After two weeks of a rougher-than-normal sea, the Swell Chart yesterday at last showed the waves off Point Conception down to five feet. Also, the cold California Current shown in blue on the Sea Surface Temperature Chart is moving in, replacing the warmer water which lingered between the islands and mainland since the most recent El Nino. Will any of this have an effect upon how ferocious the opaleye bite will be this morning?

I met Breakwall Don at a parking place he told me about last week. It seems the vacant property next to Marineland is under some kind of development and there was a section of chain link fence missing where they were working with tractors. This made it easy to walk to Long Point since we didn't have to climb over the other fence like we've had to the past few weeks.

At the point it was already sunrise when we got there because I screwed up and forgot about the time change. I planned to be there at 6:16 instead of the new-time mandatory 5:15. This mistake disallowed any chance of a before-light calico bass but it did permit us to have a better view of the situation of making a decision as to when to cross atop the treacherous stepping stones used to reach the rock.

The conditions weren't exactly lake-like, nor were they pounding like two weeks ago. We just had to be careful when crossing during the 5.5 high tide. Just before I was able to lift myself onto the staging rock, a swell came in and soaked me up to the belly button. Five minutes later Don leaped across, wet only up to above the knees from being splashed while waiting on the other side.

Quickly over that, we began the day by casting plastics. I used my standby five-inch blacksmith perch Fish Trap while Don used a root beer metal-flake Scampi. As predicted, no bass bites were detected, so with the opaleye rigs we went.

I chummed a few chunks of enteromorpha here and there to start attracting fish. Don says, "Don't chum. You'll fill'em up." I thought that was weird. I only scattered enough bait to satisfy maybe one-and-a-half opaleyes, there still should be ninety-eight-and-a-half hanging out for the enticement wrapped around our hooks. Then he says, "It's too rough for the opaleye. The waves make the bait go up and down in the water and the fish have a harder time eating it." That was crazy. The fish keep themselves neutrally buoyant. They too go up and down with the waves. Besides, last time when the waves were huge The Breakwall Angler crew caught just as many as the time before that when the surface was calm. Wave size only affects the fisherperson.

The bite we were having during the first hour was light. By the wiggling action of the bobber, it looked like they were tasting the bait rather than inhaling it. I thought maybe the enteromorpha is sometimes more palatable to them than other times due to the algae's growth cycle or something like that. But really. That's absurd. The bucket of bait stinks just the same every time.

What I have found in fifteen years of opaleye fishing is that you can't spend too much time worrying about conditions. Only three things matter when it comes to fishing for any specie:

1.      The fish aren't there.

2.      The fish are there but they're not biting.

3.      The fish are there and they're biting.

Or in other words, you either catch them or you don't

Today it was option 3. We caught them. The bite showed the same pattern at Long Point as it has the past few times we fished here. Nibbles with no hook-ups until 9:30 when for the next hour we catch most of the day's fish. Today I kept nine opaleye to two pounds and Don bagged six topped by another two-pounder.

And would I start fishing Long Point at nine in the morning just because that's when the good bite occurred the last couple of times we fished there? No. I'll still try to be parked and walking at 5:15 every time because the only condition to me that matters in fishing is getting there early. And sometimes that doesn't work.

Top