Sandwich Shop Ryan tried to bribe me the last time I visited his store. He said if I brought him two buckets of enteromorpha for himself and his two pals to use at Opaleye Point, he would reciprocate with a free pair of foot-longs of my own design. He jokingly mentioned among all around that I keep the location of my slime pit a secret. I already told him before; it's right next to Recreation Park in Long Beach where you play golf. Can you imagine these people trading free lunches for scum when they can scoop it up themselves? I did, and it was of super high quality.

As it turned out, this past weekend was completely blown out, with our target date of yesterday only somewhat as blustery as Saturday's full-on Alaska hurricane. It was just too darned uncomfortable to fish. We postponed until this coming Sunday.

Meanwhile, enter Breakwall Dan.

A little over twelve months ago, Breakwall Dan and I met half way between our houses at the Corona Del Mar jetty to split a stank bucket and mull over old times. He caught the first opaleye of the two fish he and I caught that day. I caught the largest, but it was only worth about one taco.

After reading the last The Breakwall Angler about Opaleye Point this past New Years Day, he initiated an email campaign with me to make arrangements. He was dyin' to try soon for a chance at one of them four-pounders. Dyin' so bad in fact, he got here too soon. While I was out in the desert sniffin' flowers, he was out front of the house pounding on the door to wake me up. There he was, standing at a pay phone at the corner of Florence and Normandie, email in hand, going over the text under a streetlight for the fifth time. It was then he finally took notice of the date. Next week.

I phoned him after I returned just to say, "Talk about an antsy fisherman," and to tell him about the semi-favorable tides we would have early in the morning Monday. Semi- meaning we'd have a window between 5:30 and 7 o'clock in the morning to fish the platform rock before rushing waters forced us off.

Peeking out the door this morning, I was oh so happy to see that the wind and rain of the previous two days had eased into to a lull. The swell chart predicted two-to-three foot swells, about the highest one would want to face while sticking out there on the outer rocks like that.

Dan made it from South O. C. by five. After a quick howthehellareya session, we were on our way south on Western to the fishing grounds. We made it down the Opaleye Point trail in time to have my bobber a-bobbin' before six. I gave Dan an opaleye tackle kit with all the essential terminal tackle necessary for a few trips if he was careful not to snag the bottom. I left him on the staging rock to deal with rigging up.

The day started out a little slow. We stood there together on the platform rock looking stupid until Dan once again caught the first one, valued at two tacos. I was next with an even smaller one that I threw back. He said not to worry because he remembers every time we go, he catches the first one, but I catch a bigger one.

It took about a half an hour, but this was the case. I yanked five fatties out of there real quick-like, all between a pound-and-a-half and two-and-a-quarter pounds. As I was disgorging the biggest one, Dan was over there hollering for net detail. I scooped up a two-pounder for him.

As predicted, we didn't have too much time before the tide started to rise. At three feet, the swell wasn't too much for our liking either, as noted by one washing over the platform, sweeping the bait bucket into the drink. I was able to grab the net and safely save yet another pale from a doomed existence on the seafloor.

Soon we found ourselves hanging out one rock back from the waves, fishing a two-man size space between the basaltic boulders. A couple more opaleye of three tacos were landed before we had to vacate the outer rocks by 7:30. By this time we had eight keepers between us.

So what to do. We tried fishing to the right of the point, but the few nibbles we each had didn't outweigh the stress of dodging the swell splash. As is standard here at Opaleye Point, we headed over to finish the day at the Marineland ledge.

There, we had maybe three calm minutes between each five-minute wave set to get our rigs out there to the fish. In the next hour and a half, we combined for another five three-taco opaleye, which was nice when it came to replacing a few two-taco fish that were already in the bag.

At around nine, a seal came through and spoiled the bite. I even saw it dive under my bobber just before it disappeared. I reared back, but the line broke above the floater as whatever it was powerfully swam off. I'm not sure a seal would eat enteromorpha. Maybe a fish took it and the pinniped took the fish. Anyway, there's something swimming around out there trailing ten feet of line and a fluorescent red mini-buoy.

Ah the virtues of early. We took care of some chores on the way home, and consumed fish tacos and Coronas all before 11:30.

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