Today I got up early and bee-lined it to Long Point for low tide. I wanted to get there before light for another chance at a legal white sea bass. The only hindrance was the full moon, but a layer of fog in the immediate area took care of that.

This time, since it was still dark, I used the number 540 fish trap, which is a darker pattern than the 563. According to the book, the darker it is outside, the darker the pattern you should use. I also dropped down to a 3/8-ounce leadhead to avoid snags.

The bite picked up from recent weeks. On my tenth cast from the point, I hooked what felt like a legal bass. I could tell because there was some fight to it. It was only fourteen inches, but fat. Two tacos in the bag.

The next four were all ten inches with no fight. They come twisting in like one of those Japanese fish flags you see tied to a pole, flailing in the wind. After an hour it was apparent that I wasn't going to land the big one here, so I did some more exploring over toward Cardiac Hill. It's actually called the Point Vicente Fishing Access, but the trail is long and steep, hence the name. You can't get to this one cove from the access trail because it's impossible to make it around the minor point without swimming it.

The only way to make it is to come from the Opaleye Point trail and walk past Long Point. There are some hazards, though. You have to sneak by a minor sea lion rookery. Don't get caught! I think it's illegal to come within so many feet of the beasts. The thirty I saw kindly got out of my way as I neared them. Then there's the god-awful smell. A nice thick layer of seal crap covering several dead carcasses, which by time have been reduced to bags of bones. Once I was past all that, the cove wasn't even worth the risk. At low tide it was way too shallow to be inhabited by the kind of fish I was after.

So, I walked back through the muck to a nice casting rock on the other side of Long Point and landed another bass of 11 inches. Ten casts later, I was twenty feet over, perched on another prominent rock catching another short calico. This is how it went the rest of the morning. I would make ten to fifteen casts in one spot, then move along to the next spot and nail a little guy.

Finally I came to the inside cove area between Long Point and the Cave rock. The swell was down to Sea of Cortez size, and the sand bass were going wild. Too bad none of the five I caught were over eight inches. The lure I was using was only three inches shorter than they were. I did have one hit that pulled pretty hard. Why should it matter that I must write about it? I didn't land it. Maybe because I know it's out there and reading this will motivate me to go back some day to try for it.

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