TUNA Line Has Fishermen Hooked

He hooked his first fish at 7 years old. At 14, Matt Kerster bought a skiff and spent his teen-age years cleaning boats at King’s Harbor in exchange for free fishing trips.

Likewise, Phillip Friedman took up the sport when he was 5, was a deckhand in Redondo Beach at 12 and worked on commercial fishing boats while a student at Loyola Marymount University.

They were high school fishing buddies who went off to college, entered the job market and became disillusioned with their careers. About the only thing that made them happy, they found, was sportfishing.

Two years ago, on a fishing trip to San Diego, Friedman approached Kerster with an idea that had been tumbling around in his head for a year: a pay telephone service that provides daily salt-water sportfishing information.

Today, 976-TUNA-line has become their biggest catch.

In its second year, 976-TUNA has “become a force in the industry,” according to Kerster. The TUNA-line handled about 200,000 calls in its first year and should do about the same in 1988, Kerster said. He says it takes about $2,000 to $4,000 a month to operate, with phone companies getting a share of each call.

A call costs 95 cents, plus tolls, if any. A caller can select one of eight fishing reports. The service covers the area south of Morro Bay to the southern tip of Baja California.

“We were both disappointed in what we were doing with our lives,” explained Friedman, now a teacher at Bishop Montgomery High School.

Kerster, a marketing major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, worked in commercial real estate. Now he devotes his life full time to 976 projects.

“There’s a tremendous amount of potential in commercial real estate,” he said. “But I discovered it was not my cup of tea.”

As do most salt-water fishermen, Kerster and Friedman read the fish reports published in daily newspapers. And they know that serious fisherman don’t like to wait until the following day to find out where the fish are biting. Since many fishermen begin their day at sunrise, they often bombard fish landings with phone queries the preceding afternoon.

But getting the information out of the landings is sometimes difficult.

“Often you find that the guys at the landings are not personable on the phone. They are not people persons,” Kerster said. “They would not treat people the way they should be treated.”

Kerster reasoned that if an angler in the South Bay wanted to find out if albacore were running in San Diego, for instance, he could call to one of several landings there. But with about 25 landings from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, a fisherman could spend a lot of money looking for a run of albacore.

“This way, one call catches all,” Kerster said.

But just how valuable is the service? A reporter mentioned to an acquaintance that he had just interviewed a man who does telephone fishing reports for a living. The acquaintance turned out to be an avid fisherman.

“976-TUNA, huh?” was the response. “I just dialed it today to see what was running. I call it all the time.”

Kerster handles the marketing and promotions for 976-TUNA. Friedman provides the voice. Both work out of their homes. Often they provide extra tips, such as what kinds of lures are being used to catch fish. Sometimes Friedman will provide a live interview with a boat captain. That is the type of information Kerster says he would like to get if he were a caller.

“I’m a hard-core fisherman,” he said.

He is also something of a scholar on local fishing history.

“I can rattle off the history of fish runs in Southern California,” he said. He proceeded to name a few of the better fishing seasons.

Among his thoughts: Barracuda seem to be coming back after being fished out in the mid-to-late 1960s. Also, the warm-water condition known as “El Nino,” which occurred in the early part of this decade, was a boon for fishermen.

Friedman sounds a similar bell: “Albacore is the fish that gets everyone in a frenzy around here. (Since the last El Nino), we’ve had three bad seasons with few albacore.”

Friedman said the most recent reports of warmer water could increase the number of tropical fish taken, including yellowfin tuna.

In his sparsely furnished Redondo Beach condominium, Kerster has old photographs from his salt-water excursions. There’s even a photo of him when he was 9 months old with his father, George, who is supporting a good-sized barracuda in one hand and Matt in the other.

The room Kerster works out of is barely 10 feet by 12 feet. A set of weights rest on the floor near an old mahogany desk. He is wearing faded 501 jeans, tennis shoes and a polo shirt that bears a 976-TUNA logo: a fish jumping over a telephone.

Like most fishermen’s, Kerster’s day starts early. He takes phone calls on a business line (not 976-TUNA) at the desk. A reporter was interrupted four times by calls during an interview. One came from a well-known West Coast outdoor publication that wanted an update on the first sighting of albacore.

Friedman calls landings for fish counts about 4 p.m. from his Torrance home. By 7 p.m. he has updated each of the eight lines of 976-TUNA. If new information becomes available, he may update a tape as late as midnight.

Friedman records the messages live over a telephone link with a receiving station in downtown Los Angeles called a “space broker.” 976-TUNA leases its equipment at the site on Broadway. When a caller dials 976-TUNA, the call is actually being received downtown, not at either of the men’s residence.

The TUNA-line currently provides only salt-water information because “salt-water guys are more fanatical,” Kerster said.

“Salt-water sportfishing is more exciting. You get these big fish that can tear you apart. It’s the excitement of catching a big fish.”

Gleaning information for the service is a daily test. The men count on friends and acquaintances to supplement the reports. They have relied on travel agents and old salts, skippers and wharf men. Getting that little extra lowdown on the happening spots can make or break the service, Kerster said.

“Fishermen are a unique breed,” he said. “They like to talk. I don’t care where you go, you will always find a group of fisherman sharing stories.”

Kerster says tapping them is the key. But there have been times when landing operators fudged fish counts, he declared. When that happens, according to Kerster, the TUNA owners “tell it like it is” to the violator.

“We just can’t do business that way,” he said.

Kerster says he thinks his service has slowed the fudging some.

“Fudging has been notorious in the industry for a long time,” he said. “I make the point to the landings that we are helping them and that they can’t get away with doing business that way.”

976-TUNA seems to have been well received by most landings.

“It’s an extremely helpful service,” said Dan Armstrong of Redondo Sportfishing. “It boosts our business. From a fisherman’s point of view, it saves a lot of money in telephone calls.”

Kerster hopes the telephone service becomes the “spokesman” for sportfishing in Southern California.

So far, “it has worked better than I have ever dreamed,” he said.

Friedman agreed.

“This has been a success, way beyond my wildest expectations.”