Palos Verdes 11/19
The 24-hour steady rainstorm last week here in Southern California was a beautiful thing. The green icing on that cake was at the Colorado Lagoon slime pit this morning, all that precipitation preserved plenty of long strong stringy algae opaleye bait to fill a pale.
Blufftop at Palos Verdes’ Christmas Tree Cove, a view of the conditions couldn’t have been more perfect with the occasional set of two-foot swells rolling in. At the bottom of the trail, instead of fishing the usual rocks at the back of the cove, I got here extra early and hiked 20 minutes south to my favorite bass rock and set up there. I wasn’t sure if I could even access any good casting platforms during the six o’clock five-foot high tide.
There were plenty of places to stand and at 05:30 I made my first casts with the five-inch WildEye Sardine for bass, which generally I don’t do this late in fall. During that fan casting session I hit plenty of kelp but noticed a zone to the left and another to the right where I could cast as far as I wanted without obstacles. I even felt three hits and then finally landed a calico of 13 inches; released. A few years ago the D.F.W. increased the size of the sand and calico bass limit from 12 to 14 inches.
As dawn broke, I could see there actually was hardly any kelp in the water as opposed to the last time I was here in the middle of summer when the whole area was choked with weeds. I tossed a few handfuls of bait into the whitewater washing against the rock and cast out the usual bubble opaleye bait rig set at seven feet with a rubber band.
I fished like that until nine thirty, noticing a few hits an hour earlier but they were little guys that couldn’t suck up the whole bait wad and hook. The whole time I chummed, I cast to various spots far and near but nothing just like two weeks ago. The whole area looks exactly the same as our now-closed opaleye hotspots along PV’s south shore so maybe we are in one of those periodic doldrums like we had in the mid-90s. Back then, even though we used live red shrimp from Paul’s Bait in San Pedro every Saturday for over 12 months, neither Breakwall Darryl nor I caught anything and the deal with red shrimp is, all species of fish around here eat them! The good news was, after that year the bite immediately picked up and we caught hundreds of everything for the next 20 voyages around the sun.
I dumped out the bait on a rock in case someone else comes along and then walked back to my equipment pile lying high and dry at the bluff base. Sure enough, two tardy fishermen walked up and said in their broken English, hey you’re that guy on YouTube catching opaleye. I said maybe, how did you recognize me. They peered up to my unique hat with the big Bishop, CA patch in the middle and I admitted yeah that’s me. They pointed to exactly where I was fishing in the video (it’s no secret) and said I inspired them to come down and try. I indicated, look over there at that green patch. Plenty of free bait for you. Message me on YouTube if you catch something. One of them walked over to gather it all up as I stuffed my pack with gear for the hike out and the drive over to Busy Bee for a roast pork sandwich.