“This food is so much healthier. But he said he was supporting and enforcing the compromise with the bow fishermen.Mr. “If I went home tomorrow, my children would all be there. At night you might also see a few black croaker.Sharays too are common in the inshore to mid-pier area. “When David’s away, I ask my girlfriends to come round and bring some fish heads. The man who called out the first word, “huli!” — catch! You try not to sway when each unseen roller below you strikes the pier. “I call it the tree-hugger factor.” He said some accidents had occurred, most involving bow fishermen shooting other bow fishermen. But mostly he’s mad that more people don’t live the pier life as fully as the Filipinos do. As a consequence, the state allowed the San Diego Unified Port District to take control of the city’s tidelands and pier with the Port inheriting the $350,000 annual payments. His friends call him Blake the Caveman, and it is not meant as an insult. Most of them are old. “Too big.”This fall morning, months later, in broad daylight, IB pier looks more prosaic. The skies are clear, the wind is fresh and the water is ice blue.

Shortly thereafter Angelo Asuncion, San Ysidro, landed a 3 1/4 pound silver salmon. It was a seven pound, two ounce beauty and there’s no doubt about this one. Jan Kahookela, office manager for the sports fishing concession at the Imperial Beach Pier, verified “It was the best catch for us this year.” Chula Vistan Jim Van Cleave Sr., among 35 persons on Monday’s morning trip , caught the biggest fish, a yellowtail estimated at 23 1/4 pounds measuring three-and-a-half-feet. The waters on both sides of the pier are popular with swimmers, surfers and boogie-boarders, except when an inconvenient current brings sewage and runoff from the mouth of the Tijuana River down the coast.The bow fishermen are not supposed to aim more than 20 feet from the pier, but they consider their target zone to extend about 30 yards from it because, they say, they need the extra room to get a clean angle. I can’t help feeling it’s not just the fish that bring so many Filipinos down to the ocean. She has a can of bait: anchovies. However, grunion that showed up on the beach in July ’09 were followed by corvina. Those less hardy reel in their lines, put away their gear and head for the parking lot and home. But real estate impresarios figured a way to bring newly mobile Californians to the shore by building “pleasure piers”— places bustling with dance pavilions, restaurants and arcade games.

Wouldn’t they degrade? Most states limit the take to rough fish like carp, gar, suckers and other bottom-feeders. And the fiestas, when each house on a street cooks something different and you go from house to house eating chicken, fish, fruits. Huli!” Except this time it’s an old woman in a huge, wide-brimmed straw hat held down by a scarf tied under her chin. A 1969 storm caused damage, which necessitated the first reconstruction. A lone surfer, his board pointed to sea, wisely changes his mind, turns about and rides a wave back to the beach.

They sweep along like logs under a carpet, sending a shudder through the pier’s timbers. )His favorites among all that he sampled (and he has sampled all of them): “Ventura Pier, with a beautiful sunset and those islands in the background, can be great.” And “The ‘B’ Street Pier in Crescent City—that is something.”Momentarily less pier rat and more uncrowned poet laureate of California’s piers, Jones explains their primal allure. A tram operation scheduled for the pier even had to change its plans because of the crowding on the pier.Stories about the pier appeared regularly in the local papers and a young angler named Ken Jones, recently transplanted from Newport Beach and the Newport Pier, began to visit and fish the pier. We finally decided to move to the shallower waters to see if we could catch some croakers or perch.Just inshore from the restroom area stood a petite lady catching queenfish.