San Clemente Anglers Tell Fish Stories to Rapt Crowd

Wilson “Bogie” Bogan was in his boat off San Clemente with fellow fisherman Ken Nielsen and Wallace “Bud” Brown when he almost got dragged off the side of his skiff by a black sea bass.

Bogan said he had only about 100 yards of line on his reel when he stepped into the galley. By the time his shipmates hollered, “You got a bite,” and he had bounded over to grab his pole, the furiously spinning reel was nearly empty of line.

Bogan seized the handle, and the fish, 140 pounds of marine muscle, continued bolting through the water and knocking Bogan to his knees, dragging him along the rail, the stern railing stopping him.

The group finally hauled the black sea bass, tangled in a huge lump of kelp, aboard the skiff.

This was just one of the stories from six decades of fishing related by three old salts to an audience at . Bogan and Brown, still sport fishing, have hauled in catches in locales in Venezuela, Australia, Suriname, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Brazil and 15 other countries.

About 40 people showed up to hear the fish tales, part of the Casa's sport fishing history exhibit.

The trio worked on a charter sport fishing boat in San Clemente, a skiff they built themselves, from the early '50s to the early ‘60s, and then returned to the ocean again from 1971 through 1983.

It was in those early years that Bogan and Brown boarded with Ken Nielsen’s family—the burly, bearded Nielsen was only 11 when he met the two men, then around 23 years old, but they struck up a close friendship.

Bogan and Brown took Nielsen out on the boat, leading him to catch a 137-pound marlin on his first trip.

Nielsen, in the sport fishing business to this day, said after that, he was hooked.

You can still see the San Clemente fishing history exhibit, which includes artifacts from Native American fishermen through the 1950s and '60s to today, with information aboutinstalled in 2008.