Yesterday I made opaleye bait over at Colorado Lagoon, where the intestinalis algae growing was the fresh and clean green long strands thanks to it being only four hours after a nourishing, refreshing high tide.  Normally I would’ve stopped there early in the morning on the way to the fish hole, after the mats have been lying high and dry for twenty hours.  Since gasoline is like 35 cents a gallon and Long Beach really isn't on the way to Ocean Beach from my house, the two-hour ten-minute round trip depleted neither wallet nor calendar.

    Also yesterday the swell chart was reporting a safe two- to-three feet, but this morning at three o'clock I saw five-footers would be rolling in right where I planned to fish.  I thought, crap, all these waves are going to wash out my spot.  It'll be unfishable and I'll get soaked.  Oh yeah, I remembered, take a moment to shift the brain out of rock mode; I'm fishing from a pier today.  The size of the breakers won't matter in that way.

    The reason I chose San Diego's Ocean Beach Pier is that it is about the only structure of its kind I know of here in So. Cal. that was built close to a rocky shoreline.  I've read a few postings from pier rats who the past years have caught descent opaleye there.  Reason two would be I ain't caught jack (nor opaleye) from my usual Palos Verdes haunts the past two months.

    An hour and five minutes after departing the house this morning at four, I pulled into the parking lot and was up the stairs in a flash.  Even though I was safe from the as-predicted crashing breakers, the prime opaleye habitat under the pier wasn’t.  What I was thinking, maybe the fish can’t feed on the rocks today in the rough water and there’s a heard of’em waiting it out just behind the whitewater.  That scenario played out before when the Redondo breakwall was being pounded by seven-footers, you’d see opaleye inside the harbor munching various seaweeds growing on the rocks near the bubble hole.  They made easy pickin’s from the little sportfishing pier therein.

    I tossed several handfuls of bait into the foam of breakers furthest from shore, then walked out toward the end to illegally overhead cast a five-inch Berkeley PowerBait Jerk Shad pinned to a ½ ounce leadhead along the sandy bottom.  I’ve seen reports lately of anglers landing legal halibut on said lure while surf fishing the north end of Orange County.  I cast my way back to the opaleye zone to meet up with first light.

    Just then around twenty other pier rats showed up pulling their little grocery bag carts stuffed with buckets and poles heading out presumably to the mackerel grounds.

    When the morning stratus glowed with enough sunlight for me to view what I had driven myself all the way over here for, I was quite disappointed to see the pounding waves had cooked the water between the sand and half way out on the pier not into pea soup but rather beef stew.  Looking across the way, the rocks I caught an opaleye from two years ago were totally un-fishable.

    With all that I parked twenty feet behind where the largest set was breaking and cast out the bubble opaleye green bait rig and kicked back for a couple hours while that soaked.  As I suspected the opaleye thing was a bust, not one bite was had.

    Jonesin’ for a fish-on, I hiked back out to the end of the pier.  On the way I saw the other twenty guys accumulated buckets full of mackerel and queenfish while yo-yoing sabiki rigs.  I thought, you know, I like mackerel, saba is my favorite at the sushi joint.  I proceeded to cut off the bobber set-up to tie on one of the sabiki rigs I had in my box.  First cast, fourth yo-yo I was reelin’em in two at a time. The trick is once one fish is hooked, you let it drag around the rig until two of the other flies get bit.  I started to feel  happier as I actually felt some sort of fish nibble with the bonus of seening mackerel and beefy sardines flopping on the deck.  WOO HOO!

    In thirty minutes the mackerel stopped biting but I already had several in the bag.  I moved over closer to the hot dog stand where all the Chinese guys were loading up.  Next to be winched up were several small walleye surfperch, a couple grunion and a two-taco topsmelt, which was tossed because the last few of those I caught all had big worms in their meat.

    My neighbors were killing the six inch white croaker using sabiki rigs with strip of mackerel stuck to each hook.  I’m not into this specie; they're always on the most polluted list.

    If I were really into it I would have set up my twenty pound outfit with a bottom rig and a live grunion as bait but the time was late and I needed to get going north on the 15 before traffic picked up.

***** 

From the editor: 

    Over at the Sports Authority last month, severe sticker shock overcame me as I purchased my 2009 California fishing license.  Here's the rundown:

Resident                                                    $41.20
Ocean Enhancement                                     4.75
2nd Rod Stamp (lakes and reservoirs)         12.85
TOTAL                                                    $58.80

OUCH!  There went all my can and bottle recycling for the past 5 months. 

*****

From Breakwall Doug:

checkout this largemouth caught at Irvine Lake yesterday (1/5).  I was fishing for trout.

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