Young local Cooper Stoddard takes a rest while angling from Stearns Wharf. He’s part of a group of local high schoolers who come early on summer days and stay into the early evening fishing. 
Vern Varian Sr., with son Vern Jr., right, come to the coast from Bakersfield to fish. 
Lompoc resident Nick Beebe started fishing with his dad long ago and has kept at it. He’s been a Stearns Wharf regular for years. 
Several nautical flags fly beneath the Stars and Stripes on Stearns Wharf. 
Santa Barbara High School student Collin Crolius casts off at Stearns Wharf on a recent afternoon. 
A couple of Stearns Wharf anglers silhouetted in front of an outrigger canoe. 
A Stearns Wharf fisherman perhaps senses competition looming.
[Noozhawk’s note: This is the latest in a series of articles on the myriad of recreational activities along the Santa Barbara waterfront. Click here for the complete series index.]
Some waterfront activities involve spiked volleyballs, pop-shoved skateboards, endurance swims and other vigorous elements.
Then there’s fishing on Stearns Wharf. That feels like an eye of contemplation and quiet conversation in the middle of it all, as local anglers bait and drop their lines and wait for a strike.
“It’s all time and luck,” said Santa Barbara High School student Collin Crolius, a Stearns Wharf regular and a veteran angler.
“The right place at the right time. It’s always nice to be here.”
Stearns Wharf was built in 1872, after lumber merchant John Peck Stearns borrowed $41,000 for the 1,600-foot project, according to historian Neal Graffy’s book, Santa Barbara: Then and Now.
Santa Barbara, hard to get to until then, finally had a way to dock ships for cargo and visitors.
“Stearns literally opened the door to Santa Barbara, and the outside world soon rushed in,” Graffy wrote.
Over the years, the wharf has survived disastrous storms and fires and the decline in its commercial uses.
The Stearns Wharf we know today is a tourist magnet with shops, restaurants and attractions such as the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Sea Center, as well as great views of sea, city and mountains.
Of course locals come, too, including the fishing regulars who line the outer perimeter, the designated area for pier fishing.
The furthest-out of the wharf’s businesses is Stearns Wharf Bait & Tackle, which offers gear rental and free advice from owner Mike Drew for catching thresher sharks, halibut, sand bass and much more. The shop’s Instagram page also has plenty of photos of happy anglers with the ones that didn’t get away.
No license is required for fishing from manmade structures like the wharf, but catch and size limits are enforceable, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Crolius comes with a group of friends early, and stays pretty late on summer days. The crew brings provisions for the day.
“We’re targeting thresher sharks, but there’s other species,” he said. “We catch mackerel, sardines, thresher sharks, leopard sharks, bat rays, skates. All sorts of stuff.”
And to eat?
“It depends,” he said. “Thresher sharks we love to eat. Leopard sharks and soupfin, we tend to release those. Mackerel we don’t eat, we use them for bait.
“It’s fun to be out here. It’s nice weather during the summer, nice and warm. It’s fun. I started actually fishing when I was 2 years old. I love it.”
Across the way, Vern Varian Sr. was fishing with his son, Junior, with dog Bitty alongside. The Varians come from Bakersfield to escape the summer heat. Goleta Pier is a favorite spot, and on this day they were trying Stearns.
The day before, they’d been on the Coral Sea sportfishing boat from nearby Sea Landing.
“I caught 20 rockfish and 20 white,” Varian said. “Everyone on the boat caught their limit of each species. Yes, good eating fish.”
Here on Stearns, he added, “I’m hoping to catch some baitfish so I can catch shark — tiger shark, sand shark, dog sharks.”
As with groups of anglers anywhere, they observe each others’ catch, compare notes.
“They caught one in the corner over there, they caught a leopard shark,” Varian said.
Nick Beebe, wearing a T-shirt that says “The Rodfather,” lives in Lompoc and hits Stearns Wharf once or twice a week.
He said he catches “sometimes mackerel, I’ve caught halibut. Thresher shark, a lot of jack smelt.”
“Bat rays? Yes. I try to avoid catching those, because they tangle up everyone’s line. They’re fun to catch, but when there’s a ton of people here, it’s not the best. They just dart all over the place and they’re hard to control sometimes.”
Beebe keeps the mackerel for bait, and likes to eat halibut.
“Otherwise, I throw them back,” he said. “… I love fishing. The area is nice. People are nice.”
But as he’s come here for a few years, he’s noticed a decline in the catch, and in comparing notes, he said others have noticed, too.
“It’s gotten worse, I would say,” Beebe explained. “Like usually around this time there would be mackerel and more sharks or rays, more everything. All the fishermen are trying to get their own theories as to what’s going on.”
Earlier this year, it was reported that commercially caught groundfish stocks were rebounding after years of overfishing, thanks to strict fishery management programs.
But anecdotally, for Beebe and those he talks to, recreational catches are still trending downward.
“For the people who come often, like these kids over here come all the time — they’re usually here before me — you can go all day without catching anything,” he said.
On this day, he’s caught a crab and two jack smelt, a good bait fish for halibut.
The bait is set on the seabottom for halibut, where they feed, “and it has to be moving,” Beebe said. “They like to ambush. So they hide in the sand, and then when something moves by they come out and eat it. The jack smelt tend to get the halibut. Nothing else really hits the jack smelt.”
— Noozhawk correspondent Dennis Moran can be reached at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.