This past January Breakwall Darryl and I fished Angel’s Gate from his boat, the SS Chaparral.  We used a hot new bait he discovered, the Berkeley Gulp! Baby Shrimp in white.  These non-plastic artificials don’t really look like much but man they sure work great, as evidenced by the two of us not only limiting on barred sand bass but even tossing some back.

    I couldn’t wait to try the little guys at Crescent Bay in Laguna Beach.  First we had to wait until the last of March for the early morning low tides, which make many a rock along the South Orange County coastline accessible.  Second thing was to sit out this cotton pickin’ late winter.  It seemed all of my days off through April were rainy or washed out by a northerly swell.

    During the lull I scouted out stores that might carry Gulp! products.  Out here Temescal Valley way, the only place I found them out of all the Wal-Marts and Sports Athorities was the Temecula Sport Chalet.  They didn’t have the all-white ones like we used four months ago but did have a light blue and white one and another model they call new penny.  The latter caught my eye due to its somewhat close resemblance to our local red rock shrimp.  That's the pack I bought.

    Two weeks ago I finally made it to Laguna.  Sure enough I had great luck fishing Twin Points to the left of the Crescent Bay staircase.  I tried the usual productive nooks and crannies with the Storm WildEye five-inch sardine with no action.  As soon as I tied on a new penny Baby Shrimp my drag was a singin’ ’til the tide came home.

    From the end of the main rock off the beach I flung a shrimp rigged Carolina style with a number one worm hook and a ¾-ounce weight.  The first two casts didn’t even hit the bottom and I was on.  The first fish was a 15-inch sand bass successfully landed after quite the tussle on my ten-pound outfit.  I had to free it three times from rocks and kelp before I was able to bag it.  The second and third ones pulled so hard I had no control to where they swam.  Apparently their destination was underwater caves from which they never exited.

    In the next hour I landed two more barely legal sand bass, three short calico bass, a ten-inch mackerel and a big surprise in something that bent my pole only to yank massive quantities of drag.

    Unlike sand and calico bass, who will instinctively swim straight for the nearest cover once hooked, this one purposefully avoided all obstructions, being perfectly content to hold its ground in open water.  Acting like this, I anticipated it to be a white seabass.  It felt pretty big; I could hardly budge it with the light line.  The thing to do is be a patient fisherperson and just hold on until it tires some.

    Luckily today the water was fairly glassy with a small one-foot swell.  This made getting the fish up to the rocks easier than when there is a lot of whitewater to contend with.  After ten minutes I had the monster to color; it was the expected WSB.  At three pounds it was way undersized but a fun time nonetheless.  They pretty much have to be seven pounds to exceed the legal 28-inch length.  It would be a stretch to land a take-home size white from a rock with ten-pound line.

*****

    Today, with all this wonderful experience under my angling belt, I was anxious to try the Baby Shrimp to the right of the Crescent Bay staircase at Sargo Point.  I saw on the Internet the tide would be -1.4 at 04:21 and the waves were going to be two to three feet.  What this translates to is that I would have to don my rain suit and get out of there by 07:30.

    After climbing over the dreaded hump at 04:00, my concentration shifted to the trail ahead and to a phenomenon I hadn’t expected; a very lighted-up Sargo Point.  As I rounded the corner past the patio (it slid down the slope from someone’s back yard last year), I saw at the top of the bluff some goofball had two giant spotlights aimed right at the point, one at each end of his property.  I pondered what would provoke someone to waste so much juice.  Maybe they had a garden party and the whitewater hitting the rocks below looks super cool at night from that vantage point.  I could see all the houses atop the bluff a mile north across Emerald Bay were also being annoyed by the shenanigan.

    For all I knew it probably blinded any nocturnal sportfish around, prompting them to feed elsewhere.  I could tell because I had no bites on WildEyes or Baby Shrimp.  In short order I packed up, lowered my hat bill and ambled back over across Crescent Bay, past Twin Points to fish my favorite rock at the north end of Santa Ana Cove.

    There, I did the usual routine as documented from last report, fling the WildEye with one small bite before switching over to the Carolilna-rigged Baby Shrimp with a ½-ounce egg sinker, swivel and number one Gamakatsu bent-shank worm hook.

    Reeling in slowly, I hooked up on the first cast, landing a baby calico bass of ten inches.  I deposited it into a tide pool for future study.  Second cast, second fish, a cookie-cutter calico that joined his buddy.  And on it went; sixth cast, third calico, tenth cast fourth calico.  As I retied my hook I sat and enjoyed my own aquarium display of four bass running into each other trying to escape their temporary prison.

    Just when I calculated I caught all the fish around here for now, I glanced behind me, there was an early morning tide pool gawker audience of one checking me out.  WHAMMO!  I was on to the biggest yet of the day.  This one pulled drag straight out, straight down and up into the white water before tearing out again.  I played it gingerly up to the rocks, waited for a lull in the swell, grabbed the net and ever so effortlessly scooped up the thirteen-incher as if I had been doing this for a while.  I held up the net, she said, dinner?  I said, yup, two tacos.

    One good thing I noticed about the shrimp is that they last for several fish before shredding.  The trick is to replace them now and then, putting the old ones back in the bag they came in so they can soak up some more stink juice.  With a fresh one pinned on and no bites in several fan casts, over to the next spot I went.

    At the chasm between the Twin Point rocks, several casts resulted in another small calico.  Not much else around there.

    At the main rock near the southern end of Crescent Bay the action picked up some.  I had lots of bites that didn’t stick using the Carolina-rigged shrimp.  I even went with a ���-ounce egg in order to cast out farther and to hold it to the bottom.  With no bites in several casts into a rapidly rising tide, I rigged my 15-pound outfit drop-shot style with a one-ounce torpedo sinker.  I bounced that along the rocky bottom and in the fifth cast I hooked and landed the second legal thirteen-inch calico of the day.

    I cast to the usual sand bass holes but never had a bite from those guys.  That coincides with what the Daily Dock Totals dictated this week, lots of calicos for the sport boat folks, no sand bass.

    I watched these two dudes in a 12-foot skiff float by.  I said, man, those guys are rather intrepid coming up to the rocks in a swell now increased by a burgeoning breeze.  I couldn’t detect which lure they were using but they did quite well.  In the five minutes they were there I saw the pair land six bass and one barracuda before motoring north across Crescent to Seal Rock.

    By 08:30 the tide and the swell were up enough to make anymore angling from rocks unpleasant, as if that were ever possible.

    Last week while I was at the store I picked up a bag of Gulp! Sand Crabs.  As of this hour we have tide movement flowing in, I figured I could toss a crab rigged Carolina style, pinned to a number four live bait hook, weighted with a ¼-ounce egg sinker into the surf.  Looking down at the undertow I could see billions of sand crabs digging in with each wave.  There had to be a barred surfperch, or better, a corbina feasting on all this but 40 minutes and no takers bored me to freakin’ death.

    On the way home I looked on an O. C. map for the nearest boat ramp in Newport Harbor, as Breakwall Darryl had expressed an interest of launching out of there.  I went up Jamboree to Back Bay Drive and found a 24-hour ramp with plenty of $15 parking Monday through Thursday, $20 Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Not only is it a quick 15-minute boat ride to Laguna rocks from here, there is opaleye green bait growing all over the place!

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