Laguna Beach 9/1
Concluding our last of the early morning high tides until next April, I made my first cast of the five-inch Fish Trap from the white seabass rock near Laguna Beach’s Santa Ana Cove today at 04:00. In an hour there was nothing going on.
I scooted over to the calico bass rock to make some tosses in the remaining darkness. I always have first-cast success at this spot and as I didn’t this morning I knew I was in for boredom. I only spent a half hour tossing out to the right near a submerged rock where on a good day various paralabrax are hangin’. In that time I caught only one calico bass of the legal twelve inches but I threw it back because if its puny taco cartridges. I also gave up four Fish Traps to that Dang rock.
Over at the big rock near Crescent Bay I made several tosses of the lure, having only one bite before switching over to bait. Today I used a #6 treble hook with a small split shot to whip a large chunk of half a mussel thirty feet out there with the ten-pound outfit. Letting it sink a little, the line tore out and a pretty good fight was on. As the fish tugged the drag sang out a familiar refrain of ZZzZZzZZzZZz. Oh Mary and Joseph the thing got caught up in some kelp strands. With the small line you really can’t apply much pressure to make an extraction. Having realized that fact I gave’im some slack. La tee da, momentarily the line went taut, hopefully signifying he’s out of the tangles. Cranking the reel like a wild man, I felt his struggling before he got all caught up again. More slack, a two minute wait, I cranked again. This time I felt him hit the snag and come free. I got it up to the rock, grabbed the net, scooped it up and murmured, “Yeah baby,” as I walked it back to the staging area at the bottom of the cliff to insert it into the sack and retie. What do you know, the same place I made seven casts with the fish trap, the 1-8 sandy bass goes for the mussel.
As the tide rolled in, the bite seemed to improve somewhat as in the next two hours I landed three garibaldi, three more sandy bass four calico bass and a two-taco sargo, with only two sandies at the thirteen inch mark kept along with the sargo, since there is no size restriction on the latter. Reeling in one cast I saw ten garibaldi following in my bait. They’re cute, but pests.
Around eight o’clock the incoming tide had the swell up around my goDans. I bid a fond adieu to good ol’ Laguna Beach until next year, taking the slow way home to visit a couple pals along the way.
Wednesday the 15th I plan on visiting our other favorite, Opaleye Point on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, as long as my knee heals enough to hike down the trail. Even with my $30 motocross knee pads strapped on I managed to cream it pretty good while trail riding.
*****
Breakwall Gary writes:
Yesterday I ordered a pontoon boat from Cabela’s. Crappie fishing is heating up but everyone I talk to says you need a boat to reach them in most of the lakes and ponds around here. Since I really can’t afford a real boat I thought an inflatable dual purpose boat would be the next best thing. With this boat I can float on rivers, lakes and saltwater bays or estuaries. I also purchased a 36lb thrust electric trolling motor and a combination sonar fish finder / GPS, that way when I find a good fishing area with cover and bait fish I can plot it on the GPS and return there from time to time. Attached are some links to the stuff I ordered. So far Kansas has been a great place to be. This year the weather has been acceptable temperature wise, about 15 to 20 degrees cooler than past years. Now I am ready to start fishing again, the last time I went fishing was in 1998 on my Wyoming trip which was a long time ago. Today I will be searching the garage and all my storage containers for fishing equipment, I have tons of it, now all I have to do is find it.
Pontoon Boat | Fish Sonar & GPS | Trolling Motor | Anchor
Editor's notes:
Around here crappie like to congregate around submerged trees. Six years without fishing would make me jones big time.