It's Thanksgiving eve, and a guy in a camouflage jacket is pacing in the almost empty parking lot behind a municipal golf course east of Los Angeles. His eyes dart from a group of workers loitering outside their trucks to a chain-link fence bordering the course.

"Hold on," he says, then whips out his cell phone and speed-dials.

"Hi, Mom."

He asks her if he's got the right location. Is this the way to the gate where she walks her dogs?

She says that it is.

 John tucks a plastic box under his arm and walks quickly up a one-lane dirt road toward the undulating fairways. He tries to keep his head down and his goateed chin pinned to his chest, but more than once he gives in to the urge to glance back at the men standing under the lights. John decides that they're not watching him. "It doesn't look like I'm doing anything wrong," he says.

A few hundred yards down the road he finds the gate, just where Mom said it would be. It's open. John slogs through the thick bent grass in the direction of the only light--an anemic fluorescent coil above the distant entrance to a concrete restroom. The sounds of ducks quacking and the nearby 10 freeway buzzing ride on cool air with a distinctive odor: two parts freshly cut grass, one part pesticide.

 John stops at the edge of an amoeba-shaped pond. He pulls a tiny flashlight from his breast pocket, pops it in his mouth and then plucks a mock Roboworm from the plastic box. Within seconds it's skewered on a barbless hook that dangles from a fishing rod. John scans the course from right to left and back again--all's clear--and with a snap of a wrist the rubber bait soars over the water. A tiny ripple appears in the glow of an almost full moon, confirming touchdown.

John, a 34-year-old with the thick physique of a rugby player, lives nearby and works odd jobs when he isn't poaching. He belongs to a semi-secret, completely unorganized underground of sport fishermen who sneak onto golf courses across the country to prey on unsuspecting bass, catfish, and whatever else swims among the sunken golf balls. In Southern California, these guerrilla anglers, who divulge their misdemeanors on the condition of anonymity, can pick from hundreds of private and public courses with at least one body of water guarding a green or lining a fairway. Some of the most committed operatives covertly plant desired species in the ponds, creating an urban version of the neighborhood fishing hole.

 Bass fishermen are particularly attracted to these off-limit, or "low pressure" in angler speak, waters because they tend to obsess about the size of their catches. You've seen these guys on the Outdoor Life Network. They schlep boats equipped with electronic fish finders to huge lakes stocked with hatchery fish, including Castaic and Pyramid in Southern California, in hopes of hauling in something the weight of a chain saw. But the behemoths are few and far between. "If you find a pond with big bass in it, it's usually one that has ‘No Trespassing' signs around it, and requires a nighttime mission," says Chuck Bauer, a noted big bass specialist and veteran golf course poacher from Dallas. "The more protected the pond is, the bigger the fish are."

 Bass, like deer, get wilier with age, Bauer says. "There are always a few of them big old bucks with huge horns. The same thing with bass. A 14-pound bass is going to be much smarter than a 10-pound bass. Three- pound bass? They're dumb."

If left unmolested, bass can grow a pound a year on a diet of fish, plants, ducklings and smaller bass. What makes golf course bass so appealing to poachers is that they gain size without getting wise to the tactics that anglers use against their scaly counterparts in sanctioned waters. They bulk up and stay dumb.

Catfish are no smarter. Ask Rick, a color correction technician in the film industry, who often fishes off the Santa Monica Pier during his lunch hour. He says he caught a five-pounder on a spinnerbait down in Sylmar, at a little executive course called El Cariso. "You wouldn't think there would be any fish, but I caught a big catfish," he says.

 He snagged the lunker during the day by stashing a collapsible rod in with his woods and irons. It's tricky to combine fishing with a round of golf, Rick concedes, but the glacial pace of the sport presents time, usually while waiting for a tee, to sneak off to water's edge. "I break out a little miniature steel pole, two eyes on it and a casting reel," Rick says.

The odds of being detected are low. Consider that an eighteen-hole golf course covers from 100 to 400 acres, with each hole roughly 375 yards long from tee to green. There are rarely more than three foursomes, or a maximum of 12 players, per hole. Changes in elevation, trees, mounds, bunkers, even high grass can obscure poachers. Marshals sometimes patrol the layouts, but their job is to prod slow pokes. Only once, Rick says, did a course employee politely ask him never to return.

John is also an avid golfer. Though he prefers poaching at night, when it's easier to conceal a rod, he thinks Rick might be on to something. "You've got some time, you're waiting on another foursome and you see a fish. You might want to make a couple of casts," he says. I'm not saying it's something the golf course will approve of."

The Roboworm plops into the water again, and again. The largemouths that John hopes to hook on this cold night just ain't biting. In an attempt to get his fishing head on, John clams up. Yet another cast--kerplunk!--he's all business now.

*****

It's around dusk, before leaving his apartment for the night mission, and John sifts through a small tackle box of homemade bait, looking for the ideal worm on which to hook a bass. "I do a lot of my own hand pouring," he says. "Me and a good buddy of mine have made replicas of popular worms. We buy the plastic, scents, and colors and mold them ourselves. You can save quite a bit of money."

John, it turns out, is a former game warden for the California Department of Fish and Game, and he's seriously into fish. They're everywhere in the living room of his apartment, mounted on the walls, swimming in a gurgling aquarium, pictured in weathered piscatorial manuals and old scrapbooks lining the bookshelves.

Tonight, because of the cool temperature and low light, John selects one of his 6-inch cinnamon Roboworm knockoffs, which he'll Texas rig--a method of securing a hook to bait so it'll slip through weeds--on a four-pound test line. He chooses this "presentation" mostly because of the sound it will produce; a clicking, not unlike like that of a crayfish bumping against rocks. Furthermore, its unexposed hook will enable the worm to slide easily through rocks, trees, and crevices and into the places where, tonight, the loafing bass will be hanging out.

Presentation is everything to a bass master. Water and weather conditions dictate lure selection and a poorly chosen bait, (the wrong type, color, size, or movement) or incorrect setup almost guarantees an angler will walk away empty-handed. In fact, the weather dictates if it's worth fishing at all. Low barometric pressure, for example, according to Chuck Bauer, puts bass in a sort of stasis. Cold weather does the same. "It takes a lot of education and knowledge to become proficient. To know that everyday you're going to catch a fish." Fishing for less savvy and aggressive types of fishjust isn't nearly as challenging, or for that matter, fun, Bauer says.

 Catfish is a lazy man's fish, and, bass masters say, trout isn't much better. Just like golf, bass fishing is jam-packed with tips, techniques, and "top secret" information guaranteed to help anglers hook the predatory fish again and again. When even the color of one's clothing can affect bass behavior (a bright white shirt on a sunny day alerts older, wiser and, hence, bigger-bass to the presence of an angler) you know there's a lot to learn.

 But shirt color doesn't mean a thing when you sneak onto a golf course to fish at night. The "youthful excitement," as Bauer puts it, to fishing on a golf course is just one reason anglers risk a poaching citation. The maximum fine for poaching, according to the California Department of Fish and Game, is $1,000 and/or one year in county jail--a misdemeanor. However, the punishment doled out is usually a slap on the wrist, which is what John once received when he got busted fishing a nearby unsanctioned lake before sundown.

 They may break the law, but poachers scrupulously follow catch-and-release etiquette. Perhaps it's because they're sensitive. Or they like the idea of hooking the same fish another day. Or maybe the thought of eating a bass that lives in reclaimed water grosses them out. "If I'm that hungry I can go to McDonald's and order a Filet-o-Fish sandwich," John says.

Here's another theory: The poachers don't deplete the supply because they planted the fish there in the first place. It's illegal, also a misdemeanor, in California to transport live fish caught in recreational lakes, but anyone with a live well, or holding tank, on their boat could easily transfer fish to a new home. Though he won't admit to stocking bass, John refers to the fish he's trying to catch as "pets," and says he's eager to see "how they're doing." With his tackle box and fishing rod in hand, John kicks his screen door closed and heads toward the car that will take him to the golf course. The puny trunk of the Japanese two-door can't accommodate John's one-piece rod, so he sticks it out the window, where it will stay for the mile-long trip.

*****

John's frustrated.

Cold air means slow bass and slow bass mean slow fishing, and John's just reeling way too fast. He's been casting for nearly an hour and the only thing he has to show for it are some weeds dangling off the Roboworm. The green slime is annoying him almost as much as the turtles wreaking havoc on the bass nests. "I despise them," he grumbles.

In an attempt to draw out some bass and elude the weeds, John's relocated twice around the perimeter of the lake. But even with the weeds in the distance, and the moon directly in his face assisting his sight, he's got nothing to show for his efforts. Worse, his line is now a snarl, in what he refers to as a "bird's nest." The temperature has dropped into the upper 40's and tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but John refuses to quit. "When I come here I want to at least get one. Just to prove to myself that I can get ‘em," he says as he starts to untangle the line.

The rod jolts. John jerks it to set the hook. "What are the odds of that?," he says, chuckling. As soon as he stops paying attention, he lands one. Since the bird's nest has completely jammed his reel, John has to pull the fish to shore, and for the first time tonight he seems confident in what he's doing. He flicks on the flashlight while pulling pliers out of his pocket, all the while negotiating the aggravated bass.

Suddenly the fish jumps into the faint moonlight.

John sticks the light in his mouth and shines it in the direction of the spastic fish, calmly pulling it closer and closer. The fish tires and surrenders. John grabs the line and hoists the bass out of the water.

"Florida strain largemouth, 16 inches, small, couple of pounds" he says clinically, sticking his thumb into its mouth and clamping down on its lower lip to paralyze it. He shines the light up and down its body, revealing surprisingly subtle, beautiful fins and a fist-sized mouth with tiny recessed teeth.

The largemouth is now hanging vertically, mouth up, frozen in mid-air. John knows every inch of it, but he can't say for sure if he's caught this one before. There are no easily identifiable characteristics like a lost eye or a broken hook stuck in its mouth.

After a few minutes of airtime, John cradles the bass's head in his left hand and its underbelly in his right. He lowers it back into the water, swishing it back and forth a couple times. With the flashlight casting a dim light onto to the murky water, the shocked fish pauses for a second to gather itself; and then, with a sudden kick of its tailfin, darts away.

A tiny smile creeps across John's face as he heads back to the parking lot. Back in the apartment, John's roommate has left on the TV, a rerun of "That 70's Show." John dumps his rod and tackle box into the hall closet, smack up against a vinyl golf bag. From his cage in the kitchen a Spring Conure named Herman is chirping away to the sitcom's amplified laugh track.

John's beat. As he kicks back to soak up some four-camera comedy, his arm rests on a skinned bobcat draped over the couch. John takes off the fishing license that's been hanging around his neck and tosses it on the coffee table. "I wear it whenever I'm fishing," he had said when he put it on, "I don't care whether I need it or not."