Thursday, April 24, 2003

For some reason I had a desire to throw the camping gear into the back of the pickup and head for Usal Beach last weekend. I wasn't the only one who had the notion. Usal Beach is six miles down a windy, single-lane dirt road off Highway 1, north of Rockport.

As you turn off onto Usal Road and make a steep climb you soon have immense vistas of the Pacific Ocean from almost 1000 feet of elevation. The visibility was unlimited on Saturday and I took a helluva scope at several turnouts along the way. The first part of the road passes through cattle grazing land, then it descends through timberland owned by the Wilderness Society, with stern warning signs admonishing "Members Only" and "Avoid Arrest."

I'll be damned if I didn't get tailgated on Usal Road by a soccer mom in an Astrovan, who blew past me in a cloud of dust when I turned out.

Saturday brought a gorgeous eruption of springtime growth. New grass and flowers filled the meadows underneath the alders along Usal flat. Usal Creek was wide and fast from the rains last week. On this day, the skies were blue with just a few wisps of "mare's tails" leading a coming weather front. The winds were calm and the seas were almost glassy.

I set up camp in a prime spot next to a feeder stream, unloaded the gear and went down to the beach. Usal Beach attracts surf smelt, and surf fishermen who net them for the frying pan. They use either A-frame nets or casting nets. It's a little early for their spawning runs, when they hurl themselves into the surf zone and thrash ecstatically in the pea gravel beach. The fish, I mean. The fishermen's spawning runs are more difficult to time.

By June people will be lined up in their pickups, tailgates down, nets and buckets at the ready, waiting for the next push of fish. The birds will be frantically diving right into the boil of the surf, and fishermen will be up to their waists in water trying to scoop them up. The two main kinds of osmerids we find here are Hypomesus pretiosis (or "day fish") and Spirinchus starksi ("night fish"). The night fish run January through June on the full moon; day fish run June through January at high tide.

Back at the iron ranger there is a new sign announcing a prohibition on driving off the designated park roads. It's a hallowed local tradition to drive your gnarly-tired pickup truck onto Usal Beach, right through the creek, and set up for surf fishing or flat-out beer guzzling. With several thousand acres of pristine wilderness just to the north, what's the harm? Can't there be just a few spots where a red-blooded guy can let his hair down and go "Bbbbrrrrmmm" in an outsized Tonka Toy? The Fun Police are On the Case... The new sign didn't inhibit several 4X4 owners from venturing forth onto the beach and exercising their right, as Americans, to risk burying their wheels up to their hubcaps in sand. The Park Rangers will not pull you out if you get stuck. They will be happy to call Orca Towing to come out and get you all the way from Ft. Bragg. You don't want to know how much it costs.

I set up at the beach and took it all in. A group of kids with fishing poles and a cast net walked down to the water to give it a try. The smallest boy among them had an excellent technique with the cast net but came up empty. The two-toned sea was blue and chalky brown, with the fresh-water runoff floating on top of the salt. The birds were diving at the seam between the two colors just out of casting distance from shore. The beach has a steep drop-off and Usal Beach is not a swimming hole. It's protected from the south by Cape Vizcaino and from the north by Mistake Point, so it's often calm here, but usually there's a big groundswell.

Usal always teems with life. Seals poke their heads out of the curling waves. Pelicans, cormorants, osprey, gulls and terns patrol the break line in search of bait fish. I've seen river otters frolicking in the surf at Usal.

On Sunday morning I worked my way up the north side of the beach, pry bar in hand, looking for an unlucky abalone. The rocks looked like good habitat but the beach is too exposed to the open ocean and I didn't find any where I was rockpicking, not even juveniles. Some women in wet suits found one further out in the surf line. There were only a few very small mussels clinging to the rocks.

A word to the wise: May 1st marks the beginning of the annual shellfish quarantine in California. I've heard that people eat them year round, so it's your call. I have heard that some Native Americans claim immunity to shellfish poisoning but the scientific literature doesn't offer much support for that, with cases reported every year. Signs of Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning include "tingling lips, tongue and fingertips; burning, numbness, drowsiness, incoherent speech and respiratory paralysis." Signs of Demoic Acid poisoning are "vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, confusion, memory loss, disorientation and seizure. Coma, death." Commercially-produced mussels are safe to eat year-round because the state tests them. The California shellfish hotline is 800/553-4133.

Back in civilization, or what passes for it in Ft. Bragg, I learned that the party boats had a bang-up weekend of salmon fishing with early limits of quality fish. The fish were feeding on crab spawn which was rising to the surface, according to on-the-water reports.