The last two Septembers I’ve had great success for large calico bass from the rocks below Calle Vicente near the end of Hawthorne Blvd. in Palos Verdes.

    I also read some surf fishing reports of opaleye being caught all up and down the peninsula.  A quick check of the Colorado Lagoon slime pit in Long Beach on the way this morning found zero intestinal algae for bait.  The weather is still too hot for the green strands to flourish.  We might not see much of it until the end of October.

    Down the trail, to the right and casting from my favorite rock a little before 05:00, my second cast of the five-inch Storm WildEye Mackerel was a winner.  I felt something hit, I reared back and cranked, it felt maybe a little over a pound for a few seconds then whammo, it started pulling harder than I could crank.  That lasted three seconds before whatever it was came unbuttoned.  Dang, we don’t get many chances like that.

    One thing I noticed the past couple years at this spot is that most of the big ones hit right when the lure is brought to the rock upon which I was perched.  To cover the edge of the rocks I stand at a point where a cast to the left or right will parallel the boulders from three to five feet out.  That trick worked as a nice two-pound fatty calico was safely netted and inserted into the gunnysack.

    As dawn approached I cast all up and down the coast from various rocks with the mack but only had a few small hits in the next hour.  I purposefully use a big lure to weed out the little guys, preferring to keep anything two pounds and up.

    But as per usual, when more sunlight filters through the marine layer, nary a taker is felt and boredom sets in.  Time to set up the spinning outfit with a smaller bait.

    I was at the Sport Chalet the other day and saw a new arrival in the Berkeley Gulp world, the three-inch squid.  I matched those up with a nice #2 Gamakatsu offset shank worm hook.  Rigged Texas style the shank of the hook matched the squid perfectly and on a Carolina rig with a ¼ ounce egg sinker the cast went pretty far.  Once problem here is that you can’t let it hit the bottom due to the whole place being rocky snags.  A nice slow retrieval in the calm and crystal clear water kept me out of trouble.

    The first cast BAM, I was on to a little guy that turned out to be an eight-inch sand bass.  Next cast HOOK-UP, a legal 13-inch two-taco model joined his buddy in my bag.  It went like this for the next hour with at least ten more short calicos brought up and safely released.

    Yeah, that was fun but it was time for all the big guys to go back to sleep for the rest of the day.  While the tide was low I picked a bunch of smallish mussels to take over to the opaleye hole at Long Point.  On the way back to the trail I saw something I didn’t see in the dark earlier in the morning, a large flat containing a mix of ulva sea lettuce and a small brown algae plant called rockweed.  I have seen plenty of both in the stomachs of just about every opaleye I have ever dissected.  I grabbed several handfuls of the mix to add to my bucket of mussels, then up the trail I went.

    When hiking up any super-steep trail, the dirt is more or less right in your face.  You see more fauna, mostly bugs, crawling around that you would when walking down.  Today I saw a creature I have never seen in all my trail time throughout the peninsula.  I have looked at rattlesnakes, king snakes, ringneck snakes, lizards, all kinds of groovy fauna but never a scorpion.  No wonder, though, as this thing was only ½ inch long from stinger to head.  I’m not sure if that would be a baby or just a small species in general.  I didn’t feel like researching it.  Just think of them infesting those nice new mansions going up fifty yards away.

    At Long Point I saw that all of the old Marineland buildings have been demolished and are sitting in a heap in the middle of the parking lot.  This is to make way for the new Terranea development.  Click the link to see some pretty pictures.  Thankfully despite the destruction, access to the pillar rock is still available.

    Contemplating the scene, I smashed up a bunch of small mussels and weeds and tossed that out to the opaleye hole while I took a chance of jumping out to the pillar rock with the mackerel swim bait.  I only had a few minutes to spare as the tide would be high in just over two hours, which will flood the access back to the mainland.  I made 20 fan casts but with no hits I scuttled back down, timing the waves to expose the stepping stones enough to make somewhat of a dry hop back to shore.  Oopsie, another wave came in when I was about half way back, I froze in my tracks, it only came up to my knees.  That was a close one.

    Fazed not, I went back to chumming another handful of presumed opaleye bait.  I put a chunk of mussel on my opaleye bobber rig fitted with a #2 baitholder hook and flung it out to the zone.  Just what I figured, a bunch of little guys picked the barb clean each cast.

    Next was to use a #8 treble hook covered with the mix of sea lettuce and rock weed.  The good news is that it stayed on the hook through several casts.  That tidbit directly relates to the bad news that not even little guys were picking it off the hook.  The lack of interest meant either the opaleye are not around or the stuff is B.S. for bait.  You pick.

*****

From the Editor:

    Breakwall Darryl called me saying he took his buddy out on the SS Chaparral to Angels Gate Friday 9/8.  They were bouncing the chartreuse Gulp curly-tail minnow swimbait -- with a leadhead -- on the bottom, catching the usual bunch of sand bass.  His buddy, who never ever went fishing before hooked what at first felt like the bottom.  Darryl grabbed the dude's $30 Big-5 Rod Riot combo special to try to free it for him.  That's when the monster took off, peeling off drag from a reel spooled with 12-lb test.  Darryl handed it back to his buddy who proceeded to bring it to color in a a half-hour.  Turned out to be a halibut over 20 pounds!

    With no net or gaff aboard, Darryl reached down, stuck his fingers in the gills and successfully lifted the behemoth into the boat.  Kind of dangerous since 'buts have super powerful jaws lined with large, razor sharp teeth.  One slip of your finger too far up into the gills and out the mouth will chop your digit like a hot dog.

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