A Perfectly Reasonable Way to Spend Your Birthday, Right?
Normally, on my birthday, I was three sheets to the wind. Maybe four. The only way I’d remember what happened the following morning was by consulting my debit card transactions and Uber history. Occasionally, there’d be a text or two that required some explaining.
This one was different.
It was 6:15 when I arrived at the launch to find the launch, well, gone.
“How the fuck does an entire beach disappear?” I thought.
The astronomical King Tides, along with the warm El Niño water, have kept the Southern California coastline in the news lately, with shorefront homes getting washed away. Usually, it takes a nice little walk in ankle-deep sand to get down to the water. This morning, all it took was a couple of steps. I looked around to make sure I knew where I was.
I started at the bridge right next to the launch. And, once again, not a damn thing. I’m obviously doing something wrong. Bridges and I apparently don’t get along.
From there, I started picking off fish in their usual haunts, confident in my game plan to eventually make it to the Ballast Point-adjacent docks. The confidence was high, as I was already calling my shots.
The Jika Rig pissed me off early. Five bites, five swings, and absolutely nothing to show for it. Perhaps I need to use slimmer-profile creature baits with it. Who knows. Regardless, I chucked the damn thing to the side and grabbed the Tungsten Flinger.
The Dobyns Champion Extreme, a Tranx 150, and a 3/8-ounce Keitech Type 2 with the Keitech Custom trailer. That did some damage.
Those Ballast Point docks were well within kicking distance and exposed to plenty of the moving water coming in from the mouth of the jetty. With whispers of “bonita on the jetty” being the word for the past month, my salty dream of finally getting a Bone on the tube (which sounds NSFW, but I assure you isn’t) seemed like it might actually come to fruition.
Instead, I got sidetracked by a stretch of water that wasn’t even on the itinerary. I threw the game plan out the window and followed an impulse that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.
Sometimes you have to chase something other than your original plans.
The funny thing is, I had been staring at a huge, unoccupied dock since I first started fishing this place. It had caught my attention, and I’d been thinking about it as I got within eyesight. For the two hours or so that I’d spent fishing my way out from the launch, it had remained completely undisturbed. Pretty awesome that it’s finally late October and midweek traffic in this place is practically nonexistent. It’s also fantastic that we’re nearly into November and the water temperature is warmer than the air temperature. Figure that one out.
I decided to make a move across the channel and fish that dock. The entire outside of it. Every inch I could cover.
Nothing.
Not a bite.
I sat there wondering what the hell I’d been thinking. I’d abandoned my original plan, kicked across the channel, and spent a good chunk of time fishing this thing for absolutely nothing.
Great move, dickhead. You went with your hunch, and it kicked you in the ass.
I had a decision to make. I could kick back across the channel, admit defeat, and resume my original plan of fishing the Ballast Point docks. Or I could keep working with what I’d already committed to.
Then I looked at the tide again.
I’d seen this before. Newport, about six weeks earlier. The Unnamed Marina a few weeks after that. Both sessions had given me a better appreciation for what these unusually high tides could expose, particularly around isolated seawalls and dock structures.
I looked back at the dock. There was an opening behind it, barely eight feet from where I’d been casting.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
So I turned around and started working my way through the opening. Getting the FishCat back there was an adventure of its own. Two seven-foot rods sticking out every which way, a turning radius somewhere between a city bus and an aircraft carrier, and a whole lot of maneuvering in a space that wasn’t exactly designed for recreational boating.
But once I got through, I finally understood what I’d been missing.
The water behind the dock was a completely different proposition. I’d spent all that time working the outside with nothing to show for it, while the opportunity was sitting just a few feet away. The combination of the elevated water, the protected structure, and the available cover had opened up an entirely different area to fish.
I started working it, and the bites came.
That was enough to convince me to stay on the Naples side of the channel. I wasn’t going back across to chase my original plan. I’d found something worth pursuing, and I was going to see where it took me.
As it turned out, that decision made the day.
Sure enough, the fish were stacked behind the docks I’d been targeting from the outside. The videos give you a pretty good idea of just how high the water was sitting against the sea wall. That’s what opened up the backside in the first place.
After the sea wall adventures, I kept on throwing the jig, as it did what it’s meant to do. It got down quickly, and these fish absolutely wrecked it. A few picked it up on the fall, which requires some pretty quick underwater ninja moves on their part. But, it also let me know how aggressive these fish were, not letting the bait settle on the bottom before trying to murder it. As the day went on, the fish seemed to get bigger and bigger.
There really wasn’t a pattern, honestly. I don’t know if the tidal movement had these fish riled up, but they were coming from all over the place.
By the time it was all said and done, I was somewhere around 60 fish for the day, with roughly 20 of them being solid fish in the 14-inch-and-better category. There was even a random 14-inch sand bass mixed in there for good measure that fought as if he assumed I was going to eat it. He saw the Mexican in me, apparently.
Not a bad birthday session from the harbor.
And honestly, I probably left quite a few out there. I had a hard stop at 4:30, and somewhere along the way, the second half of the day turned into more of a sightseeing expedition than a serious fishing session. Had I kept my head down and continued fishing instead of exploring every interesting corner of the place like some asshole tourist floating the Venice canals, I suspect the numbers would have been considerably higher.
I’d already spent a good portion of the day fishing the water I’d come to investigate. With a few hours left, I decided to do something that had absolutely nothing to do with catching fish.
I wanted to see what the homes looked like.
So I started exploring the residential canals, essentially taking a sightseeing tour of the harbor in my floating Lazy Boy.
On the way through one of the smaller canals, I was literally dragging a Major Craft 3-inch swimbait behind me and having fish come out of nowhere to eat it in open water.
And then it happened.
As I was dragging that swimbait behind me, with maybe ten feet of line out, an average-sized spotty hit it so hard that it broke the anti-reverse bearing in my Chronarch 100B.
Straight-up shot.
I knew these fish were violent, but c’mon. Now they’re breaking metal objects.
So, the search for a new baitcaster begins. I figure it’ll make a nice belated birthday present to myself.
By around 3:00, I knew I needed to start hightailing it back toward the launch. I decided to spend the remaining time hitting areas where I knew the odds of getting a bite were pretty good.
I can look at a spot now and tell you exactly where I’d put a cast if I only had one shot. It’s that combination of structure, shade, current, and positioning that makes certain locations stand out. And when you get it right, you don’t necessarily need to work very hard to get a fish to cooperate.
Some poor guy ended up getting a front-row seat to the last hour of my fishing day. His expression seemed to get a little more annoyed every time I set the hook. It probably didn’t help that when we first met, I told him I’d “only caught a couple.”
And to be fair, I’d only caught two fish on the swimbait. He didn’t ask about the jig.
During our conversation, I caught two more fish right in front of his face. Both were straight-up 16-inchers.
He was nice enough to snap some pictures of a few smaller guys, which was great because I’ve realized I’ve never actually seen how fucking dumb I look sitting in a floating Lazy Boy.
Turns out, exactly as dumb as I imagined. (And apparently the guy was using an iPhone 1 to take the pictures.)
At least I get to catch fish while looking like a dickhead.
The funniest part? The dude essentially low-holed himself! (See footnote #1.) I didn’t even cause it this time. For the last hour, he was essentially fishing my backwash because he’d decided to turn around and start fishing behind me. All used-up water.
I must have caught another ten fish in front of him before packing everything up and making the long kick around the island to get back to the launch.
Of course, the moment I’d packed away the Jigpara, a flurry of bonita came up. Right there in front of me. Nothing like putting away the exact bait you wish you still had tied on.
Some things are better left alone.
Before we parted ways, I gave him the 1/4-ounce Keitech I’d been throwing, complete with the trailer that was absolutely torn to shit. Figured it was a pretty good advertisement for the bait. Hard to argue with something that’s been chewed on by half the harbor.
I’d managed to lose three jigs during the day, and now I was giving away another one. Apparently, in order to keep it, you have to give it away. I’ve heard.
I finally made it back to the launch and headed home, straight into rush-hour traffic on the 605. Hundreds of people around me honking, yelling, and generally losing their shit in the stop-and-go traffic. Not one ounce of serenity to be found in a situation nobody could change.
Meanwhile, I’m all Namaste. Grinded-up thumb, smelling like the countless fish I’d caught that day, and perfectly content.
No fires to put out. No having to do something someone else wanted to do. No more wondering, “What did I do last night?!”
I can wake up in the morning, look at my thumb, and know where I’ve been.
And that is a good thing.
1. Low-holing: The fine art of positioning yourself just close enough to another angler to fish the water he's about to cover, but far enough away to pretend you're not being an asshole. A time-honored tradition among socially maladjusted anglers who apparently missed a few important lessons in human decency.
