Palos Verdes 11/28
Just like September, again all month November local sportfishing boats have been producing relatively massive quantities of opaleye. Even though for my fish day this week radio weather reports had a big storm blowing down from the Gulf of Alaska, causing high surf and drenching rain, I couldn’t sit back and not try. A quick check of the Swell Chart and Unisys Enhanced Infrared disproved all that. In fact, the rain was more than a day away and the ocean swell was one foot all the way from Point Conception to San Nicholas Island and beyond, perfect for fishing the normally swell-whipped open-to-fishing portion of Palos Verdes rocks from Pt. Vicente northward.
All we need now is a bucket load of algae bait. A check of the Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach this morning returned a whole scoop of #9 grade in three minutes.
I got up at three, ate, drove off and after the one bait stop was at the top of the cliff at 2901 Paseo Del Mar equipping my body by five fifteen. I deducted from the morning’s eerie silence the swell chart was correct. As I descended the trail to meet the water it was as if I were hiking along the shore of Lake Tahoe as everywhere I shined my headlight I found the brine to be flat and crystal clear.
I picked a perfect rock just inside the main point to cast from during the six-foot incoming tide. While still dark I started with the five-inch WildEye Sardine for bass, fan casting my twenty pound outfit to every strand of kelp I could barely see. The forty minutes I gave it produced nothing.
Once there was some light I chummed four wads of algae and cast the opaleye bobber rig. All conditions were perfect: a comfortable rock with no swell, good bait, opaleye in the counts, and overcast skies to keep the sun off the clear water. Problem was there were no fish, at least none at this spot.
After an hour I moved farther out to the rocks at the end of the point where I found even better conditions, that is, add to the aforementioned a bit of whitewater, behind which the opaleye like to hang out, as seen during our many skin dive trips here back in the day.
It wasn’t until seven fortyfive before I had a hit that turned out to be a nice three-taco model netted and bagged. FINALLY!! I chummed some more and immediately got back to business.
Fifteen minutes later I hooked another only this one felt big. The fish was holding its ground as I tried to work it out from under the rocks and kelp into which it sought refuge. Just when I thought the battle was over, as I dipped the net it took off again peeling off line from the spool to the right, then turning and lumbering defiantly left. By now the fish was tuckering out and when the next puny swell caused an inflow of water, I dipped my net, he went right in and I lifted out a big fat toad slightly over three pounds. YES!!
I said, here we go, we’re going to catch a lot, and chummed a bunch more bait. With my polarized fishing glasses I could see opaleye swimming around my rock and had five more bites in the next hour that refused to stick to the hook. I guessed due to the clear water the fish might be line shy today but historically I don’t remember that to be an issue.
Since I didn’t have anything to do the rest of day I faithfully spent another two hours fishing around the point but didn’t notice any more bites. I will try again next month and January as long as we have a two-foot swell on a Wednesday and the algae bait keeps growing long and strong.
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Introducing Silverfish, my new car.
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Giant local spiny lobster returned to sea