Photo by Craig Carlson

The following evening I hiked down to Black’s Beach, spotfin croaker on my mind.

An old flame phoned and said she just wanted to talk. She went on about the weather, as one will when a fledgling San Diegan, and she voiced delight that it was nearly Christmas and the hillsides were still green. Despite our past differences, I felt it only right to set her straight. The grass here grows in winter, I explained, and by summer it’s seeded and dying.

You can catch anything in summer — from perch to bonito, sheephead to sargo, opal eye to guitarfish to every kind of croaker.

I pedaled my bike up the mesa and out through greenery to the edge of the cliffs overlooking Black’s Beach. There was swell from the north, long lines sweeping geometrically off the horizon, and the winter sunlight caught the smokelike spouting of the migrating gray whales. The beach below was all but gone, the sand now steep along stony berms. You could see into the water, not only the currents but the contours and patterns of the bottom; and I tried to picture the promise of things, come the seasons of fish in the surf.

Surf fishing in San Diego is a year-round game; if you refrain through the dry spells, there is the dark possibility of something happening without you. I know of a fellow, warming up for a winter steelhead tour, whose fly found a corbina you could fish all summer for without matching. Where was I? Planting my tulips? Nevertheless, the way I play it, I’ve rationed my shots like a bowman, knowing the bass will eventually show up around the rocks and, swell permitting, there’ll be the long shots at the gathering surf species. The halibut — the mature spawners — move into the shallows sometime near the start of baseball, but they’re around long after the various members of the croaker family are feeding in the surf, which, when you’re casting in the heat of summer, can be a madhouse of surfers, sun-bathers, swabbies on leave, and the entire galaxy of San Diego beachgoers.

Where I live, the surf of our Eastern Pacific swings out of a deep submarine canyon and traces the variegated shorelines of La Jolla. This canyon probably influences local sea life in ways beyond any angler’s understanding, and even the illuminati at Scripps Institution of Oceanography are known to quibble grimly about its effects. But the canyon is only part of the picture.

All around are guideposts to fish: the pier, kelp beds, a marine reserve; the reefs and tight coves at the south end of town; to the north, the cliff-lined beaches and isolated waters of one of the last wild stretches of Southern California coast. I fish here for the diversity of game fish, which, when you get one in the surf, pinpoints the season in a way no calendar can.

We were chased out of high country by the sort of knockdown storm that invariably makes April trout fishing a shaky proposition. Back in the desert, tail winds kept pit stops to a minimum; and by the time we made Cajon Pass, reentering the Southland, the rainfall had turned light as shadows.

There were wildflowers in the foothills, poppies and lupine and the big splashes of mustard. For once the freeways didn’t seem a bad way to travel. We reached the county by sunset, swung west across the mesas, catching glimpses of the Pacific under low, graying skies. We dropped into La Jolla, and we could see the surf was small, and the blue of spring, through the twilight’s last gleaming.

The following evening I hiked down to Black’s Beach, spotfin croaker on my mind. The spotfin are usually the first of the croaker family to move into the surf; but anybody who fishes for spotfin knows you can go years without hooking that good one which runs in the neighborhood of, say, five pounds. I’ve had my five-pounders — and some decidedly bigger — on trips into deep Baja, and I’ve found them there in numbers that make one wonder what the old days must have been like back home. Yet I’ve been home and fishing a good portion of my life, and I’ve seen spotfin worth keeping about as often as blue moons.

I strung up my jigging rod, and I tied on a chrome spoon. Maybe I was still a little road weary. Nobody in his right mind fishes for spotfin with a lure, because they feed deliberately and seem, at best, to take bait with a tentative suck. But I’d been back pounding nails all day for an honest buck, and I’d missed low tide and a chance to gather some mussels.

Working a channel between the high-tide shorebreak, I put the spoon through its paces. I had clear water to my feet, and when I cut loose I could reach the back side of what was left of the winter sandbar.

I liked my chances. Sometime later I still liked them, though by now I was thinking just as much about what I might fix for dinner. Then in midretrieve, the spoon stopped. I raised the rod, and I came up tight to something solid.

I lost line fast. My initial response, besides trying to keep things in order, was hope for a white sea bass, the grandaddy of all Pacific croakers. I know they’re still out there, despite the gill netters, and you always hear they can be earlier than spotfin. On the other hand, I’d never picked up a white sea bass in surf north of the border. Which, in my way of thinking, was all the more reason to imagine I was into one with my lure headed for the high seas.

It turned out, instead, to be a spotfin, an honest five-pounder at that. I was careful to examine how it was hooked. I’m not one to nitpick, but when it comes to sport, landing a foul-hooked fish can in no way be tallied a success. A point of the big treble hook was held squarely in the spotfin’s mouth. I bagged it, my first keeper of the year. Now winter was officially, and finally, over. I put the spoon back into play.

Is surf fishing the domain of the little man? Let’s nip this one in the bud. Surf fishing breeds intimacy with fish, the sea, and freedom. The spirt of the game is its refined simplicity. Surf fishermen don’t chum. Nor is there anywhere the bondage of gear that can reduce other anglers to equipmental slavery.

The surf fisherman relies on his eyes and two feet, a rod and reel and his ability to use them. He is apt to be rather patient, it is true, yet no more so than the naturalist awaiting each evanescent rush of wildflowers. Above anything else, surf fishing marks the man of hope, not the party-line optimist of religions, but the man who senses, somehow, that he can know things about the world around him, and that these things are worth knowing and the world itself is okay.

Which isn’t to deny the surf fisherman his serious lapses. The richness of a sport is to be recognized in its propensity to reduce good men to meatheads, if only momentarily. My closest fishing buddy, a scientist stalking the voodoo of cancer, once saw fit to hurl rod and reel into the surf after losing two big fish in a row. For years we ranked this as an all-time low, right up there with the 800-mile trout-fishing trip we took only to discover the season hadn’t yet opened, and spending a week smoking grass and fishing for small mouth bass. Eventually even my buddy was able to laugh about his disreputable seizure. Then one day the two of us had a morning of casting interrupted, and finally cut short, by a gang of teenagers clubbing golf balls at us from a cliff above the beach near Black’s.

I admit I’m not a big golf fan, but still, nobody would disagree that a salvo of golf balls, launched from 200 feet overhead, is at odds with the joys of fishing. We went up to have a word with the fellows; I told my buddy I’d handle it. We circled up to the back of the bluffs, approached the fivesome without notice. At the edge of the cliff I asked if I might try my hand with the driver. Then, to make sure I got everyone's attention, I inverted the club and laid the shaft to the back of one of the youngster’s thighs.

Obviously I do not relate this incident to establish reader sympathy. Instead of lecturing on the possible consequences of the adolescent sense of sport, I broke out in a fit of barking. I snatched away all of the clubs, snapped them in two, and tossed the pieces off the cliff.

I’m trying to make this short. Despite my swashbuckling, it didn’t take long for the gang to conclude that, at five-on-two, the odds were in its favor. The boys caught up with us at my buddy’s pickup, fired rocks and golf balls at us as we drew away from the curb. I didn’t like that any more than getting shelled on the beach, and I didn’t like the thought that I’d just acted the asshole and now I was trying to slip away. I got out of the pickup. We rumbled some.

After an outing in the surf, you are inclined to stress the particulars: the wind, the tide, the matrix of waves — all of those special aspects which, as often as not, add up to a fishless stint of wading. In this case,

I logged two black eyes, a swollen snout, and a lousy feeling about myself that took a long, long time to swallow.

In spring in the surf, you are thinking of halibut. Everybody loves halibut. Fished for from shore, halibut offer all that is sporting in angling: a certain elusiveness, the confident strike, the spirited fight of the aggressive predator, and power and wave sense that make every landing a delicate operation. And it is arguable that there is no finer dining than fresh halibut, the big filets marinated an hour or two immediately after dressing out, then grilled lightly over open flame on a balmy May eve.

But halibut can present a problem in timing. Their arrival in the surf assumes the deep mysteries of spawning, no less mysterious than the halibut’s winter life in open ocean. Yet to state categorically that you’re fishing for spawning halibut is to set yourself up for all sorts of scientific rebuke. Then again, like most fish, probably half of a mature halibut’s year is in command of the sheer chemistry to reproduce, so that its time spent in the surf, whether to feed or to spawn, is essentially response to one and the same dynamics. Which is a roundabout way of saying that you can stand tall against those accusations of pipe dreaming when you’ve lost a day casting for halibut in the teeth of late-winter Arctic swell or wasted entire weeks of summer tossing lures for one last halibut, when the smart bet is a sand crab aimed at corbina.

I always fish for halibut with a lure. They’ll take an anchovy, live or frozen or however you can get them, but it seems somehow wrong to dangle bait out there when you’re after a fish lying in wait for something to swim by that it can rise to and nail. I’ve seen halibut jump, exploding crazily from the shallows upon, presumably, unsuspecting bait fish. And in Baja I’ve fooled a number of halibut with the fly, the strikes as brilliant against the surface as those of the aerodynamic pelagic fish.

Anyway, to paraphrase somebody somewhere. I’ve never caught a halibut I didn’t like (although many short of the minimum twenty-two-inch size limit, all immediately released); and I’m thinking now of an evening on the rocks, toward the end of one of those late-spring days that just seem to go on forever. Dawn in the garden, trying to hose down everything against another beating from the sun. Ten hours setting fence posts around a tuna fisherman’s suburban port o’ call. A beer with my buddy while laying plans for an upcoming Baja run. (He’s got a dinner date and, much as he’d like to, can’t join me on the water.) Then, finally, a quick surf check at Windansea Beach, the search for a parking space, rigging up, and a double-time hike along the outcroppings beneath the shorefront estates of ritzy southern La Jolla.

An hour above the horizon, the sun looked like a cross between a beach ball and a heavy drinker’s cheeks. I tied on a fluorescent-red Scampi. No doubt, only the practiced hand thinks a Scampi a good first bet. Those new to or stupid about surf fishing think it’s a ridiculous-looking lure, but those who fish it regularly consider the Scampi a marvel of fish-fooling creativity. The rubbery body and tail do seem rather childish in design, and the blunt lead head strikes one as being as lifelike as a stone. Yet in combination these elements make for a lure that can be fished at any depth and at any speed; and to predator fish, the Scampi’s outrageous action is as close to irresistible as anything fashioned by man.

I climbed down to the water, picking my way through the clutter of dead seaweed. The tide was high, pressed up against the sandstone, and I had to perch atop a limpet-covered nob to gain a toehold for casting. But the surf was small, the wash as gentle as a stream, and ahead, blue water marked a fissure in the rocks, opening out into a tight, deep hollow of sand.

While halibut lie on sand, one will often stake out this sort of hole between reefs or fingers of rocks. There it can keep an eye peeled for the diversity of feed that naturally surrounds such spots. And this halibut will necessarily be one of the biggest, toughest halibut in the neighborhood. It didn't lay claim to its turf through diplomatic request.

I worked the Scampi around some just under the surface, trying to gauge the lay of things before risking a snag. Then I shot for the heart of the slot. I let the Scampi sink. It hit bottom and the line went slack. I flicked off the free-spool. I waited. Finally I lifted my rod and, without any perceptible strike, I was into something good.

Now, halibut are notorious for allowing you your way with them up to a certain point. At that point, often within plain sight, they get down to business, and from then on the game, as is said, isn't over till it’s over. Those same zero-to-red line bursts of speed with which halibut ambush bait fish are transmitted through the rod as sharp, implacable runs. Stopping, halibut assume the manners of a mule, the broad body working against moving water like an oar. Add kelp, rocks, backwash, shorebreak, or whatever may be, and you have your hands full, the sort of fight in the surf you never really bargain for.

This one went off without a hitch. Spotting him a second time right below me, I let the halibut hang until a small wave formed. I lifted him with it, and I slid him up onto the rocks. He was legal by half a foot, probably pushing a good eight pounds. I loosed the Scampi from the needlelike teeth, and, because my fiancee’s mother was in town, I decided to kill the halibut for dinner, which by now I was already late for.

The surf builds and flattens, changes colors with the sky, and shows the wind and swings of tide. Sometimes the pelicans ride the waves, their motionless wings carrying them down the beach and out of sight, like leaves on a quiet river.

The summer haze breaks up earlier and earlier until you meet the dawn under smoke-blue skies, fretting with the thought of sunbirds already gathering. The lime tree across the yard catches the first rays peeking over the mesa. You can hear the traffic beyond the big hedge out front, the rush of cars pouring into La Jolla from the interstate.

It is clear that if you don’t face the crowds, another surf-fishing year will drift off to nowhere, along with pennant races, garden tomatoes, and a number of other blessings that just don’t last.

You can catch anything in summer — from perch to bonito, sheephead to sargo, opal eye to guitarfish to every kind of croaker. I’ve had lobster crawl onto my hook while casting bait at low tide at my feet. I’ve also dragged in a moray eel or two, which I might have carried home to eat if I didn’t find them utterly hideous to deal with.

But it is the corbina, that ghostly avatar of the surf, that sharpens your summer pulse. There’s always a chance for one year-round, and especially when the swell takes its periodic rests. Yet only in summer, when shorelines are rippling with sand crabs, do you fish for corbina in earnest.

This year I wanted a corbina on the fly. It isn’t as far-fetched as it may sound. Given clear water and the right light, you can actually spot corbina moving. Like disembodied shadows, at ocean’s very edge. Creeping forward to cast, it isn’t unusual to see the gray, exposed back of a corbina grubbing through sand. This is generally a quite fleeting sight, however, followed immediately by the agonizing sight of a wake disappearing into surf, your shot at that particular corbina riding off with it.

I worked out a couple of abstract sand crab patterns back home at my tying vise, and I haunted the surf from Black’s Beach all the way north to Torrey Pines. Two months later I switched back to bait. I hadn’t moved a thing with the fly — and should a summer pass without me catching a corbina, I really would die of shame. I suppose I began to cut a rather grim figure, casting at arm’s length from the sun-maddened crowds. But in summer you know there’s a corbina with your number on it, because the surf is what it is, and in it these wild fish still roam.

It came down to this, an evening in late August that had corbina written all over it. Rising tide. Lapping shorebreak. A clear stretch of sandy bottom alongside low, jutting rocks. I filled a Dixie cup with sand crabs, and I tied on a little bait hook to a drop leader hanging just above a one-ounce pyramid sinker. I wasn't actually seeing fish. But as I began to cast, I imagined corbina everywhere.

I picked up a couple of sargo. You never really fish for sargo; they usually show up when you're hot for something else. But sargo are always a treat, their spirited fight lasting right up to the landing and ensuing release. Then on a cast not more than twenty feet out, I felt the gentle, unmistakable nudgings of a corbina. I was patient. For every one corbina I’ve hooked. I've probably pulled the bait out of the mouths of a dozen of them. Then again, should you wait for that big, rod-bending strike, you might never hook one. It occurred to me, eventually, that my sinker was on the move, and not because of waves. I struck at that movement and, this time, the hook went home.

A while later I had a corbina all right — but not the one I was after. At, say, eighteen inches, a corbina will run close to two pounds, a decent fish, it’s true, and one to keep if you’re planning to bring home a sack full. Nobody I know, however, catches corbina in bunches. And I do know, from experience, that there are few things sadder in this world than a single, middling corbina gutted out on the back yard lawn. I kept casting. There were bumps and scrapes, nibbles and good jolts. But I failed to connect. I cast right on into darkness, stopping, finally, with the realization that the push of tide was over and done with. Looking north through moonlight, I saw all of the summer solitude I could ever ask for. The surf was up tight to the cliffs, my route home underwater.

The year in the surf ends, as it does everywhere else, in fall. There is no sharper San Diego season, as emphatic in my eyes as autumn to a Maine woodsman. The Santa Ana winds blow, sweeping haze and smog beyond the horizon; and from the south march the long, clean lines of swells kicked up by the Baja chubascos.

I think of fall as my favorite season. There’s the surfing to be done, the World Series, the eclectic arrival of migrating waterfowl, the resurgent greening of seaside gardens. You skirt the sea on private wings, and in the fresh, crystalline light, you can see anything that moves. But in fall I don’t fish much at home. Probably it’s because anything you make happen will only be a repeat of another, earlier season. I put away the jigging rod, give lures a good rinsing, and clean my casting reel through and through, the way I’ve neglected to all year long. Then it’s back to the fly vise, tying handfuls of big, bright streamers; and I make again for Baja, its frontier shores, and the ventures of sport promised anglers in the surf.