Palos Verdes 4/27
Wednesday my pal Bruce emailed a pair of videos featuring Dan
Hernandez. One demonstrated
how to catch opaleye using canned peas. The other you see Dan
reeling in the same specie
with wads of white bread.
Pea-ing for opaleye isn't new. The Breakwall
Crew has been familiar with this trick since the beginning of time. I
replied to Bruce's email saying, use frozen peas because they are more
durable. Canned peas are too soft and don't stay on the hook very
long. The bread technique for opaleye I will admit is something I have
neither heard of nor ever considered. After watching both videos I
thought, why not wad up peas with the bread around a treble hook to make
your own Opaleye Gulp! Bait.
Maybe some day I will concoct a dough and bake a custom loaf of pea bread.
I mentioned to the email reply-all audience I
will try this out on our final opaleye run of the season in case Colorado
Lagoon is devoid of the much more effective algae bait Friday. On
Thursday's weekly grocery run I added white bread to my list and bought the
good stuff; Van de Kamp's. I already had a can of Del Monte peas
sitting on my garage tackle shelf.
Well, there was no algae this morning at the
aforementioned slime pit. In such a case I would normally turn around
and head home to find something else to do all day. Armed with this
newfangled bait I drove forward to the Palos Verdes fishing grounds to test
it out.
As I cruised the freeway I realized a flaw.
In the Dan videos he is in his boat parked inside a marina catching all
these fish with no wave action to contend with. Today the swell chart
is showing two to three feet, which is perfect for stirring up a good bite
while still being fishable but I doubt wadded up bread on a treble will
remain on the hook for any amount of time.
I was at the opaleye hole at 05:30, three hours
before the 4.8 foot high tide. I could see to my chagrin there was
none of the usual thick green coating of ulva along the exposed rocks that
the opaleye will come in to graze on at high water. I walked to the
right along the cove to fish from a prominent casting rock and in the
burgeoning light could see there would be no place to cast the Wildeye
Sardine swimbait for bass due to thick kelp growing everywhere.
I was able to toss out the bread and pea wad under a bubble float to
a weed-free zone in front of the rock but as predicted the bait didn’t stay
on the hook more than five minutes.