I checked the Swell Chart before driving to Opaleye Point this morning. It didn’t look good. It showed ten feet off Point Conception and six feet hitting the South Bay.

Sure enough, at the bottom of the trail, the incoming tide I was hoping to fish was a roil mess. The waves didn’t seem to come in sets. They just crashed in one after the four-foot other. When conditions are such as this, we head over to the Marineland ledge where it is somewhat sheltered from the swell when it’s rolling in from the northwest.

Not this time. As Breakwall Darryl and I walked along the pebbly beach on our way over, we could see lots of whitewater hitting our favorite rocks. We gave it a try anyway. We’ve seen it worse than this in the past and still caught a bunch. Darryl took a position at his normal spot about half-way out from the cove. I perched myself on a rock closer in.

The three gallons of enteromorpha we had for bait looked real good. Still it took an hour before one of us had even one bite. It was Darryl who landed the first opaleye, a one-pound specimen tossed into a tide pool to retain freshness.

I had a few bites, but couldn’t set the hook on any of them. It seemed like today they were all little guys.

However, I did see Darryl over there with his rod bent, gingerly playing something that looked like a big one. After he bounced it up onto his rock, I went over to size it up with a scale, on which was displayed 2-0. That fat opaleye looked like three pounds, probably because I’ve been so two-pounder starved lately.

We gave it another hour, with Darryl fishing so hard, the bail spring in his reel broke. After that, he sat there watching me have lots of little guy hits with ho hook sets.

Soon it became obvious our endeavors were pointless. I gathered up my two fish that Darryl caught for me and we both gave that ol’ fishin’, "Maybe next week."

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