Once there was an oasis deep inland in the deserts of California. The place was called the Salton Sea. It was a vast area of water covering 30 miles in length and a width of eighteen miles across. In its heyday, this oasis was a very popular holiday destination for thousands of visitors who enjoyed boating, water skiing, and of course fishing. The fishing was so good that its fishery was named at one time the best fishing destination in California especially for Corbina.
When I had arrived in California back in 1976 it was something I read about and wanted to visit. I was part of a group of guys looking for a fishing trip to bond us together and see if the chemistry was there to further along our long-term intentions of forming a saltwater/freshwater fishing club down the road. I decided to take a chartered trip with fishing guide Sunshine George. We arranged to meet him at a place called Skunk Hollow on the eastern side of the Salton Sea. The name of the place didn’t make much sense to me until I arrived at the destination. More on that later.
We were an unusual group of guys from all sorts of backgrounds. I, being the youngest at the age of 30, was definitely the odd man out, since several of my peers were retired or at the retirement age. I couldn’t even think that my fishing experience was close to these salty old guys and kept my mouth shut for better or worse as to not embarrass myself. One guy Lou, hauled a small RV trailer out there whereas John and I opted to carpool out there and stayed at the Salton Sea Hotel the night before our trip. We gathered at 6:00 AM in Skunk Hollow at Lou’s RV trailer but as frequent visitors to this area can attest to, there was a wind storm from hell going on. We could barely see each other and went into Lou’s trailer to get out of the wind and blowing sand.
A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. It was Sunshine George our guide. He told us the wind conditions being what they were made fishing impossible and if the wind stops then we can go fishing. We wanted to wait it out. We all agreed to give it some time since the drive home was long. To make the time go by we decided to play cards. Being guys, this meant a lot of drinking hard liquor, smoking cigars, swearing like drunk sailors on leave, and you get the picture. We were having a great time and didn’t care if there was a hurricane blowing outside as the time passed. Then there was banging on the RV door. The door opened and it was Sunshine George. “You guys still want to go fishing? “The wind stopped blowing and it’s nice out” he queried to us. Now for lack of better terms, we were “shitfaced”, but we all still wanted to go fishing and one at a time we exited the RV rather wobbly and squinting at the strong sunlight once we were out of the RV.
There was a really strong odor of rotting fish everywhere and it began very clear as to why the place was named Skunk Hollow. The cove to the left of us had thousands of rotting Tilapia floating on the surface. The smell was horrid. We quickly gathered our fishing gear from our cars and followed George to our fishing vessel moored offshore about 25 yards from land since it was too shallow to beach this 26 foot Cuddy. Wading out in water up to my waist with tackle box and fishing rods in tow, I made it to the boat. We handed our gear to George who was in the boat and pulled ourselves up the aluminum ladder into the boat. Once situated onboard George gave us a crash course in fishing for Corbina. The course of action was using small live tilapia and drift fishing off certain areas that held schools of Corbina. The Corbina ranged from 5 pounds to over 30 lbs. according to George. Corbina are cousins to the White Sea Bass and extremely tasty. Even back in the 80’s the toxic water of the Salton Sea was questionable to whether you wanted to eat these fish. I was not concerned too much about this at the time and just wanted to catch one. The limit was two fish back then. There was another problem that we had to deal with that day. The temperature was over 100 degrees out there. Man, was it hot ! This was low desert conditions and there was no shade onboard the boat to escape the heat. We drifted for a short while and then “hook up”. Several guys simultaneously hooked up with fish. Corbina can give you a couple of good runs very similar to catching salmon in the ocean then come to the boat easy. Over the rail several nice fish came but I didn’t get bit. We kept drifting in the midday heat picking up one here and there. It got to the point that the outside temperatures were hovering around 112-115 degrees. Off came the tee shirts and we dunked them into the ice cooler's water for heat relief. A couple of us looked like we were getting heatstroke so this action saved our butts. We continued fishing and I finally caught my limit and back to Skunk Hollow we went. All in all, it was quite an adventure and Sunshine George delivered and he was quite entertaining as a guide. He told us the history of the sea and all the particular weird oddities of this area as well. We had a good time and it was the first unofficial trip for a group of guys that eventually formed a fishing club that’s still around today.
