A while back Breakwall Darryl expressed an interest in trying Newport Bay for spotted sand bass – a.k.a. bay bass or spotties – and I have been wanting to fish all my favorite Laguna Beach rocks from a boat.  Today the tides were such that if we were to launch at Newport Dunes at 3am we could zoom 13 miles to Dana Point, fish the San Juan rocks then work several points back to the bay just in time for incoming tide movement cresting at 11:30.

    Since I am meeting him at the launch, at 02:30 I parked at the Shell station near the corner of Jamboree and San Juaquin Hills to avoid steep parking fees at The Dunes.  Fifteen minutes later, here comes Darryl and his grandson, five-year-old Javin, right on schedule.  I loaded my stuff into the boat and off we went.

    This was our first time at this particular launch ramp and it’s a long way to the harbor entrance.  In the dark it was tricky for a pair newbies to navigate through the narrows between the upper bay where the launch is and the main bay where all the houses and docks are – especially at low tide.  We tried to follow the buoys out but all of a sudden the motor bogged down and the SS Chaparral stopped as we found ourselves in less than one foot of water.  Five minutes into our trip and we already ran her aground.

    Thinking swiftly, Darryl raised the prop and yanked’er into reverse, which caused the whole back end of the boat to be splashed with mud.  Still she wasn’t going anywhere.  He cranked it in forward, reverse, forward, reverse, gassing it each time.  After ten minutes of minor panic she was free and we were heading back to the launch in search of another way out that perhaps we missed earlier.  We also wondered why we didn’t hear the shallow water alarm on the depth finder.

    We searched around with the 50-million-candle-power light we had handy and found there is only one way out.  This time we took the same route but stayed far to the right along the bluff where we followed a nice dredged channel of twelve feet deep all the way to the PCH bridge.  From there you turn left, go to the end then turn right out the jetties between Corona Del Mar and The Wedge.

    It was a perfectly calm day with no wind and zero swell.  We pointed the bow a little east from south and applied throttle.  In no time we were approaching the San Juan rocks just offshore from Dana Point.

    Darryl’s latest and greatest toy is a Minn Kota electric trolling motor.  We used that to quietly position ourselves right next to the biggest rock in twenty feet of water.  With fish being metered we tossed out our favorite swimbaits, he with the Gulp! four-inch chartreuse curly-tail on a ¼-oz. leadhead and I with the Storm WildEye five-inch sardine.  The trolling motor made it so easy to maneuver into several perfect casting positions in the current-less water.

    I snagged and lost that lure, and remembering when I had a great calico day a few months ago, I tied on the WildEye five-inch Mackerel.  I was telling Darryl last time I did this I had no bites on the sardine, then when put on the mackerel I caught a bunch casting to the same spots.  Ta da, just like magic, on the first cast with the mack I landed what turned out to be the day’s biggest fish, a 3-6 calico.

    Moments later as we swung around to the inside of the rock I nailed another large calico that had the length but was kind of skinny.  It only weighed in at 2-8, the second biggest of the day.

    Darryl was doing pretty well with the swimbait as he caught numerous small calicos and several barred sand bass, three of which were 13 to 15 inches long.  On ice they went.

    There was a large school of topsmelt hanging around with something big making them spray atop the water.  I was hoping they were some of the yellowtail I have been reading about lately cruising by, that would love to eat my mack.  We never saw exactly what were chasing the bait.  Probably just some more bass having a grand ol' time.

    We motored to some of the other San Juans but with not much more happening we started our way back north.  Somewhere between Salt Creek and Monarch Bay we slowed down to meter another large school of sand bass.  All three of us tied on a curly-tail swimbait and tosses out.  The bites were rampant for an hour, as we reeled in sandies with a few short calicos mixed in.  We kept the biggest pair, neither of which hit the two pound mark.

    In order to be back in the bay for the incoming tide movement we hit a few more rocks and points to Crystal Cove before zooming back.  We worked’em quickly and with hard passionate casting but another bite was never had.  All the rocks I usually fish from were really crowded for being a Friday.  Too much pressure.

    Darryl checked with his buddies who told him, find the Coast Guard station then look for some moorings nearby, as the bay bass hang out around there.  I said, hey look, there is a red boat docked on the right, I’ll bet you that’s the USCG station.  Sure enough it was and there were several vacant mooring buoys across the way.  I was readying my curly-tail on ten pound test when Darryl turned the boat around, saying I think my buddy was saying fish near the docks.  So we tried that and it was no good.

    Next we tried Balboa Island then Lido Island, casting to several boats and docks along the way.  Darryl seemed confused, as if he were going to find some wild place with coconut palms, grass-skirted hula girls and coral reefs instead of the omni-present mansions equipped with their own docks and gigantic motor yachts.  Add to that the water looking like a cross between pea soup and chocolate milk, we were out of there by eleven.  That was fine with me because any later and I would have gotten stuck in the Friday 91 east traffic.

*****

From Breakwall Robert 7/26/2006:

Hey I just got back from Laughlin with the family and kids and while we were hanging out at Telephone Cove, I hooked into a nice Nice Catfish while trying to fish for carp. I saw it swim by real quick, I then hook a piece of ham on my treble and I cast it where the shadow was.....Bam, Hookup and it fought pretty well. I had a couple of guys come by and give me a high five when I brought it to shore....see ya.

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