Huck hits Huntington Beach

Jenny Marder

Dressed as Becky Thatcher in an oversized prairie dress, boots and

pigtails, 9-year-old Nichole Grimes was among about 500 youngsters to

gather at the Huntington Beach Pier Saturday for the 40th annual Huck

Finn Fishing Derby. Children, ages 7 to 15, dressed as their favorite

frontier storybook characters and spent all morning vying for the

derby crown, awarded to the child who caught the most pounds of fish.

The fish weren’t biting for Nichole.

“I’ve tried down there, and I’ve tried down here, and nothing,”

she said and shrugged. “I usually catch fish. This is the first year

that I haven’t caught anything.”

The young angler was disappointed but not discouraged. Nichole

knew that some days, the fish were just slower to the bait. And

besides, she didn’t have her favorite Snoopy fishing pole.

“If you’re not catching fish, you’re just soaking bait,” a voice

over the loudspeaker warned.

It was a lesson in patience for the children. For three hours,

they gazed into the waves, eagerly awaiting a tug on the line, which,

for some, never came. But others reeled in mackerel, surf birch,

smelt, sargo, perch and halibut, which they marched proudly to the

weighing post, before tossing them back.

“Mom, it’s heavy, mom, it’s heavy,” 7-year-old Andrea Hendrixson

insisted, gripping her pole tightly.

“No it’s not, honey,” her mother, Deana, said, feeling for

tautness on the line.

Deana Hendrixson, 42, was one of many moms who grew up competing

in the derby year after year.

“My mom would bring me early in the morning,” Hendrixson said.

“The big thing then was to catch shark.”

Now she shares her childhood hobby with her own daughter, to whom

fishing is a sort of rare treasure.

Nichole, who also fishes with her parents and grandfather, has

become a master in the sport.

“Good plastic bait are plastic worms, the long ones,” she said.

“Plastic crabs and flies are good, but not best. But the stuff I like

best is mussels. It’s easy to get and it works.”

Eleven-year-old Jesse Duarte, who caught a 0.75-pound perch, won

the grand prize for the largest fish of the day.

Nicholas Castro won first place in the costume contest as the best

dressed Huck Finn, with Ryan Shean and Matt Glover placing second and

third.

And despite a slow day fishing, Nichole was named the third

best-dressed Becky Thatcher of the day. First and second place went

to Megan Glover and Kristi Shean, respectively.