I did it!  I reeled in one of those big ones I hooked and lost the past two trips.  Check it out…

    Up and over the dreaded hump, across the sandy expanse of Emerald Bay, 45 minutes from the stairway where we park, I was ready to make my first casts of the anchovy and Fish Trap off the Cameo Cove side of Laguna Beach’s Emerald Point at four.  Map Feature

    First, some nasty business.  See, getting up at one in the morning can lead to occasional flare-ups of irregularity and at the moment Mike Du-Du was a knockin’ at the back door.  There I was squatting somewhere relatively near where I laid down my equipment when I detect in the darkness a sizeable swell heading my way.  The wave worked great as a toilet flusher – also as a bucket knocker-over.  I waddled over, pants around my knees, in an attempt to save my bag of bait before it was all swept away.  Too late!  Twenty anchovies disappeared without a trace.  Crap! (literally and figuratively).

    O sweet Mary and Joseph, all the planning.  I thought I had everything parked high enough and out of the way of disaster.  As it turns out, this stretch of rocks was pretty much washed out today by four-footers rolling in regularly.  Fish Trap flinging was pointless, as would have been trying to keep a ’chovy anchored down with three ounces of weight.  I know because I tried the lure for a half-hour up and down the ledge without so much as a hooked kelp strand.

    In lieu of using frozen minnows for bait I guess I could have stepped on a few green sidewinder crabs and stuck one of them on my 4/0 Gamakatsu live bait hook for soaking on the bottom.  I’ve caught lots of calico and sand bass with claws in their stomachs.  But first while I was over here, I wanted to walk across Cameo Cove to investigate the next point over, which is unnamed on the Tomas Bros. Map.  I saw the Chinese guys march there last time.  Naturally I need to know what they find so compelling o’er yonder.  I packed up and headed along the rocks, in toward the beach.  The trail abruptly ended at a fifteen-foot sheer drop, with the only access a half-rotten, half-inch nylon cord Dangling from rusty rebar embedded in the basalt.  Heck with that.  I didn’t need to risk life and limb for an unexplored region when with much less effort and Danger involved I could easily lose big ones in the relative safety near Sargo Point.  The water looked a lot calmer back that a way.

    I’ll check the passage through Cameo Cove some other time, like when there’s ample daylight.  Meanwhile, on the way back to Sargo, something fantabulous dawned upon me.  I left my stupid dogchovies in the icebox in the truck!  Well, I’ll just have to run up there and grab’em.  But first some trap flinging in the calm, deep sandy area on the Emerald Bay side of Emerald Point.  I hit the seventy-or-so yards of rocks all the way back to the beach but had no hits.

    Back at Sargo Point, the truck was only fifteen minutes away.  As I approached the dreaded hump, it was five o’clock and here came the Chinese guys, all six of ’em, slightly behind schedule.  We said hi, I mentioned I forgot my bait bag.  They said, don't use anchovy, should use mussel.  I use both, I said.

    At five-thirty I returned to Sargo making my first cast with the bait outfit smack dab into the hotspot to the right where the sandie bass usually hang out.  After dunking it out there thirty feet from the rock, I held onto the pole for five minutes in anticipation of quick bites.  Already board and Jonesin’ for some Fish Trap action, I stuck the bait pole in the sand spike wedged in a crack, clipped the alarm bell, turned around to grab my other outfit and, jingle jingle, I was on.  I ran back, set the hook and felt a little guy twisting in under the full power of the twenty-pound line.  A twelve-inch calico bass was tossed into the usual Sargo Point deep tide pool for educational studies.  In the next hour I caught six more sand and calico bass, all of the exact twelve-inch size.  That there tide pool was fascinating to gaze into after a while.

    This week I made an adjustment in the rigging of my bait pole.  Until now I was using 20# for the main line and the hook and weight leaders.  This week the weight leader was reduced to 8#.  This way the weight will break off if it gets stuck during combat, an accommodation which is hoped will produce more landings.  So far the change paid off, as one of the small calicos I had just bounced was a result of this technique.  I heard the bell go off but before I could grab the rod, the fish took the whole get-up into a rocky place.  I pulled hard, felt the eight-pound break, the fish once again swam unimpeded, or as freely as one can with a hook and line affixed to their face.

    Then it happened.  Bells a jingling, I look over and there’s my bait pole, loosened drag fully abuzz, ready to get yanked out of the holder.  I grabbed the rod, the fight ensued.  ZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZ, straight out it went, just like last trip.  This time I kept the pressure on, trying to tire ’im out as much as possible while he was away from the rocks.  But oh no, the thing hangs a left and heads straight for the kelp encrusted jagged spires surrounding the outer point.  I tightened my drag a little and gave him all I had.  That stopped him, even allowing me to regain seven yards of line.

    Then, ZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZzZZ, it switched toward the right, finally getting stuck in a pile of rocks over there.  I reeled in as far as I could, engaging him in a tug-o’-war.  As I pulled him to the rock, he pulled eight feet of line back out.  That seesaw scenario played out for ten minutes.

    As noted by only two lines of Zzs in this week's story, this one wasn’t registering with my biceps as being as gigantic as the last one I hooked.  It felt like he was tiring a lot sooner.  At one point I pulled him up to the rock again but the fish didn’t react in kind.  I kept the pressure on and, * plink *.

    The weight busted off, the fish once again was swimming zigzag in front me, the hook still holding.  He pulled hard a couple times but I had my drag loosened to make up for there being no stretch while not much line is out.  What mono had been extended from the spool was likely damaged from brushing up against rocks anyway.

    Alas it came to color.  It’s a bass…  It’s a ’but��������������������� It’s a…

    It’s a…

    Rat bastard bat ray!  Quite the disappointment.  Gol dern things fight like mad, faking out the saltiest of saltwater Danglers.  Just ask Breakwall Sam, who by nature is a halibut freak.  Once time while fishing from a boat at San Clemente Island, he hooked one, thought it was his life’s largest ever left-eye flounder.  He was a screamin’ and a hollerin’ as it took him around the boat twice.  We all on board found hilarity when that worthless, ugly beast of a bat was pulled over the rail.

    What I had on my line was karma (for us poking fun at Sam) that stung me in the ass, and it looked too big to bounce up onto the rock with the twenty-pound line.  Stupid me; I still had my gaff tied to my backpack.  With a wave I was able to guide the ray up onto one of the lower rocks.  I backed up the ten feet toward my gear to untie the gaff, but the hook part was tangled in the net.  With one hand I held onto the rod while I screwed with the netting with the other.  Before the next big wave came in, I stuck the wing tip and lifted the freakin’ thing out of the water, straining all the way as it was real heavy.  I hung it on the Normark 50-pound scale, it registered in at a respectable 28 pounds one ounce.  That was my biggest ‘fish’ since the 25-pound tuna of 1995.  Come to think, this was the first time I brought something up from the depths upon which I had to use my gaff since I bought it four years ago.

    I kicked him into -- where else -- the tide pool with all the bass.  Watching it glide gracefully back and forth in the pool, I saw it was all scratched up from being dragged through two sets of rocks by thick line.  That’ll teach its ass to mess with the Du-man.

    All my buddies who I have been phoning the past month-or-so to brag about the big ‘seabass’ that keep braking off are going to think I’m a big ding-dong and will not want to come to Laguna with me to fish for stinkin’ bat rays.  I don’t care.  There’re still a bunch of the paralabrax types around.  I caught the largest and only keeper bass of the day on an anchovy, a fourteen inch sandie worth two tacos, after plopping a couple more shorties into the tide pool.

    I caught these last ones after  re-rigging by tying the 4/0 hook directly to the main line, then pinching a ½ ounce Big Shot six inches above.  You toss left, the current took it to the right, allowing the bait to cover fifty yards with one cast.

    Nothing touched the Fish Trap all day.  I used the same one the whole time.  It’s still shiny, unscathed by fish teeth, like fresh from the wrapper.

    I did use chunks of mussel on a treble hook for a half hour at all the usual spots.  I felt a lot of nibbles, but they were probably grunion picking off the meat.

    Around eight, any bite to be had was slowing down as I rounded the small inlet toward Dangerous Dan Point.  Did I mention it was Dangerous there?  I slipped on a rock, landed on my left kneecap and cut my shin pretty good in two places.  More karma for you (hi Dan).  I sat there for a while, waiting for sensitivity in my leg to return, then limped over the dreaded hump toward the car where I encountered – speak of the devil – Breakhand Dan, who was in the midst of Trap flingin’ Crescent Bay.  First thing I wanted to do was look at what was once a nasty gash in his palm.  It has healed beautifully in no time, thanks, unlike my scarred psyche will after today’s batty ordeal.

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