Angels Gate 8/14
Breakwall Darryl has been telling me well over a month now about how good the calico bite is off the Federal Breakwall near Angels Gate. Each morning he takes his boat, the SS Chaparral, out to the rocks, he and his pals score limits by ten. Due to conflicting work schedules I haven’t made it out there with him until today.
At 4:45 I met him at the Steven White Drive entrance to Cabrillo Beach, where I threw my poles and tackle box into the boat, then conveniently parked along the curb across from the apartments. By a quarter after we were in the water and onward through the fog.
It was slow going as the visibility was only twenty feet. First thing we were greeted by was the blasting of the horn of a freighter being tugged into the harbor. We couldn’t see it until it was right upon us, we veered right to avoid being the stars of tonight’s six o’clock news.
It wasn’t easy finding Angels Gate. All we could do was creep along until we could hear the small swell hitting the rocks then finally seeing the twirling green light of the lighthouse at rock’s end.
The hot bait of late has been the Berkeley Power Bait five inch Jerk Mullet pinned to a ¼ to 3/8 ounce lead head. Darryl started with that while I tossed my usual five inch Storm WildEye Mackerel, which garnered me first fish honors with the boating of a solid fourteen-inch calico.
At first light we zoomed across the gate to the Federal Breakwall. There, the bite was pretty good, with us pulling out of the kelp strands five legal calicos along with a few small mackerel. The hot ticket was to cast the jerkbait as close to the rocks as possible while feeling for strikes on the sink. That’s where the bass would pounce on it, but then you had to reel in before the lure snagged the bottom and as it approached the boat, the mack attack ensued.
We went around the corner to the outside part of the wall, where we had a double hook-up of big ones. I netted his, he dropped it into the cooler, he netted mine, I did the same. Both calicos were over three pounds and looked like twins. In fifteen minutes we hauled in ten more calicos, keeping four over fourteen inches.
After a while, the fish with their needle-like dorsal spines and knife-sharp gill covers had my hands all cut up and poked with blood dripping all over. Darryl says you should have seen his hands after three days straight of limit-style bassing last month. It was difficult to hold on to the wheel of his truck driving job.
We zoomed out about a mile along the wall to where he marked a hot spot by a certain driftwood log stuck in the rocks. We used the Minn Kota trolling motor to keep the boat the perfect distance from the boulders as we slugged along unhurriedly. Casting here and there we landed more two-pound calicos along with countless babies, several small mackerel, a couple ten-inch bonito and one rockfish.
By nine the bite shut down and we were on our way back to the dock with eleven nice calicos in the cooler.
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From Breakwall Jerry:
Hi Mike,
The fishing trip to Idaho had a few good days and a few not so good days. Three days fishing on Henry's Lake yielded 2 fish, and four days fishing on Island Park Reservoir yielded 34 fish. The attached Pic shows 10 fish although it's a little hard to count them as they sort of bunched up.
Jerry
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From Louie:
Orca eats salmon being reeled in
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