The next morning I met pals Breakwall Dan and Breakwall Steve at the parking lot near Dana Point where I informed them of our lack of candy bait. I already knew the waves were going to be too big to fish the rocks there but we didn't have anything better to do. At the bottom of the stairs we could see there wasn't much beach left compared to two weeks ago when we were there. As we made our way closer to the point we saw the tide and surf was all the way to the bottom of the bluff, making the passage to the rocks impossible.

So we went over to the Dana Breakwall where the swell was relatively calm. We hiked three-quarter the way out and had at it. Just like last time, we had perfect opaleye conditions and no bites. Not even anything on the fish traps. Dan was happy when his line tangled and he had something to do for fifteen minutes.

By this time I was out of ideas so the three of us went on a hunt for the mythical ten-pound Dana opaleye. Legend had it that someone caught it from the Dana Point rocks and it is stuffed and mounted on the wall of a local tackle shop. We visited one shop on P. C. H. just south of the harbor but the guy there said he's never heard of such a thing. We told him we had a problem because we couldn't find any opaleye around these parts. He said the Chinese guys hang out on the jetty on the Doheny side and catch them all day.

We drove over there and parked near the spot. We walked past someone with a rice paddy hat and a cane pole and inquired, but really couldn't make out what he said. We walked to the end of the jetty and tried for an hour but only one nibble was noticed.

On the way back to the car we saw that the dude on the jetty we spoke with on the way out was unhooking a zebraperch he caught with enteromorpha. We watched as he slid it into his cooler to be added to the stack of three-taco opaleye he caught. Ah-ha. So they are really here. Cool. The three of us decided to try this spot next time.

As my two pals departed ways I went over to the other tackle shop in town, Larry Burson's world famous Jig Stop. There I inquired about the big opaleye. I told the guy that last week it started out at ten pounds and is up to eighteen this week. He laughed so hard coughed up blood streaked sputum. He pointed over to the back room where upon the wall it was hanging, ever so majestic and beautiful, with the perfect taxidermy job all painted up with a blue eye. The two of us agreed it was only about five pounds.

The kid who works there said he has fished Dana Harbor extensively and drew me a map with Xs to show where he has seen, "Toad opaleye", as he put it. "The water is so shallow their backs are out of the water". I returned to the harbor to have a lookie-see and saw another angler at the walkway rail tossing plastics into the harbor's channel. As I gazed into the water not really seeing any fish, I asked him if he has seen any opaleye here before. He gave me that are-you-stupid look and stated, "They're all over the harbor".

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