One angler fishing two rocks caught three opaleye.

    Thanks to a couple of rainstorms this past December the ulva intestinalis algae opaleye bait has once again bloomed at Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach.  Problem was the fish weren’t around... until now.  Two weeks ago I was perusing the online dock totals and noticed landings from Dana Point northward tallied numbers of our blue-eyed beauties, with the best report coming out of Pierpoint Landing from January first through the eleventh.

    I seriously considered going out on their boat but a big nasty blew in on my days off, causing rain and swells upon which Columbus would have puked.  Then, on my next series of days off, they didn’t catch anymore.

    Anyway, I understood the report as telling me the opaleye were back in town, and this morning we had perfect conditions at Opaleye Point, a seven-foot high tide at eight o’clock coupled with the occasional three-foot set.

    After a quick stop at the aforementioned slime pit for some fresh-growth long, stringy algae, I was rappelling myself down the bluff by six.  I noticed since my last visit that more of the foothold rocks have fallen out at the very top, the use of a rope is now mandatory.  As a result of this fact I saw there’ve been no footprints down the path for quite a while.  Once I reached the bottom I chummed a few handfuls of bait and started casting a five-inch Storm WildEye Mackerel all over the place while waiting for enough light to make a bobber painted fluorescent red visible.

    By six thirty with no bass bites while using the lure, I tossed out a wad of green bait and watched the bobber for over an hour not go under.  That is the deal with this spot to the right of the point as I have written so many times.  If you don’t hook up immediately, it’s time to move across the cove north to the Marineland Ledge.

    At the ledge I followed the same program; chum a few wads of bait and while that is soaking, toss the WildEye out to the various nearby kelp strands.  Again no bass were interested so out went the opaleye algae bobber rig to the usual hotspot half-way out on the ledge.  In the previous picture the place where I stand is at the bottom of the column of flora cascading down the bluff.

    It only took ten minutes before I had my first hook-up, a nice three taco opaleye netted and slipped into the gunnysack.  Alrighty then, should be a killer day after that result.  In fact I was so excited that on my next cast I forgot to twist the handle of my reel to put it into gear, so that when my bobber went down and I attempted to set the hook, the spool of the baitcaster spun freely, causing a terminal bird’s nest of line therein.  When I say terminal, I’m talkin’ it would have been impossible to pick out the backlashes manually.  In order to hurry up the process as to not miss out on the bite currently under way, I cut them out with the small blade of my Swiss Army Knife.

    Ten minutes later I retied the rig but I didn’t have another hit for over an hour.  It wasn’t until a quarter after nine before I hooked up once more, this time to a nice 2-4 opaleye. 

    There was a pretty good bite all the way 'til 10:15 with one other three-taco opaleye landed out of twenty hits that didn’t stick to my needle-sharp Owner Flyliner hook.  From that time approaching eleven o’clock as the tide zoomed out there was nothing.

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