Breakwall Dan and I were trudging along the sand to the left of the stairs at Laguna Beach’s Crescent Bay at four this morning to take advantage of a –1.1 tide.  We passed a love-making couple parked alongside the main path, the female of the pair popping her head up above his lap, checking out what other kind of weirdoes might be enjoying the beach at such a romantic hour.  I wondered why ever they stationed themselves so close to the predicted foot traffic if for no other reason than the thrill of getting caught.

    Twenty yards further into the pre-dawn obscurity we could barely make out several mixed young people grouped near the kybo enjoying the effects of glow-sticks on their eyes.  The scenario inside of one of the opulent bluff-top houses played inside my head.  “Mom,” requested the beautiful seventeen-year-old spoiled daughter earlier this morning just past midnight.  “I’m goin’ down to the beach to hang out with my friends all night.”

    “Okay dear, have fun.”

    I was walking in front of Dan, since I forgot to bring batteries for my headlight.  The beam from his cranially mounted illuminator provided the perfect sightseeing tool for both of us as we hiked over to our favorite casting rocks.  Suddenly the ground in front of me turned dark.  I looked back, there was Dan pointing the beam to something adorning the beach that caught his eye; a spent rubber.  All these years I never thought a beach could be more fun than fish.  Alright all you Freauds out there, figure it out but don’t let me know.

    Hopping upon our favorite mussel-encrusted one-acre rock, all that socio-sexual pressure was way behind me.  Suddenly it was we against the finned creatures.  I dropped everything but my baitcaster and the net and headed up and over to the spot where usually I nail a legal calico.  For almost an hour I covered the area with my five-inch Fish Trap but had no takers except for snags that stole two of my lures.  I went back to where Dan was flinging away his Trap with only one bite the whole time.

    By now the stratus was light enough for us to not need any more lamps.  In tandem we gathered up our crap and marched back across the cove towards the rocky shoreline to the right of the stairs.  At that point in time it was absolute low tide, and with a small swell it was easy to navigate out to several casting rocks.  My second toss into one of the many intra-rock channels hooked up.  It felt sizeable and sure enough I lifted a two-pound barred sand bass out of the water.  As I walked back to the gunnysack, Big Dan got bit and reeled in a nice two-taco legal bass of the same specie.

    We each cracked open a brew, said cheers, took a sip, then went about our business.  I walked over to the north to some other nice looking rocks beckoning me.  As I was fan casting this spot I heard distant voices.  I looked over to my partner thirty yards away, who in turn was glancing over at me.  Then as the voice grew louder we pinpointed the hollering to the public gazebo atop the bluff directly above us.  Some dude was up there saying things like, “Hey fisherman, you da man.”  I turned around towards the open sea and made a major cast next to a boiler rock about 25 yards out there.  Upon splashdown I cranked the reel with moderate speed as to not snag another lure in the shallow water.  BAM! I was on again.  This one felt smaller, turning out to be another legal sandie of 14 inches.  I turned around facing the wild man up there, holding up my newest catch by the line.  Hootin’ and a hollerin’ like my main cheerleader, he fell out laughing as the day’s largest wave washed over my head, soaking me from noggin to toe.  ‘Twas one of those America’s-Funniest-Video moments.  People, if you catch a fish and you think you’re proud, DON’T SHOW OFF!  Strange things happen.

    It was kind of a good thing getting soaked.  For one it’s summer and not too cold and I had my swim trunks on underneath my jeans.  Second, if I showed off and didn’t get soaked, the reciprocal would have been not catching another thing.  I hiked my drenched ass further north on this cool two-acre rock – where many tide pools held hundreds of baby opaleye – and caught another and yet another sand bass, both over the twelve-inch limit and worth two tacos each.  An eleven-incher, my fourth of the same kind of the day, was thrown back.

    By 7:30 the bite ended.  To beguile the rest of the day we flylined Dan’s frozen grocery store smelt all about the place with no bites.  As we scaled up and over the trail back to the car, we committed ourselves to fish the right rocks first instead of the left rocks, where, it seems, most fisherpersons go, rendering the left fished out.  We’ll be back Saturday morning July 13 at 3:30am.  Make plans.

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