This past Thursday I fished Long Point again. Unlike last time I didn’t have to walk so far to get there today. I arrived at the Marineland parking lot at eight in the morning to find all the usual gates and fences open. Merry Christmas.

Actually I showed up a little early, so I waited for eight by hanging out a few minutes at the Point Vicente fishing access parking lot. From there I had a great view all the way to the point of an extremely flat and glassy sea barely making a splash against the shoreline rocks. I almost went down Cardiac Hill trail to fish there, it looked so inviting. But I stuck with the sure thing, driving over to the other lot nearest our beloved Long Point.

As soon as I exited my vehicle, it was noticeably warm considering just thirty minutes earlier I had to don a parka before I even stepped out my front door. I was now down to a T-shirt.

At the fishing hole I found my favorite pillar rock had already been occupied by a tenant of sizeable proportions. That sea lion had to be a grander. He didn’t mind that I fished to the right of the staging rock, in the small rip where for the past few weeks I caught a bunch. Today, things were a little different. The water was crystal-clear with only one swell every fifteen minutes to stir things up. Generally, the opaleye bite isn’t very good on days like this. My experience is they like it a little rough, schooling just past the white water in puke-green conditions, sucking up all the little doo-dads the waves churn into the water.

It took about a half an hour, but alas my bobber finally disappeared, only to be seen again when a fat opaleye of three-tacos came to net. All and all the bite was kind of slow. It took me until noon to catch nine, with three of those too small to take home.

A while back, a few folks at two different domains to where I send my stupid fish report notification said their net nanny at work won’t let them look at The Breakwall Angler website because, it says, the site contains sex. To that I say, it might smell like fish, but it’s really fish! The host server for my site, FreeYellow.com, won’t even let me do business with them if these allegations were true. The only thing I could think of is it’s what I call the bait we use. Green shit.

I went in to my reports document and changed shit to scat, but still those same readers cannot access the site. I wrote a note to the net nanny place earlier this month, but I haven’t received a reply from them yet. Sorry about that, guys.

Anyway, I decided from now on to call the bait by its scientific name of enteromorpha. This picture shows what it looks like when it grows on rocks in the surf. The stuff I harvest is really long because it grows in a mud-banked tidal lagoon away from waves and fish. Anyone who wants to know more about this form of algae should go to the enteromorpha prolifera site.

If you want to get your own bucket load to take to your favorite rocky beach, there’s plenty at Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach. Take Lakewood Blvd. south to the PCH traffic circle, then hook up with PCH south. Go one block and turn right on Ximeno. Go 1 mile to 7^th Street and turn left. Go two blocks and turn right on Park. Go one block and turn left on 6^th Street. Go two blocks and you will see it on your right near the pretty houses. Why did I make this known on the Internet? Because there’s a lot there and I’m friendly. Besides, I have two other backup sites, which will remain a secret.

I’m so excited. If you enter the word breakwall into the Yahoo! search engine, The Breakwall Angler comes up number two.

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I took my pale full of enteromorpha to Palos Verdes this morning. After having a so-so day at Long Point Thursday, I decided to try the shoreline near Point Vicente while the waves were down. From the parking lot, I saw that the swell was up to about one-and-a-half feet, or one foot higher than the other day.

Down the trail and to the right of the big pillow lava rock, I fished from another smaller lava boulder, which was high enough out of the water to keep me dry. Also, unlike Thursday, we had an outgoing tide to two feet instead of an incoming tide to five.

Since I was there before sunrise, I started the day by flipping a five-inch blacksmith perch pattern Fish Trap with first-cast success. That calico was only eight inches long, as was the one I caught five casts later. Both were tossed back. I forget in how many more casts it was, but I did manage to catch a legal fish in a fifteen-inch barred sand bass that sucked the whole leadhead into its gullet. That one was inserted into the bag for dinner. After sunrise, I caught one more small calico and had a hit every cast for the next six or seven tosses, which were likely little guys since they couldn't fit their mouths around the plastic lure and up and over the hook. As per usual, as soon as the sun hit the water, the bass bite had finished and it was time to switch over to the enteromorpha rig.

Conditions looked mighty fine along the south side of Point Vicente, especially near the rock on which I was situated. But I’ll be darned, I had no hits. After a half-hour, I moved to some rocks closer to the point where the small swell was constantly tearing up the water. Three more spots and still no hits. At nine I gave it up. I thought about visiting Long Point, but having to work later in the day turned me off that idea.

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