Decker if the harbor needed another boat launch ramp. “There really is no place to put one unfortunately. The Dunes launch ramp is phenomenal, it’s a great facility with wash downs, five lanes with long docks that makes launching easy for one person. There is not a better launch ramp facility than Newport Beach,” Decker said.
I assume fishermen and sailors all have their superstitions, so when I asked Decker of his, he said, “I don’t know if they are superstitions, but I try not to fish bass in the morning after a full moon. I don’t like to fish if the wind is blowing out of the southeast when we are marlin fishing. I have the same three shirts that I wear in order, same gloves, lucky crimping tools.”
I found our interview very interesting for so many reasons. Decker and I came to the beach from the foothills, and our passion for the harbor is strong with both of us wanting the best for the harbor with access for the next generations to have the same life we have been so fortunate to have on our harbor. If you are bringing in that old school buddy of yours and you want to show them the best fishing our harbor and coast have to offer, contact fishingwithdecker@yahoo.com, as he is “The Guy!” Hiring Fishing Guys
Sea ya.
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Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport.
