Monday morning I met Breakwall Don at his house. We loaded his aluminum skiff, the SS Sea More, into his pick-up truck and hauled it the few miles to the Marina Del Rey launch ramp to start our voyage out to the marina’s main breakwall, which is not connected to land. You have to figure there’d be more and bigger fish at a breakwall that not just anybody can walk out on to exploit. And, of course, all the rich guys who have boats in this marina more than likely wouldn’t bother fishing the breakwall on their way out to some exotic island.

All was going well for us as we putted under the full power of the four horsepower motor through the main channel, until we saw a giant floating crane scooping up muck from the bottom and dumping it into a barge not too far from where we wanted to fish.

We started at the end of the wall farthest from the crane, which would have been the north end. We anchored close to the rocks about fifty yards from the end on the inside of the wall so the swell wouldn’t get us. After all, we were two two-hundred-pounders in only a ten-foot-long by three-foot-wide dinghy.

Don travelled up to the Ventura County line at low tide the day before to pluck some big mussels to go with his package of grocery shrimp and I, of course, went to Colorado Lagoon for the usual bucket load of enteromorpha. I started with the mussel pinned to a treble hook suspended under a bobber. It seemed a half-hour went by before I had my first hit, a one-taco opaleye inserted into the bag in case it was the only one I caught for the day.

Don, fishing on the bottom with an ounce of weight and a chunk of mussel reeled in a four-inch sand bass. My next catch was a foot-long senorita, a rather large size for this specie, but they’re not that great eating so back it went. The bite north really wasn't happening so over to the south end we motored.

Don says he has had his best luck near the south end. Once cast proved that. I was on before my hunk o’mussel sank to the bobber’s pre-rigged seven-foot depth. It was another small opaleye barely worth one taco. I re-baited, tossed out and again I was instantly on another fish. This time it was a fully-fledged two-taco opaleye.

The bite was so good I put aside the fifteen-pound bobber rod for the ten-pound outfit to splitshot a wad of mussel wrapped around a number twelve treble. Upon casting out, the rig sank for only five seconds before I saw my line twitch and tighten up. I set the hook on what turned out to be a really small opaleye of about one-half taco. In fact, the next few I caught were all of that size and released. I managed to crank in two more opaleye of one taco each before as if by karma the fish departed. All of a sudden neither of us had much action on shrimp, mussel or enteromorpha.

We fired up the Johnson and motored back to the other end, where after an hour or so Don caught a buttermouth perch worth two tacos. The day ended with me catching one last non-keeper teensy opaleye.

One little problem fishing here was that it is at the mouth of Ballona Creek, which drains much of the surface of L. A. west of Downtown. Tight up against the rocks there was a really big slick of sea scum present, mixed with thousands of Styrofoam cups, plastic bottles, branches, leaves, bags, wrappers, etc. Our game likes to hang out under the flotsam but it's kind of hard to fish when you're reeling in all this stuff. Don had the best junk catch of the day when an El Segundo squid wrapped itself around his bobber. An El Segundo squid, of course, is the nickname for a spent and drifting prophylactic skin. It was tossed back.

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