I was all showered, fed, ready to commute to the factory yesterday afternoon, when as soon as my hand touched the doorknob the phone rang. It was my stuporvisor saying there was a crisis on campus and they needed me to come in from 20:00 to 04:00 each day for the rest of the week.

    Although those hours didn’t sound exactly appealing, to preserve my employment I wholeheartedly accepted. On the bright side, getting off at four in the morning is coincidentally very conducive to fishing, especially when every day until Sunday the tide chart says there’s a happening low tide. I readied all my gear, put it in the truck and went back to bed for a while.

    After work I was able to drive home, change my clothes real quick and start casting from the platform rock at Opaleye Point by 05:20. Since at that time the tide was at its lowest point, the rest of the day sea level would be rising and I would have to watch out. However I wasn’t too scared. Unlike the rough conditions I experienced last Saturday morning when I was in the vicinity, today there was no wind, no swell and the surface was like glass.

    Thanks to this week being so close to the summer solstice, for this early in the morning there was already too much daylight for it to be excellent for white seabass. I fan cast from the platform with a five-inch blacksmith perch Fish Trap for an hour without hooking one of the big croakers but I did manage to net a fourteen-inch calico bass to take home for two tacos. Another of the same specie landed was too small and let go.

    Usually after I’m through with the platform I would head towards Long Point to fish various rocks along the way there. Not this time. Today I drifted the other way, to the left of opaleye Point and discovered some really wonderful casting rocks, the tops of which are normally just below the water’s surface. One massive boulder in particular was perfect to stand on even though I had to wade up to my ankles to access it. While I was flinging the Fish Trap I could see my beloved Opaleye frolicking ever so gently and sweetly right below my toes, yet I had no enteromorpha or any kind of tackle with me to support the sticking on of even a chunk of mussel to try for them. So I kept on flinging the Fish Trap with my one-and-only outfit for the day, a 1967 Mitchell 302 reel on a Fenwick Seahawk nearshore seven-foot spinning rod. Alas it came to net a legal barred sand bass to include with my haul.

    I tried a few more rocks along the way toward Abalone Cove, losing a few more Fish Traps and catching two more sand bass whose lengths were a mere inch below the legal twelve.

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