Four more weeks until we set our clocks to PDT. I'm ready to make the adjustment now. I was at the Opaleye Point trailhead at 5:45 yesterday morning and it was already too light for success on bass with the blacksmith perch pattern Fish Trap. Nonetheless I gave it a try anyway. I ended my first cast from the platform with a snag on a rock, breaking off the plastic leadhead. I tied on a calico bass pattern Fish Trap, which lasted me ten casts before I lost it.

After chumming a few wads of enteromorpha into the calm crystalline water, I tried the fifteen-pound opaleye bobber rig. I now and then had a few nibbles from little guys, but it wasn't before an hour of standing there waiting passed before I caught my day's first opaleye, a one-pounder worth two tacos.

About a half-hour and a few more little guy hits later, I caught another opaleye that was about the size of a bluegill. Tossed.

I hung out until eight-thirty, having by that time nothing more than a few nibbles from little guys. I looked towards Long Point thinking if they weren't at Opaleye Point, they might be over there. Instead I went home to catch a nap before attending the Fred Hall Show.

But today I got up before four in the morning so I would have enough time to park at the Opaleye Point trailhead and hike to Long Point before dawn sheds its early light. I almost made it. I forgot it's a forty-minute walk to get there.

Once I did, I started with a blacksmith perch Fish Trap into large swells and a twenty-five-mile-per-hour easterly wind. I'd say it was about the tenth cast when I hooked my first calico bass, a ten-incher. Five casts later I was on to a noticeable larger one that came in at twelve inches. Neither fish was kept. Fifteen minutes later I was hooked on a rock and lost the lure.

I tried the enteromorpha bobber rig for about an hour. The wind was blowing the floater all over the place. Two swells rolled in that were twice as tall as the rock I was fishing from. Since it was low tide at the time, I was standing right in the middle of the breaker zone. Luckily the rock in front of me would cut the waves in half before they reached me and my stuff. I ended up getting sprayed twice which is better than washing in and eaten by a shark.

I had enough of that nightmare, so I walked back and tried casting the Fish Trap from the end of the Cave Rock. The lure soared far thanks to the wind at my back. I was fishing in milky hued water created by the waves kicking up sediment in the cove. These are the conditions white seabass like. I heard there was a run of them last week off the backside of Catalina Island. Perhaps we had our own school hanging out locally. I'm hoping to have another day like I did last August when I caught three of them. After an hour of flinging the Fish Trap, it became apparent today's not that day.

I finished the day by donating an hour to fishing for opaleye with enteromorpha from the platform at Opaleye Point. The wind was sailing the bobber from left to right and I had to jump back to the staging rock a few times because of the waves but I still should have noticed fish taking my bobber down. However, I didn't.

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