Laguna Beach 8/2
At 4:45 this morning Breakwall Dan and I had walked across the sands of Emerald Bay near Laguna Beach and were now struggling to climb up and over the slippery cliff rocks to the south to be the first to fish low tide Saturday morning at Sargo Point. That is the unofficial name we gave the area back in 2002, where we witnessed a group of pescadors fill a tide pool with scores of sargo.
I was needling Dan after I saw that he had a folding chair strapped across his back. My macho breakwall buddy reduced to a lawn chair fishermen.
The daily dock totals from the local sport fishing fleets are reporting large catches of sand and calico bass. With that the two of us in the dark started fan casting plastics, I with a Storm WildEye five-inch mackerel and Dan with a five-inch Fish Trap.
After an hour with no bites we both downsized our offerings. I went with a Power Bait jerk shad mullet on a ½ ounce lead head while Dan tied on a two-inch Gulp! squid anchored down with a one-ounce sinker. With the smaller baits at first light the action picked up as within thirty minutes Dan landed two short calicos and I three of those plus an eighteen-inch scooter (short barracuda). We put everything into the huge tide pool right behind where we were casting so we could watch’em swim around a while. Don’t worry; they’ll escape in a few hours as the tide rises.
At six I finally landed a legal calico of thirteen inches. I look over, there’s that lawn chair guy kickin’ back while the bite is heating up. I showed off the bass before sliding it into the bag, and then walked back to the casting platform for more. Here at Sargo Point there is only one really good spot to cast which can handle at most two anglers at a time. To the left there are a lot of snags with tumultuous white water and to the right a rocky ledge with quantities of kelp attached.
Oops, there goes my jerk shad, broken off on one of the aforementioned snags. I turn around for our staging area, up walks Dan with the gaudiest blue, green and yellow fish trap on a red leadhead I ever saw. I’m thinking with the realistic-looking WildEyes available to us these days, why would he use something so last decade. What the kelp, more fish for me to catch.
I retie my line and while kneeled down, realize how tired I am. I was up at 2am to get ready to leave at three to be and Dan’s at four so we can cast before five. I couldn’t resist the temptation to get comfy in the chair and close my eyes. Dan looks over and comments, making fun of me for bringing a chair, eh?
I didn’t have much time to catch up on Z’s as soon Dan yells, HOOK UP! I opened my eyes to see he was struggling with something sizeable with his 12-pound spinning outfit. I force myself to get up, grab the net and by the time I am in position, he has the fish almost up to the rock. I instructed to go easy, crank the reel on the next swell to bring it up to net. As the fish came to color it looked big but as I lifted it out of the water we both screamed WHOA!
I claim, that’s the biggest sand bass I ever saw. Dan said it looks prehistoric. Check out that big fat belly, it’s definitely over five pounds, maybe six? We couldn’t weigh it immediately, as the nine-volt battery connector on my electronic scale was broken.
We cast until seven but by that time the bite wound down, we likely caught all the available bass at this spot, the tide was coming up along with an increased swell washing over the good ledge from where we stood.
Meanwhile a pair of pescadors showed up, coming from the south, up and over the dreaded hump. They admired Dan’s catch for a while and in typical fisherman fashion proclaim someone last Sunday caught a bigger sand bass than that from this very spot. I cracked up. As the two of us relaxed we watched them use the large mussel from the rocks – with spark plugs as sinkers – to quickly land one keeper sand bass per each.
As they walked by to stash their catch, I said wow that one looks like three tacos, he giggled at that, being Mexican and all. Dan asks, hey what kind of spark plugs are you using? Hombre replies jokingly, we only use Rapidfires. Dan and I were saying, just think if we went into a Kragen store all decked out in our wet fishing outfits with licenses dangling and asked the parts guy for a set of Bosch platinum. We would open the little boxes, study them over, and say, yeah these will catch us lots of bass.
For those readers who are not following the joke here, you see, guys tie used spark plugs to the end of their line to serve as sinkers because they are free and if you lose them to rocky snags it didn’t cost you anything. Really, you had to be there.
I was wondering how the two pescadors were going back, as to fish this spot you only have three hours after low tide to get going back to Crescent Bay and that’s when they got here. They said they are going back the same way they came. I said, you know bros, in a few hours you will have to wade up to your belly buttons in a three-foot swell in the next cove over.
They asked how we were going back, I said we parked right over there in the Emerald Bay neighborhood. They said that’s private property (gated community), how did you get in there. I said my fishin’ buddy knows one of the residents. Joe Hookset of unit 666 phoned the guard the day before to let them know to expect Breakwall Dan and Dufish at 04:30. We got a permit and parked near the sand along a gray curb.
We said goodbye and eased our way down the slippery rocks to the beach and drove out of the ’hood. We stopped by a few other of our favorite rocks but the tide was already over them and the weekend scuba guys were launching.
I got my scale working once I returned home. At 14:00 Dan’s monster topped out at 5-2. I figured it probably lost a few ounces while sitting in the ice box for eight hours so we’ll say it was a 5-5. The belly was so fat because its stomach was stuffed with a good size octopus.
*****
Submitted by Jim L.: