Palos Verdes 2/13
A good soaking winter’s rain such as we had two weeks ago usually begets the opaleye algae bait over at the Colorado Lagoon slime pit in Long Beach. A check there at five this morning saw disappointing thin mats lining the mud, not the expected thick, gooey luxurious verdancy. It took a whole ten minutes to rake in a half-scoop of number 6.798 quality green strands.
I motored on to Palos Verdes to fish the back of Christmas Tree Cove. Conditions today were incoming high tide at 10:00 and a two- to three-foot swell. Only thing that could be better would have been high tide at 08:00.
I chummed the water with four handfuls of green bait then made my first casts with the five-inch WileEye Sardine at six but was any attempt for bass with this lure was thwarted by impenetrable strands of kelp lining the whole shoreline.
After a few minutes of that technique, I switched over to the opaleye bobber rig set at a depth of five feet. I chummed a handful periodically but in the next two hours I didn’t notice any nibblers.
At 8:30, as the tide flowed, I set the depth at six feet and again kept chumming hoping to attract a crowd of fish. Alas at 9:00 I hooked up to a one-taco opaleye that I photographed then released.
There were a few other fisherdudes around. I saw one of them land another one-taco moments later and that was about it. At ten I packed up and headed home.
That’s the thing about this spot. It is either limit action for 3- and 4- taco opaleye or zilch. There is no in-between. It is a good place to fish during a three-foot sets episode, as the points, like Flat Rock, would be too rough to angle. Will try again in two weeks but I have a feeling the green bait will have withered away by then.