This week we had minus tides, allowing The Breakwall Crew the opportunity to access platform casting rocks that are normally submerged.  I thought about hitting up my favorite holes around Laguna Beach but considering the bite has been lousy there lately and that the sport boat sand bass counts have been only a few caught here and there from San Pedro to San Diego, off to Palos Verdes I went.

    At the Colorado Lagoon slime pit in Long Beach this morning there was plenty of bright green enteromorpha algae for everyone who wants it once you get past the yellow dead stuff.

    The Swell Chart said the bump was only three feet in outer waters and one foot along the shore, first time we’ve had this kind of calmness in months.  I shined my usual Opaleye Point and Long Point for the chance at casting from the wonderful rocks at the end of Hawthorne Blvd., something I’ve wanted to do for a few months but had been disallowed due to crashing breakers.

    At the parking lot the sign says no parking from dusk to dawn.  I was hoping the RPV police wouldn’t mind me sneaking down the trail at 03:30.  They’ve seen me strapping on my pole-laden backpack way before dawn before as they cruised by, never saying a word.

    A quarter mile to the right from the bottom of the trail, I made my first cast with the Channel Islands Chovy pattern five-inch Fish Trap at 4.  I have never seen the water so calm here; complete stillness broken only by a set of one-footers every fifteen minutes or so.  I cast like a wildman for two hours with no hits, covering something like five hundred yards of shoreline.  Finally at 6:08 I had a big hit pretty far out.  At first I thought I snagged kelp, then the drag went out on my 20lb baitcasting outfit.  I could tell it was a five pound bass by the way it pulled hard, holding its own, with five short pulls of line off the tightened drag.  After a five minute tussle, I had the beast up to the rock I was standing on, which was about ten feet above the waterline.  It was too heavy to bounce and there were no waves to help out, so I had to walk it over twenty feet to some lower rocks from where I could scoop it up with my net.  With the telescopic handle fully extended it’s six-and-a-half feet long.  Without much fuss, a successful landing was made.  At the staging rock the calico weighed in at 5-14 on my new Normark ProGuide scale.

    Funny thing was that I caught this one from the exact rock I caught the legal white seabass and the 6-7 calico last September.

    Fired up by that action, I kept up with the Trap flingin’ until 8 o’clock without another bite.  I also tried the Yum crawdad for a while.  Nothing on that either.  I covered every rock for the next half-mile north to the next cove, which, by the way, was Lake Tahoe clear and calm with lots of kelp.  Too bad no hungry fish were around.

    Back towards the trail, I whipped out the opaleye enteromorpha bobber rig to give the very opaleye looking spot below the gutter falls a try.  I chummed, cast near the rocks, let the bobber drift far out and pulled just about every other opaleye trick I know but had no bites by 9:30.  No matter how I’ve tried I have never caught an opaleye around here.  A mile over to the south at Long Point is where I’ve been doing all the ’eye hooking as of late but we need a high tide for that place to be any good.

*****

Editor's notes:

Perfect Neighbor Larry submitted two Stephen Wright quotes.  The second one has been a fave of mine for years:

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line.  He caught every other fish.

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

*****

Hooked up with some pals for a spring desert run.

Top