Last year I was looking at the Pierfishing Message Board and saw a report entry a dude wrote that contained a picture of him standing on some algae encrusted rock holding up a big fat opaleye.  He mentioned the spot was in San Diego and there was a picture of a pier in the background.  Always on the lookout for a new opaleye heaven, I got on local.live.com and scanned that city’s coastline in bird’s eye view.  I’ll be darned, here it is, in the Ocean Beach community.

    Unlike Palos Verdes, whose shore is protected by Catalina Island blocking the south swell and Pt. Vicente taming the north, Ocean Beach is exposed to the every whim of the wild ocean.  This means a calm day is required before any time and money can be expended on a sortie.  This morning when I got up I saw the surface is only one foot, perfect.

    At the Colorado Lagoon slime pit in Long Beach, the quality of the algae bait is degraded.  Instead of long gooey stringy strands, the rake picked up chunks.  This is typical of the warmer weather, however there was still enough good stuff to be usable.

    At 4:30 in the morning the trip south on the San Diego Freeway was an 80-mph affair, I pulled up to the lot under the pier on Newport Ave. in a little over an hour.  There’s plenty of free parking as long as you get there early.

    A short hike along a sidewalk put me atop acres of rocks which at low tide were indeed coated with long strand algae.  It looks like the opaleye can only get to it at the very highest of tides.  I doubted that today’s 4.9 at 9:39 would do the trick.  I figured the fish will be lurking around, waiting until the water is high enough for them to be able to feed.  If I give them what they are waiting for beforehand, heck, I should catch a bunch.

    I picked a spot where there was the most algae, tossed out a few handfuls of chum, then proceeded to fling the WildEye mackerel around in order to test the bass bite.  I kind of knew that technique would prove pointless here as the water was really filthy; okay for opaleye, bad for bass.

    Out went the opaleye bobber algae rig set at five feet.  I had a couple bites then at 7:30 the action really took off.  The bobber went down several times before I landed an opaleye coming in at your basic three tacos.  Out of the net and into the gunnysack it went.  Just then a nice homeless gentleman walked out to check the catch.  I thought he was going to hit me up for quarters but either he chickened out or he assessed that if I had money I probably wouldn’t be standing on a skuzzy rock in the ’hood trying to catch dinner while using slime for bait.  Before I could offer up some of my provisions (beef stick slice, cheese stick and Kudo bar), he was gone.

    For the next hour I had a bunch of bites, resulting in the hooking of two zebraperch.  Since I find the flesh of this specie revolting, I always throw them back.  Today I used them to test out my tackle.  Since they fight harder than opaleye I adjusted the reel’s drag and attempted to bounce them up onto the rocks.  The first one weighed a guesstimated two pounds, the hook ripped out of its mouth.  The second one was over three pounds, and when I tried to swing that one up my 15# line broke; better on a zebra than on an opaleye.  Testing successful, I retied.

    By nine the bite waned.  The only exciting thing was this really pretty girl who walked by saying, Hi Mr. Fisherman, what’s your name?  I said, Dufish, she said Carla then wanted to see what an opaleye is.  We walked back to my bag, I whipped it out, she said COOL!! and even touched it.  OMG that was wonderful!  It wasn’t until after she left I remembered I have a movie camera hanging from my neck.  What a dope.  I could have made a video co-starring a bum and a beauty to go along with me and my zebras and opaleye.  Dam.

    On the way back to the truck I noticed there are submersed algae encrusted rocks underneath the base of the pier, and the water was notably cleaner.  I will definitely have to try fishing for opaleye from the pier as long as I remember to bring my large hoop net on a rope.  It is doubtful one could hand-line an opaleye three stories up without one.

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