This morning at four Breakwall Dan and I drove around Emerald Bay looking for access to the killer sargo rocks we fished last time.  Turns out the whole community is gated private property.

    Oh well, back to the usual Crescent Bay spot.  In lieu of passing over the dreaded hump to get over there, I headed left from the stairs, while Dan was gathering his tackle, to fish the spot I bagged a few legal calico bass last time.  Due to a rather large south swell the whole area was washed out.  I gave it a shot for an hour or so but never had a bite.

    Back at the stairs I saw my partner’s boot prints going to the right.  I didn’t see him at the rocks before the hump, meaning he dared to cross over to the sargo spot.  I was so proud of him considering I was too chicken to do the same before daylight.  In an effort to catch more than The King he was probably over there with a whole tide pool full of fish by now.

    Not exactly.  Fishless and disenchanted, he was all packed up, ready to hike back to the stairs.  I cast my Fish Trap at several spots for a half hour with no bites before switching over to the twelve-pound outfit to use mussel.  This being a north-facing rock, the swell wasn’t as nasty here but still one or two ounces of weight were needed to keep the rig stationary.  Right away I caught a short calico, which enthused Dan to whip out his bait outfit for another try.

    After I caught another small calico I put the bait pole down for again the Fish Trap hoping there would be some larger bass cruising by.  At a spot fairly close to the beach I nailed a legal two-taco calico on the lure, but that was about it in the next twenty-or-so minutes.

    Meanwhile Dan was nearby cranking’em in on the mussel.  First he nailed a nice size black croaker, a jacksmelt over a foot long, two nice yellowfin croaker and a fat barred surfperch.  We both had a lot of bites but I could only muster two of the large jacksmelt and one teensy calico.  The jacksmelt have a lot of meat on them but the ones I caught a few years ago were very wormy.  I kept the pair anyway, just to check them out later.

    It was getting to be a little past nine, already over three hours past the 5:40am low tide.  Even though we were still having a decent nibble-fest, it was time to hoof it back over to Crescent Bay.  As the tide comes in, one can easily get trapped as the water goes all the way up to the bluff in spots.  In fact we made it to one critical climb where we were already up to our ankles as we used a pre-rigged rope embedded into the cliff to pull ourselves up.  Back at the safety of the stairway beach we tried our bait rigs around the rocks but we mostly caught seaweed instead of fish.  A little later the lifeguard came over to put up a sign next to us saying don’t go past this spot due to high tide and heavy surf.

    Sitting on the rocks, having a brew, the two of us recapped our day.  Danny was so stoked he finally filled the bag with more tasty taco fillers than I, with his four to my one.  I was no less than a proud fishing guide, having trained my subject the past few months to this accomplishment.  Don’t count on it happening again, though.

    We’ll shoot for Sunday, August 11 to fish low tide at the same spot.  See ya there.

Notes:  The jacksmelt I cut open had big worms in its flesh.  Yuck.

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