His mantra: Go farther, fish longer

Under a glaring April sun, perspiring crews at the Point Loma sportfishing landings work on the boats that line the waterfront, painting hulls, sanding decks and making repairs to ready the fleet for the upcoming season.

But when 83-year-old Bill Poole sees them, he gets antsy. If he were still captaining a sportfishing boat, he says, he wouldn’t be wasting time on the docks.

“We’ve had great weather for weeks, and nobody’s going out,” he grouses. “Somebody’s got to get the season started. Somebody’s got to go catch some fish. As I’ve always said: Fishermen don’t catch fish; fish catch fishermen.”

Poole’s get-out-and-fish spirit -- and his firm belief that when you catch fish and the word spreads, anglers will come -- has made him a giant in the sportfishing business, especially in San Diego, home of one of the world’s largest sportfishing fleets.

For more than half a century, he has pushed the limits, building bigger and better boats and motoring anglers farther and farther out to sea. It’s a legacy that has led many to regard him as Southern California’s godfather of saltwater sportfishing.

“He’s one of the real pioneers,” says Bob Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California. “It was always Bill Poole to make the next step.”

Poole, a tanned man with strong arms and a head of thick gray hair, isn’t one to discuss the pleasures of sportfishing. Either you get it or you don’t. But he’s sensitive to changes he has seen on the ocean that has provided him with an ample livelihood. He agrees with regulations designed to protect species from overfishing.

“We hurt the black sea bass years ago when we fished them real heavy,” he says. “We didn’t realize what we were doing.”

Poole doesn’t spend as much time on the water as he once did, but he still oversees his businesses, including Fisherman’s Landing in Point Loma and Marina Cortez on Harbor Island, where he is building a 100-suite business hotel. He also owns the Excel, a $3.2-million long-range sportfishing boat that recently returned from a record-setting trip off Mexico with 41 tuna, each weighing more than 200 pounds.

When he’s not working, he’s fishing his 1,000-acre ranch in Montana or hunting big game in Iran, Pakistan, Namibia or Mongolia. For Poole, such adventures are the payoff for the decades he spent building a thriving business.

Poole’s father, Herb, taught him to fish off Long Beach when he was 6 years old. Herb Poole owned a truck and hauled fuel for Signal Oil, moving the family up and down the California coast over the years following the work. When Poole was 9, he found his niche. He’d been fishing with his uncle from Oceanside Pier, reeling in more corvina and perch than anyone out there, when an envious angler asked what his secret was.

“Sand crabs,” Poole said.

“Where’d you buy them?” the man asked.

“I didn’t buy them,” Poole said. “But I’m selling them for 50 cents a dozen.”

So began his career. He went on to sell countless sand crabs. He also sold calico bass, and any other fish he caught, to his grandfather, who owned half a dozen butcher shops in north San Diego County.

But Poole’s serious entry into the sportfishing business came in 1946, at age 22, when he returned from military service in the Navy Air Corps and bought a 125-foot sailboat with his father. The two anchored the boat several miles off Oceanside and transformed it into a fishing barge, shuttling anglers back and forth from the pier.

Two years later, Poole and his father moved south to San Diego and invested a little more than $8,000 in a beat-up 50-foot motorboat that could reach the Coronados Islands on day trips.

Shortly after that he bought the Polaris, a 62-foot Navy boat that he quickly refurbished.

From April to September, Poole captained the boat day after day, taking anglers out in search of yellowtail, sea bass, albacore or whatever else happened to be biting, competing with more than a dozen other boats for passengers.

“For five months we beat our brains out, working around the clock,” Poole says. “You’d kiss your wife hello and goodbye at the same time.”

Back then, a chalkboard posted at the landing tracked the number of fish caught daily on each boat. Anglers heading out often checked the board, so competition was fierce. Fistfights occasionally broke out when a skipper was suspected of inflating his numbers. Poole says he never exaggerated his take, but worked hard to keep Polaris near the top.

“When we got our fanny kicked,” Poole recalls, “I’d go down to the dock, and the guys would give me a hard time: ‘The big green racer fell off today, huh?’ ”

When business fell off for other sportfishing boats between September and April, Poole began venturing farther out, chasing big fish such as bluefin tuna and luring anglers who would pay to join him. In 1951 he took his first payload to Guadalupe Island, 150 miles off Baja. It took him 24 hours to get there. “We felt we were at the end of the world,” he says.

But there was just one problem. At the time, the Coast Guard required sportfishing boats to stay within 50 miles of the nearest port. Legally Poole shouldn’t have gone that far south. So he took a low-key approach to the trips, spreading word quietly to regular customers. He eventually was caught and fined, but soon after, restrictions were eased.

In the mid-1960s the Coast Guard began to allow larger engines in sportfishing boats (until then, most boats were conversions) and Poole and others began commissioning more specialized boats with plush sleeping quarters, powerful engines and improved storage for bait and fuel.

In 1973 Poole launched his own boatbuilding company which soon built the 112-foot Royal Polaris, at the time was the world’s largest sportfishing boat. It allowed him to offer trips to Alijos Rocks, 500 miles south of San Diego, and Hurricane Bank off Cabo San Lucas. Today these destinations are popular fishing spots, but when Poole first fished them, they were little-known.

On a recent afternoon at his Point Loma home, Poole strolls among the nearly 200 animals he has bagged in three spacious trophy rooms. On one wall, a 140-pound leopard crouches on a branch, as if eyeing its prey. Nearby, a 9 1/2-foot brown bear stands on its hind legs. But there are some prize marine catches too. The head of a 922-pound marlin he reeled in off the Great Barrier Reef gazes out from one wall. And nearby is the tail of a 341-pound halibut.

“I caught that one off Alaska,” he says, smiling. “At the time, it was near the world record.”