Editor's notes:

Special thanks to Breakwall Dan, who submitted this week's photo documents taken with his phone camera.

    Opaleye fans get ready.  Western Outdoor News reports as of this past Sunday there are lots of opaleye showing for shore fisherpersons from Pt. Dume to Angel’s gate.  This morning at four I arranged my tackle into the rear of Breakwall Dan’s new Mountaineer for a speedy, rich Corinthian leather-lined luxurious transport to the Palos Verdes rocks.  Good to have the fish, we need the bait.  On our way we didn’t bother stopping at the slime pit for enteromorpha algae due to our observations the last two stops that there ain’t any.  However, with the rain due this coming week there should be an ample supply when we head out in two weeks.

    A little after five at the end of Hawthorne Blvd. we were doing the downhill dust shuffle down the Chowigna trail, aiming right to the rocks from where I nailed the big ones last month.  A check at the gutter creek saw no algae, all washed away.

    At the rock we started the festivities in the usual manner, with five-inch Fish Traps flying all over the place.  I was using a glow-in-the-dark head and body.  The action was pret-much nonexistent, with Dan claiming to have had a hit.  Granted.

    It wasn’t until six thirty before anything happened.  I hooked up to something on a Channel Islands Chovy model of Trap that felt rather weak, like a twelve-inch bass, which turned out to be a barracuda eyeballing in at not legal.  They have to be 28 inches.  With a mouth full of gigantic teeth and all, a plastic jig doesn’t last too long and after the second ’cuda was deposited into a tide pool the body was shredded beyond recognition.

    Stored handily in the pocket of my Black Belt I pulled out a two-ounce green mackerel pattern ’cuda-proof chrome steel Krocodile and flung that out there.  The burgeoning light displayed a surface breezing with ’cudas well within casting distance.  The bummer was that all the 10 pencilnecks I caught in the next hour were all two inches short of the limit.

    If I catch barracuda it’s an incidental thing.  We’re not really targeting them.  I will keep one due to their fine tasting flesh; once you get over the smelly thick slime covering their log bodies.  One and only one because they don’t keep well in the frige or freezer.  You have to cook’em up within two days, beyond that they’re funky.  Oh yeah, they’re dam good charcoal smoked with hickory.

    That didn’t last long.  By eight the school disappeared.  Scanning the horizon while reeling in casts I saw a big brown fatty – presumably a calico – jump clear out of the water twice on baitfish over there to the right.  I ran over, flung the Kroc right into the zone but in five casts and nothing I retied with the Chovy Fish Trap.

    With that I finally nailed a legal calico of twelve inches, barely enough for two tacos.  Two other small calicos were tossed back.

    I glanced over to check on Driver Dan.  Yup, he’s still there.  We both tied on a 3/0 hook and flylined frozen anchovies for an hour.  The only thing biting those were little guys who were picking at them.

    The tide was coming in fast.  I was pretty much soaked by eight.  None the worse for wear, I tried using peas on a number four hook, flylined using my ten-pound outfit.  I felt some bites but upon reeling in I could see in the crystal waters a cloud of grunion nibbling the little green balls off the hook.

    Next with the same outfit I went with the full-on opaleye bobber rig with peas fished from a rock near where the gutter creek enters the sea, on a hunch the alginated water might keep the opaleye curiously near.  A few times the bobber went under but nothing stuck to the hook, indicating more little guys.

*****

From Chuck P.

beauties Mike -  Congrats!  I gotta get back to shore fishing some more - I just got back from an overnight charter trip 10/2/04 out of San Diego about 60 miles south and 50 miles out -  lots of tuna, Dorado, and yellowtail.  Yellowfin tuna limits,  only one yellowtail keeper @10 lbs -  the yellowtail and Dorado were small @ 5-6# mostly  fun catch and release.   Tuna wore me out!

*****

From poor ol' Breakwall Tim:

Nice fish. I only went 'kind of' fishing once and caught a 10 incher. Slow season this year. I have been busy racing mountain bikes. Oh well, next year.

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