Conditions at last cooperated for Sandwich Shop Ryan and his pal Alden and I as we met at Opaleye Point this morning at 8:30. At least that was supposed to be the time. I arrived and started fishing by 8:20. I figured they'd see my truck parked at the curb near the start of the trail and be on their way down, but by 8:40, they weren't there. I worked all night without a lunch. I was starving. Where was that sandwich of my own design in exchange for scum that I desired so?

At 8:45 there they were. They waited for me at the top for a few minutes, not immediately recognizing my truck. The old disguise-the-truck-with-a-new-shell trick worked fairly well. In those 20 minutes, I already had four keeper opaleye and one dwarfish fish thrown back.

Ryan has been fishing with me down here before. When he tried to convey to Alden just how great the action is for opaleye at the point, Alden was hesitant to appraise anywhere on earth to be so piscatorially splendorous. It didn't take too long for him to become a believer. He landed five opaleye, including a three pounder, before his self-proclaimed more-experienced pal Ryan did. In fact, Ryan didn't even catch one until after ten o'clock when we scrambled out to the platform rock.

Unlike two days ago when I was here, there was a high tide earlier in the morning, going out to a 0.0 low tide at 12:47. That meant we had to wait it out by fishing the point until the water receded enough to allow us access to the outer rocks. I was the first one to cross the channel, only getting wet up to my knees. It wasn't long before I was grabbing the net to scoop up my first three pounder.

The other two were scaredy pants. Especially Ryan, who waited another half-hour to make the traverse.

The swell was up from Friday, too. This made it tricky when a set rolled through. I kept having to grab the net and to put a foot down on the bucket to keep them from washing in. At times this deterred me from my hook-setting duties, but still I had no problem filling my gunnysack with two-pounders.

Either did they, once they made it out there. Even Ryan, who by this time had been skunked, caught a bunch topped by a three-and-a-half-pounder.

The bite was consistent the whole time. Our bobbers never stopped going down. After I had my limit of ten two-to-three pounders, I removed my float and caught a few with an algae bomber jig, which is simply a wad of enteromorpha wrapped around a 1/0 live bait hook tied on the end of the line with a BB shot for weight. It's more exciting to feel the fish bite as opposed to just seeing a bobber become submerged.

Sometime around noon, the tide was out far enough so that when a set of waves crashed, it stirred up sands and sediments which are usually a hundred feet behind the breakers and under 10 or 15 feet of water. As came the murk, so did dissipate the bite. By a quarter after we were history.

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