Did you see the headlines last Thursday?  A private boater found white seabass off Torrance beach.  A Redondo party boat skipper heard about it and all on board his ship landed their legal limit of one, the largest weighing over fifty pounds!  The next two days saw numerous sportfishers from landings from Newport to Marina Del Rey show up, and also about 100 skiffs.  After a big seabass is hooked, it’ll start out with a long drag‑burning run, usually taking out about a hundred yards of twenty‑pound line.  Needless to say, with all these boats fishing so close together, there was one big ugly bird’s nest created.

    Some folks were catching them down the line from Torrance, near the rocks of Palos Verdes’ Rocky Point.  That means they could be hanging around my usual rocks between Abalone Cove and Long Point.

    This morning I pulled off the usual weekend marathon, finding my way down the Opaleye Point trail at four.  I was torn between which of the excellent rocks to stand on, as I’ve caught white seabass from three of them.  Probably the best of all is the Cave Rock because of the milky water over there.  Many a word has been penned about how the seabass like to hang out near the surf in and around the scum line between churned up off‑color beach water and clear water from the main outside current.  But then again, I caught legal seabass from both the platform and wade rocks without that condition.

    My decision was to fish the latter two today, then hit the Cave Rock tomorrow.  In the fog’s cool dark mist, I hopped out to the platform rock to begin the fan casting of the five‑inch Fish Trap.  A biteless hour‑and‑a‑half disposed of itself before I had a brainstorm there might not be any of the targeted species feeding here.

    So, I moseyed a hundred yards over to the Wade Rock, where the action improved slightly.  About forty‑five minutes into it and three lost lures later, I hooked a calico bass that measured right at the legal twelve inches in length.  It really didn’t have enough meat on its bones to make it worth two tacos, so back into the water it went for some other day.

    Oh, about another two lost Fish Traps and thirty minutes passed before I had my next and final hit of the day.  Right away I could tell it was quite larger than the fish before, but at two pounds, this sand bass really wasn’t making the loss of ten bucks worth the tackle hurt any less.

    After a while, the twenty-four hours straight I was awake was catching up with me.  Upon breaking off my sixth lure, a wave came up and soaked me in the front, then as it crashed on the rock behind me, it got me in the rear.  As I carefully hopped back to where my backpack was, I slipped and seriously jammed both pinkies and cut two other fingers on the rocks.  This was in addition to the similarly smashed and still‑smarting elbow I suffered two weeks ago.  As I was rounding up all my stuff to get the hell out, I saw that my net was missing.  Luckily I bought a gaff yesterday and was easily able to spot my fish scooper about five feet down there, hooking it’s mesh to safety.

    When I was at home cleaning my one keeper for dinner, I stabbed my hand with my four-inch fillet knife, causing blood to gush out, thanks to a combination of having weak fingers and hardly ever using such a short blade to slice open ocean‑caught fish..  I usually use the six‑inch.

    After all this I though to myself I should get a wheelchair and hang out on the handicap dock at the lake.

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