Breakwall Dan was outside his pad at 4:01 this morning awaiting the arrival of Li’l Miracle, which was to transport the two of us to a platform-style rock he scouted within the past two weeks somewhere about near the usual Diver’s Cove we fish in Laguna Beach.  You turn west on Cliff Drive from PCH, only veer left at the fork in the road.  Park where there’s a hedge near a fenced-in area, he directed.

    A few passes up and down the road we alas parked near the bush row at a meter looking hungry for quarters.  The sticker on the side said we didn’t have to pay until after 8am.  I thought that was nice of the city considering where I come from, Hermosa Beach.  Of course I’m not from there anymore and down the rather steep footpath we scurried, with Big Dan slipping and landing on his Big Ass, holding up the fishermen’s procession descending the trail.

    A few feel-better cusswords later we were both on our four feet and near water’s edge, watching the surf pound the shore in front of us.  Along the cliff we could hike only so far without having to swim across to a line of platform rocks, even as the tide was medium and heading out.  From the likeliest roosts we could find we cast our five-inch blacksmith perch Fish Traps here and there between wave sets.  All we reeled in were clumps of eelgrass and kelp wrapped around our lures until we vacated the joint fifteen minutes later.

    Meanwhile back at Diver’s Cove, we at first fished the rocky point to the left of the staircase, with both of us taking up our favorite positions at the spot, where we each caught a few bass the last time we were here.  I wasn’t getting hit with my Fish Trap after a half hour so I went across the way to fish toward the next cove to the south, where two years ago I caught and released two five-pound white seabass.  In a half hour I had what I thought were several tap-taps on the lure before I finally set the hook into something worthwhile, a 1-12 calico easily bounced up onto the rock with the twenty-pound-test line.

    More casts in and around this particular ledge found me exerting extreme pressure on my baitcasting outfit to hurl the lure as far as possible, letting the leadhead sink to the sandy bottom before reeling in with a twitch.  Last week I reported I cast for an entanglement that rendered my Ambassedeur useless.  A few days ago I used my Betty Crocker kitchen shears to cut away the whole bird’s nest from the spool, removed the spool from the reel, stripped the spool down to one-third full, then tied on the same auxiliary spool of Trilene Big Game I bought in December, using a blood knot to re-fill the reel’s spool.  Anyhow I’m really spooled-up now but the Dang thing developed this banshee wail today, which impedes the progress of the cast.  Always somethin’.  Later on I’ll have to squirt some grease in there somewhere to get my smooth casts back.

    From another casting platform closer towards the beach I flung the lure.  I felt an increase of tap-taps transmitted up the line, amplified by the Fenwick Inshore graphite rod.  BAM one more bass was hooked, only it was a sandie of ten inches.  For another 20 minutes I felt more of the smallish hits on the lure until the first dive class of the day jumped in the water.

    I stuck my legal calico in my net and walked hobo-style back to where Dan was hanging catchless.  I showed him my fish, then went back to the equipment pile to grab my also-re-spooled eight-pound-test outfit.  I would usually refill with Trilene XL for this purpose but I accidentally bought Stren clear eight-pound because I was faked out by the same bright orange packaging.

    A couple years ago, seeing the sargo guys use a light-line rig at this rock, I cast the eight-pound set-up with a ¼ ounce sinker holding down the line with a #8 treble hook loaded with mussel Dangling above.  I felt a few hits, then got the whole thing stuck in either the rocks or kelp.  Busted off.

    Forget it, I tied a #8 treble on the end of the light line, crimped a BB-shot a few inches above and decorated the hook with one half of a five-inch mussel, first pinning the long tougher strings around the three prongs, then draping the whole thing with the orange gooey part.  That way the soft section will get bitten away by frenzied fish only to leave the big chunk with all the hooking power.  For about an hour all I could muster was a garibaldi I threw back and a bunch of little guys that didn’t have mouths large enough to suck in the whole wad.  One rock wrasse of six inches was hooked in the eye.

   At 07:30 The two of us huddled around the gear to decide what to do next.  I wondered where’s the nearest Albertson’s.  Then Dan mentioned some dudes were fishing those rocks across the cove, to the right from the bottom of the staircase.  Off we went, finding the tide low enough to get way out and fish this cool place where large channels between rocks churned madly with small waves coming in from all directions.

    As soon as my bait hit I felt lots of bites, so many that I had to re-bait five times before the big one swallowed the hook in five feet of water.  This thing didn’t nibble.  My rod tip went down, I pulled back, it tore out stage right to the middle of the big channel, ripping line off the Daiwa BG-15 the whole way.  I yelled, it’s a drag burner, as I turned to my cohort close-by on another rock to make sure he was witnessing The King in action.

    The fish held on in mid-channel, almost feeling like it was stuck on something.  There wasn’t a lot of kelp around, which made the only goal to put max pressure on the 8lb line to keep it out of the rocks.  The fish broke out of its doldrums, racing to the left towards the channel that leads out to the open ocean.  The reel’s drag systems and the 6 ½ foot graphite rod combined flawlessly to be able to turn the fish around and heard it into one of the back channels closer to shore.  There was one last drag pull before the two-pound sand bass again was turned, straight into the net.  That was the biggest fish and coolest fight I’ve had with this outfit since I bought the thing four years ago.

    Doing the whoop-whoop Dance I looked over and saw Dan holding up his first catch of the day, a calico.  Our double-hookup was just as Thursday’s daily dock total reflected; even numbers of sand and calico bass caught by sportfishers from Long Beach south to Dana Point.

    Another exciting specie I found were the four halfmoons I caught on the same splitshoted mussel set-up.  These things were only six to eight inches long, for their size proving to be quite the battlers.  They felt similar to an opaleye twice their weight.  Fun to catch but not very palatable, however.

    As this cove’s dive class entered and swam out, yet another spot spooked.  After showing off our fish to the tide pool family crowd we took off for the Albertson’s.

Top