Friday afternoon when I returned home from errands, there was a business card crammed in my front door jam with some writing on it. "#10 enteromorpha. Call me," it read. Later in the day I made contact with bait-raker Breakwall Darryl and he agreed to pick me up Saturday morning at 05:45.

"Guess where I was yesterday when you came by?" I riddled, as I jumped in the cab of his truck after loading my gear in the back.

"Uh, where," he wondered, not expecting a funny.

"I was getting enteromorpha!"

He laughed. I knew he'd like that one.

So, there we were, driving down the road, with ten gallons of enteromorpha in the back of the truck. Actually, there were only seven-and-a-half gallons because I dumped half of mine out in the back yard before I boarded. We just missed each other at the slime pit, as he was there about fifteen minutes before me.

At a quarter after six, we pulled up to the curb near Opaleye Point to find Breakwall Don there in the waiting. He too brought some enteromorpha from Del Rey Lagoon near his house on L.A.'s Westside. We were plenty well stocked for bait. He also brought a photo album featuring pics from the long-range trip to Alijos Rocks he took a few years back. My favorite was his whole back yard stacked to the fence with forty-plus-pound yellowfin, yellowtail and wahoo. I was going to show him a picture of my fifteen-pound white seabass and my seven-pound lake trout, but compared to his monsters, hell with my minnows.

Anywho, back to business. Down the trail at the point, the three of us fished to the right for about twenty minutes without a hit. If the tide is high in the morning and you don't hook up right away at this spot, move on.

So we did. We tried over at the Marineland Ledge for another fifteen minutes and in that time Darryl landed the days first opaleye, an aquarium-sized pixie about three inches long.

I wasn't getting much action, so I went over the dreaded hump to try a new spot at Long Point. Darryl and I fished there earlier this year with plastics during calico bass season and this one rock in particular looked real promising for opaleye. The boulder was flat-topped and covered with such opaleye fodder as mussel, ulva and algae, just like our beloved platform rock. Also, looking straight down from the edge it was a little over eight feet deep at medium tide.

This morning's 5.3 tide made the scurry out to said rock a bit challenging. I had to wait for a swell to come in then hurry up and jump across three other rocks as the water retreated. Didn't even get wet. When another wave came in, I looked back to see the stepping stones under two-to-four feet under water.

I tossed some muddy enteromorpha against the rocks where waves lapping up against them would break up the stuff and take it out. While the chum was steeping, I used my Fish Trap rig for about ten casts with no results. At seven-thirty with a bright sun, it was already too light for the plastic to entice anything. Besides, the whole area in front of the rock was a solid mass sardines either way for a mile and about a half-mile straight out. Any predators around were by now napping with stuffed bellies.

Back to the enteromorpha rig. As soon as I tossed it out, my bobber went down. I swung the rod but missed setting the hook. I re-baited, flipped it out about ten feet and again my float disappeared with no one home upon hook-set.

Well, this went on for about an hour before I finally caught something, a three-taco opaleye. It was fun having all those hits but filling the gunnysack is much more joyous. In the next hour I had another hundred bites which resulted in one more three-taco 'eye.

It wasn't until nine-thirty before I started to land fish in earnest. As the sun rose, the area in front of the rock started to look good. About twenty-five square feet of the bottom is lightly colored, which allowed me to see about a score of opaleye hanging out beneath my chum line. Boom, Boom, Boom. Three just like that, including my largest fish of the day, an opaleye four ounces short of two pounds.

I didn't get it. My bobber went down just like it had the first two hours I stood there. Why didn't I hook them before? That's fishing.

From ten to ten-thirty I watched as the fish would go away for five or ten minutes then return again. If I didn't see them in front of me, I would cast to the right for some hits and one more fish. As soon as I saw them return to the light spot, I would cast in front of me for a bunch more nibbles and one last opaleye.

After ten-thirty I neither had another bite nor did I see any hanging out. Back to Opaleye Point to rendezvous with my cadre.

Over there, Breakwall Don claimed to have caught a three pounder. Of course, I had to see it to believe it. When he dug it out of his bag, I said nah, maybe two pounds. Then he pulled out another toad I guesstimated to be 2-2. On the scale the first one went 2-0 and the other 2-4. Still, either one of those two was larger than any of the seven I caught. Then he admitted Darryl gave him the big one. Also, Don said he used is Del Rey enteromorpha all morning and didn't have a bite until he wrapped on a wad of Darryl's bait. The two pounder he caught with the good stuff was his best-ever opaleye.

Up the trail and back at the truck, Darryl was snoozing in his recliner-seat extra cab. He caught ten for the day, keeping only his two biggest, which went home with Don.

*****

The rock at Long Point was good enough for Darryl to pick me up Sunday morning so we could use up the rest of our combined enteromorpha at our newfound hotspot. Actually, we've known about the place for a while, but it's kind of hard to get to. We used to have to wait until eight in the morning for the guard to open the gate leading into the old Marineland property to be able to easily access the area. Otherwise it was a half-mile hike through a pebbly beach and up and over a Dangerous ledge to get there. Yesterday I saw fisherpersons in the vicinity at seven, so I figured the landlord has been opening the door a little earlier now.

Sure enough, when we pulled up at dark-thirty, the gate was open. We started fishing at 06:30, right at the crack of dawn. As always before light, I started out the day throwing the five-inch Fish Trap. First cast, hook-up. A ten-inch calico tossed back. Third cast, hook-up. A legal fourteen-inch calico in the bag.

Darryl, who has a collection of over twenty angling outfits, persists in bringing only one set-up with him to the rocks. He cut the opaleye bobber rig from his line and tied on a four-inch fish trap. With it he caught three calicos, all under the twelve-inch legal minimum length.

As the skies brightened, the bass dimmed. It was time to start using the enteromorpha rigs. Basically, as soon as my bobber hit the water, it was being taken down. Hook-up, a nice three-taco opaleye in the bag. Boom, Darryl hooked up with his own three-taco fish being sacked. It went like that for about an hour; lots of hits and six fatties to take home. I was out for a twenty-fish day so I could make a big batch of fish jerky. I haven't had any in quite a while. Darryl hasn't been keeping his catch lately, so for a bribe of a few pieces of jerk I anticipated his catch would be mine.

A little later, Breakwall Don showed up. It was about that time when the bite took a turn to the south. For the next two hours, it was a hit and a miss, forcing us to stay until 10:30 in order to fill the bag with a combined fourteen opaleye and one bass between Darryl and I. Don went home with a prize in the honorable mention category. His three fish were topped by his personal best and the largest opaleye of the two days, a two pound eight ounce toad.

Somewhere in there a flurry of barracuda graced our rock as a school of the slime-sticks breezed through to pounce on the hoards of sardines that were hanging around. I reached for my Fish Trap rig when I first saw the commotion on the surface, but mostly they were only pencils a little over a foot long. They were bumping the plastic consistently, but with such small mouths, they couldn't get around the leadhead well enough to become hooked. I did, however, catch one but it wasn't much fun. It was more exciting watching them jump clear out of the water right in front of us as they pursued their prey.

Needless to say, we'll be exploiting this hot spot the rest of the opaleye season. The rock is quite convenient to access as long as they open the gate early. Of course in two weeks when we go, we'll be there an hour earlier at 05:30 so you never know.

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