Great seabass bites

I've seen quite a few good White Sea Bass bites. I mean, I know there's a strong recurrence of these fish with all the fish-rearing going on. But I really have seen some good ones. As previously mentioned, the first good seabass bite was at Tijuana Flats out of San Diego. Did not see much of these fish for a while after that. Another time, I caught wind of a good seabass bite just outside the Marina Del Rey breakwater on the Redondo half-day boats - an afternoon deal no less. So off I went on the City of Redondo (Rick Oefinger was running the boat - which should give an indication of the timeframe - mid 70's. We got to the spot - a barely visible low spot on the meter in 100' of water. Nothing until 5pm or so. I got bit on on the yoyo iron (6X JR) on the bottom. YoYoing jigs back then was not the 'go to the bottom and wind up as fast as you can' ordeal it is today. It was going to the bottom and just up and down with the rod. I started using a 10' rod - I don't recall the brand - but, light and parabolic, with 40 lb line. We hooked a few on the first go-around. Mine fell off on the way up. All the fish were nice ones - 30/40 lbs. I immediately went back down and got bit again. 36 lbs. Nice fish. That picture went in the Western Outdoor News. There was 30 or 40 guys on the boat and we had 20 or so. Another time, I was on the Redondo Special (don't remember the owner/operator's name) on another afternoon venture. I used to fish a lot on the Redondo half-days. Spur of the moment - got a hair up my ass kind of thing. A lot of times, there wouldn't be anything in particular biting - but I went anyway. So here we were at Haggerdy's (a kelpy/beachy area at the South side of Palos Verdes. We had about a half a tank of sardines and anchovies. All of the sudden - there were sea bass everywhere. They didn't want the anchovies, but every sardine was a sea bass. Not big - but all keepers in the 15 lb category. I learned here, rather than a hot lively sardine - half dead and dead worked better. People would get a bite, pull too fast, bring up their scratched-up half-dead sardines and throw them on the deck. I would pick them up and immediately get bit. For the 20 or so anglers that day, we had about 40 keepers. I had nine, and the jackpot to boot. Two other memorable seabass bites come to mind. The first one was on the Scotia. This is a 45 or 50 foot Seaway owned by Lee Wong. Everybody wanted to fish on the Scotia. I got to know Lee - who was 70-something at the time, through Gerald Chun I think. Anyway, Lee took a liking to me and I fished with him quite a bit. Catalina was his favorite place - especially during winters. We'd leave at 6 or 7 pm out of San Pedro and setup at Catalina for squid. After loading up - and I mean loaded up, as he had 5 or 6 large bait tanks on this boat. I saw some of the most fabulous Calico Bass bites I'd ever seen. A lot of these bites were in places and at times when the regular passenger vessels from San Pedro and Long Beach were just leaving the landing. Between 9/10pm and 1 or 2 in the morning - the bass bites were nothing short of phenomenal. I had sat at many of these same spots on the open party boats and never saw anything close. And the seabass bites. The most memorable of these - for me anyway, was at Point Fermin. It is an area no more than a mile or two outside the San Pedro/Long Beach breakwater. He had a spot - the bearing was a Pagoda on top of PV when it lined up with between two sets of trees, in 50' of water. We had sat there with full tanks of squid, after an already successful day of bass fishing at Catalina. After an hour or so, Lee wanted to go in. For some reason, I asked him to stay for a while longer. I thought they were going to bite very soon. Sure enough, not more than 10 minutes later - we were wide open. The six of us had 30 or 40 seabass in short order. After we got our fill, we called in the Matt Walsh. Ray was very appreciative and got in on the bite also. The second and last one for this post was on a 17' Boston Whaler at Catalina. I had a girlfriend at the time that loved to fish as much as I did - her name was Lori. Her and I went fishing a lot. One day, we were at Catalina around the East end inside Church Rock in 8/10 feet of water. This is a spot Russ Izor showed us and we had been itching to try it in a small boat - rather than the First String. We had been chumming cut squid for an hour or so - we had caught halibut, calico bass and few others the whole time. Then all of the sudden, the meter (fishfinder) went solid under the boat. A large seabass boiled on one of the chummed cut squid. We caught 3 seabass for our efforts. I can't stand it, I have one more. Lori and I were fishing in the same spot where we caught the seabass on the Scotia - at Point Fermin. We drifted for a while and when we got bit, dropped anchor. I think we were both hooked up and pulling on fish and completely ignorant of anything else. We forgot to tie the anchor line to the boat. We both watched as the last of the rope went over the side. On the positive side, we did catch a few seabass.