Palos Verdes 2/2
This week’s semi-adventure found us with a bucket of Colorado Lagoon green bait at the new P.V. opaleye hotspot making our first casts a little before six. I didn’t include any bass gear today, opting instead to start the morning by flinging an algae bomber. To the what-the-heck-is-that questions I reply; you slide a 1/16 bullet weight up your line, tie on a #1 Owner live bait hook, wrap both with a strand of algae then reel in slowly, feeling for nibbles while trying to keep the bait off the bottom.
The bobber only works when you can see it. Even though The Breakwall Crew spray paint their Cast-A-Bubbles fluorescent red, it is invisible until there is enough sunlight plus the bobber disallows nibble vibrations to be transmitted up the line, through the graphite rod and eventually to your fingers. With the bomber trick you can feel the fish biting without having to see. The drawback is you have to keep casting and reeling in all the time. With the bobber you can sit and wait until the fish cruise by.
Two weeks ago I cast a lure until bobber light before making the first opaleye casts and when I did they were biting immediately, meaning they likely came up for the chum before then. I figured why not start with a bomber today in case we have the same luck.
We didn’t. The bomber bombed. I detected no takers before bobber light.
I chummed some more and retied with the bobber at six thirty. I could tell already today would not be as productive as two weeks ago; the first hook-up was a long half-hour later, a solid two-and-a-half taco opaleye.
Field Test:
This week I have that new reel I needed, the one with the big rubber T-knob: a brand new Penn Spinfisher 5500 spooled with 14# Trylene XL. The retrieve is fast, there is no delay setting the hook, and my hand did not slip off the knob all day.
Once that first fish hit I noticed more bobber wiggles following. Problem was already these were little guys picking the bait off the hook. You can tell because the bobber never gets pulled under and the next two I hooked were snagged in the belly instead of the mouth. Both were only one taco each. Normally I would free that size back to their environs but since I’ve been fresh fish filet famished for quite some time two tacos are better than no tacos.
For the next hour little guys were picking until alas the bobber got pulled down and I hooked another two-and-a-half taco specimen. Usually when the little guys start to pick they get smaller and smaller in the next hours. Surprisingly this one was as large as the previous two added together.
Two weeks ago the main conditions were new moon and three-foot swell. As I was theorizing the larger swell makes for tough feeding for the fish at the points so they come into the coves. Today the swell was only one to maybe two feet so they could eat out anywhere and not get too beat up. This morning the full moon six-foot tide at eight o’clock stayed up for a while but by nine and not much happening at the hotspot I moved out towards the minor point to the right.
I hiked to a perfect pillow lava that stuck out high above the water line so that the two-foot curlers couldn’t nail me. In the clear water I could see garibaldi milling about in the perfect looking opaleye habitat. I chummed and cast for an hour but in that time saw only three little guy hits but no hookups.
Seven tacos for the day is ok especially now that the price of gas has crashed, making the morning’s effort prorated at $2.85 per taco. Kind of high but not bad. In two weeks we have a new moon high tide. I’m hoping for some messy winter swell to hit so I can check the hotspot during those conditions.