Palos Verdes 4/8
February 18, we reported a fun time for opaleye at Palos Verdes, which included two three-pounders during high tide. Two weeks later March 4 we had perfect bait, swell and tide but for chumming all day Wook and I only noticed three nibbles from little guys removing algae bait from the hook. This signified the end of opaleye season, when every year they go somewhere to spawn. My understanding is, they head out to offshore kelp forest or paddies away from shoreline rocks.
The other indicator is the availability of ulva intestinalis. Two weeks later, March 18, a check at the Colorado Lagoon slime pit revealed all the algae had bloomed out and was nothing but withered clumps of short strands. It will grow back in October.
Now we are in the usual doldrum period of opaleye gone; calico bass not here yet. The water along the Southern California coast is still rather chilly at 56F. For bass, better conditions include >60F starting mid-May. This didn’t stop me from trying today anyway because we had minus tide at 05:25 and a perfect one-foot swell.
I parked at 05:00, suited up and hiked 20 minutes south from Christmas Tree Cove to Big Bass Rock, where traditionally I always land the largest specimens. In the pre-dawn darkness, I made 20 casts without a hit. The positive news is all the kelp that had been choking this particular casting zone for the past three years is gone. I could fling my WildEye 5-inch Sardine far away and let it sink for a 10-count before reeling in slowly with a jerk motion. Before you had to reel in rather speedily as soon as the plastic hit the water to avoid snags.
Onward another 10 minutes southward to the next cove. By this time, we had enough light to see no kelp anywhere. I made many casts along a fifty-yard section of rock edge, finally hooking up at 06:15 to a calico that puked up a perfect size anchovy when it hit the deck, a sign of a relatively healthy ecosystem. This one measured in at one inch over the 14-inch state mandate and was slid into the bag for Sunday dinner.
I spent another hour fan casting from perfect rocks near the beach all the way out to the main point. I was excited to see, again, no kelp in the way to interfere with the fun. I just had to be cautious of undetectable shallow rocks, to which I lost 2 jigs. In previous years there was so much kelp I never even attempted to cast from half of this whole zone. Now that I have logged all this lure treachery in my brain the hard way, I will be better prepared mentally for the rest of this season, before the weeds grow back by July (my prediction).
At 07:00 I had another hit that didn’t stick and then fifteen minutes later I hooked up to another calico that was a half-inch under the mandate and released.
Making my way north back to the parking lot, I remained in disbelief how devoid of kelp the whole mile stretch of rocks was. Last trip we saw much kelp has been uprooted from January’s high swell period but there was none of the shrivel dried stands lining the pebbly beaches as you would imagine and no free-floating clumps or strands. Basically it all disappeared.
I had three more hits and then another solid hook-up at 09:30 from something sizable but it came off about five feet from the net.
I fished until ten o’clock, casting everywhere I could before making it back to Christmas Tree Cove, where as usual I saw the only kelp strands around but much less than the last several years.