Laguna Beach 5/8
Saturday morning I awoke at seven‑thirty and cleaned the house. I left home at one‑thirty that afternoon so I could make a few errand stops before showing up for work at four, one of those being a visit to the Colorado Lagoon slime pit for an enteromorpha refill. There wasn’t much of the bait around, and what was there wasn’t of too great of quality.
The eight hours I was at work was nice and boring, then afterwards, at midnight, I knocked out the weekly grocery purchase. I finally arrived back home at two, put away the food, started a breakfast of sausage and French toast, then assembled all my fishing stuff and placed it in the truck. I boiled a pot of coffee, wolfed down the sizeable meal, then hit the road at ten ‘till four.
Breakwall Tim and I simultaneously turned west from P. C. H. onto Laguna Beach’s Cliff Drive right at the predetermined rendezvous time of five o’clock. After a bit of friendly chat we were down the stairs at North Crescent Bay and heading south to some great looking bass and opaleye rocks.
The swell was up a little, causing both of us to immediately get soaked up to the crotch, but the surge wasn’t anything unfishable. Now and then a four-footer would wash over the spot at the end of the rocks where we were standing. Both the air and the water were warm, so it was no big deal.
I didn’t catch anything the last time I was here but the area looked so good I had to try again. Nice big mussel, ulva and algae encrusted rocks to fish from that stick far out into the water, which has a sandy bottom perfectly suited for such tasty treats as sand bass and halibut.
I was the first to actually get bit while using the anchovy pattern five‑inch Fish Trap. After the fish exited the kelp stringer it had entangled the line around, it felt kind of big. Turned out to be that predicted barred sand bass of two‑pounds worth three tacos.
Tim was next. Ten casts after my landing he was on to another sand bass of a pound‑and‑a‑half while using a Fish Trap. Already two legal fish for not being there very long portended a good day. We hit the place pretty hard, casting our three‑quarter to one‑ounce leadheads far out there, letting them sink to the bottom and reeling in just slow enough to keep them out of the snags, except for Tim, who lost three of the lures.
I walked around to the other end of the rocks and landed two calico bass of ten inches each, which was another good omen, but as morning light brightened the bass bite dimmed to nothing.
As I was returning to our staging rock, I saw another fisherman walking out, who had a cast‑a‑bubble tied up and painted fluorescent red just like I the breakwall crew uses. Behold Breakwall Dan sauntering out to join Tim and me for some good ol’ opaleye fishing.
The three of us gave a two‑hour effort with our opaleye enteromorpha bobber rigs, casting to several spots, but we only saw maybe one bite each. I tied up a number eight treble hook, wrapped a chunk of the local mussel around it and shot that out there for a spell. I saw bites but they were only teensy-weensy fishies nibbling the bait off the hook.
Dan drove over to Main Street to shoot some hoops, while Tim and I climbed down to the beach to give corbina a holler. I tied on a number ten baitholder hook onto my eight‑pound outfit and cast a piece of mussel into the surf with a number two split shot. If the fish are around, they will usually sniff out the bait and bite within ten minutes. Seems like we gave it a half-hour with no action before giving it up for home.
*****
Monday morning I visited Opaleye Point during low tide. I fished the platform rock and the wade rock with Fish Traps, Mussel and enteromorpha, but didn’t have a single nibble in three hours.
Afterward, Ryan at the sandwich shop said he saw lots of big sargo caught off the jetties at Carlsbad last week. Sargo make good tacos. Maybe I’ll try that in two weeks.