Two weeks ago I postponed a trip to fish the rocks of Laguna Beach for two reasons.  I sprained my wrist really good the previous Friday, rendering my arm unable to support a fish rod and the daily dock totals for area landings revealed there weren’t enough calico or sand bass around to be worth the gas.  The best time to go is when each dock’s count of the sandies is up into the triple digits and beyond.

    By yesterday I decided the wrist – albeit tender – had healed sufficiently and though the counts for the bass are still minimal, I couldn’t pass up a rare day off with an early low tide, perfect for accessing normally submerged giant rocks which serve as one’s own personal pier.

    I arrived at the Crecent Bay Staircase at 4am.  To the right, up and over the dreaded hump, past Sargo Point, across the water-hardened sands of quarter-mile-long Emerald Bay, I made my first flips with the Fish Trap on the Cameo Cove side of Emerald Point forty minutes later.

    Hitting every nook and cranny between weed and rock while walking back around the point for the next hour-and-a-half, nary a tap-tap registered up the line.

    Feeling dismayed and lonely way out here far from anywhere, I made a few desperation casts for halibut with the lure from some rocks just behind the breakers, which, by the way, were small.  Zilch.

    Retracing my footsteps across the sands with head hung low, I was back at Sargo Point in mere minutes.  The Breakwall Crew always catches at least one bass here, so if nothing happens soon it’s bye bye.

    First cast of the plastic into the deep water to the right of the big tide pool, BAM, a hook-up feeling small.  Whoopie, a thirteen-inch legal calico into the bag!

    Ten casts later, with one placed perfectly into the whitewater against a rock thirty yards out, BAM, another hook-up feeling big.  A two pound barred sand bass inserted therein bagside with his buddy.

    That was about it for the fish trap.  I kept at it, casting to a bunch more fishy-looking lairs but no bites.  We were already way past daylight anyway.

    Next thing to do was to dunk a mussel-enshrouded #10 treble hook tied to the 10-lb outfit wit a BB shot for ballast.  If I were to have some with me I would have used a slightly larger #8 treble and if the swell were up, a larger split shot.  Promising was how many tap-taps were received before the action stopped on a particular cast.  This meant the orange goop was picked clean off the hook.  On the third baiting I felt not a nibble but weight on the line.  As I reeled in, the rod dipped and the drag sounded but only for two seconds, as whatever it was did not stick to the hook.  I was thinking it was another sandy.

    What may have disproved that guess was what I landed next.  After four more baitings of the treble, another sizeable something yanked drag from the spool.  A short but fun tussle on the light gear and the net ready, up came a three-taco sargo, as tasty as anything that swims.

   I was hoping there would be lots of the latter around but in the next hour, exploiting every spot where I know they hang out, that was the day’s lone sargo.  The only other thing I caught here at Sargo Point was five garibaldi to one pound.  There is a no-take restriction for these guys.  Didn’t matter as they were too small to be worth a Dang.

   As it was getting four hours past low tide, higher water determined it to be time to skedaddle.  Crossing the critical section of the trail I was only up to my ankles in water as I attempted to pull myself and all the gear strapped to my backpack up and away from death using the re-bar someone planted into the cliff face.  Discomforting was the twinge that reminded me about my bum wrist.

    Just past that I fan-cast the Fish Trap at Dangerous Dan point from the very rock of which this line of jagged spires receives its title.  Nothing doing here nor any of the other prime bass habitat I tossed out to on the way back to the beach.

    Wednesday April 21 I will show up at the staircase at 03:30, which will give us two hours of dark for bass at Sargo Point before we switch to bait.  No more hoofing it over to Emerald Point.  I’ve been there three times, a waste of energy each visit.  Maybe too by then the usual springtime biomassive school of sand bass will have moved up into our area.

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