After crawling out of bed Sunday morning at four­‑thirty, I switched on the computer to view the Animated Radar page, which showed a somewhat moist cell moving in to where I wanted to fish for opaleye today.  This bit of news didn’t scare me much.  I just made sure my rain suit was in my backpack.

    I ended up spending three hours at the Dana Point Harbor jetty without even a bite while using high quality Colorado Lagoon enteromorpha for bait.  The rest of the shoreline from Dana Point northward was under the influence of a four- to five‑foot swell, making any attempt to fish one of several rocks near Laguna a miserable prospect.  At least all this rain we were supposed to receive was nothing more than a few sprinkles.

*****

    Monday morning I fished Long Point first thing.  The last two times we fished the stretch between Opaleye Point and Long Point, most if not all of each day’s action happened there.

    Things started out well.  I had lots of hits from the shore to the left of the point in the first half‑hour, but nothing stuck to the hook.  Pretty soon, though, I detected no more bites at that spot, so I moved out to the pillar rock and tried.

    With a high tide at five‑thirty, it was easy to make the crossing at seven. I chummed some bait and while that was spreading out and attracting opaleye, I proceeded to fling the five‑inch Fish Trap for bass.  After ten casts of the lure to various kelp paddies and no hits, I picked up the ol’ bobber rig.  I tried all angles from the rock, then finally after a half‑hour I had some hits behind the kelp stringers to the right.  I could tell they were little guys.  They were very skilled at removing the bait from the hook without entrapping themselves.

    After three hours of fishing Long Point and not a taco in the bag, it dawned on me perhaps I should try somewhere else.  As I hiked back towards Opaleye Point, I pondered two or three spots on the way, settling my mind on one in particular, which historically the Breakwall crew has had lots of success, the outer Cave Rock.

    By the time I got there, at nine o’clock, the tide had lowered enough so that it was the first instance of the day I could jump across the gap separating the outer rock from the inner rock without getting swept away by a wave.  Perfect timing.  I put my stuff down and chummed so that each of the waves would break up the bait and sprinkle it over the thick kelp stringers in the emerald water to the left.  To the right, into the turquoise water, I made a few launchings of the Fish Trap.  The white seabass like to hang out around the light blue but I knew it was already too late for one of those guys to be on the chew.

    I switched over to the enteromorpha rig and placed the bobber about ten feet out, in a gap between kelp stringers.  To my delight, I had hits right away, although with the bobber not going under and the bait removed from the hook upon reeling in, I figured they were again little guys.

    On the third re-baiting I found that I had figured wrong.  The bobber went down and I was on to something that felt weighty.  Alas, at nine‑fifteen, my first three‑taco opaleye of the weekend was slid into the gunnysack.  For the next forty‑five minutes, for every four times I had to re-bait the hook, I caught a keeper opaleye, until I had a total of seven fish, capped by a specimen that went two pounds. The big one was a challenge to yank out of the kelp.  It took me five minutes to reel it in after three times it entangled itself in the branches.

    At ten o’clock the tide was out so far that each time a wave broke, beach sediments muddied my honey hole.  This caused me to detect no more bites.  I had to walk out to the end of the rock to get away from the ever-darkening water and cast to the outside of the kelp.  I started to see more action as the bobber wiggled incessantly.  The problem was that in the next twenty minutes I lost three bobber set‑ups to the weeds.

    Pretty soon I was seeing all these bobber‑wigglings but I wasn’t hooking anything for loosing bait.  I cut off my number 1/0 live bait hook and tied on a smaller number ten treble hook.   Sure’nough the next thing to get hooked was an opaleye worth about one taco.  It was tossed back.  Seeing this and noting that it was eleven‑thirty signaled time to go.

Top