After reading our last filing, an outdoorsy dude at work expressed an interest to fill a sack full of calico bass and opaleye.  As his rod and reel wore out years ago, he wondered what sort of equipment he should run out and purchase.  I suggested and he picked up a Penn 7500 spinning reel, an Ugly Stick 1100 eight-foot two-piece pole and the always-handy rain suit.  One day last week he brought it in for show-and-tell.  The rig was beautiful.  It gave me goose bumps just holding it.

    We simultaneously pulled into our office’s parking garage this morning at two seconds past four. With an appointment looming later in the day, he planned on following me to the Colorado Lagoon slime pit for enteromorpha algae opaleye bait.  There, we found the quick rain of two weeks ago had the green strands blooming once again despite the recent Santana heat.

    Seeing my fish license dangling from my neck reminded him that, oops, he forgot his on the kitchen table.  Riding in separate vehicles came in handy.  I didn’t have to cart his bass back to his pad, which would cut into my fish time.

    Didn’t matter anyway.  I cast my five-inch WildEye Anchovy from my favorite calico bass rock for over the half hour it took for Breakwall Shane to get there and never detected a hit.  Company supplied Nextel phones were key in guiding him to the spot at the end of Hawthorne Blvd. in Rancho Palos Verdes.

    ’Twas very amusing watching someone with a new outfit who hasn’t fished in a while make those first few cautious casts of the five-inch WildEye Sardine, the pattern I caught the six bass on last time.  He wasn’t flinging it out there very far but as reported the past few calico trips, the fish were biting close to the casting rock.  True to form, Shane pulled up the first fish of the day, a thirteen-inch calico.  With a pseudo-quizzical style he pondered aloud, “Is this how you do it?”

    Yup, that’s it!  I could see he’s an old pro at this game, taking wave after three-foot wave against his rain suit, letting nothing break his concentration in the precise placement of the lure out to the boiler rocks and kelp strands.  I then could lend all of my attention to my primary goal of the day, to finally catch one.

    My killer rock wasn’t putting out today, so we moved one rock over towards the trail.  There we made a hundred casts, with me alas hooking up and landing a barely-legal calico.

    As sunlight hit the water we tried the rocks jutting out from the bottom of the trail but we never had another hit between us.

    Opaleye time was upon us.  Over at Long Point the waves were calm, as Point Vicente blocked the swell out of the northwest.  I chummed some algae then instructed Shane on how to rig the opaleye bobber rig.  About fifteen minutes after we cast out I could tell it was going to be a slow day.  Usually I have a lot of bites here but today even with the high quality bait we saw something like one interested party each wiggle the bobber before Shane had to leave at nine.  I planned on sticking it out until 10:45, which would have been one hour past the 5.5-foot high tide.  Lately I noticed most of the opaleye action has been from an hour before until then.

    It wasn’t until 9:15 before I hooked the first opaleye of the day, a smallish three-taco specimen slid into the bag.  In the next hour it looked like I had maybe three bites before the second and last opaleye of the day bent my pole.  Turned out to be another cookie-cutter size for the same cantidad de tacos.

    Next trip will be 10/17.

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