WHEN LUCK IS AS FICKLE AS THE WIND; ONE CAN ONLY PONDER AFTER A CANCELED TRIP.

Byline: BRETT PAULY Angling

Waiting for the weather window.

Now I know how Robbie Knievel felt while winds gusted before his Grand Canyon jump, what the space shuttle astronauts go through before liftoff and the frustrations of mountaineers tackling Mount Everest. Well, sort of.

Three separate ocean-angling trips I had planned this week were blown off by howling winds.

And now instead of writing about the action, I'm forced to ponder what might have been, all from the dry perspective of good ol' terra firma.

When the white seabass bite exploded at Santa Barbara Island more than two weeks ago, I was itching to tackle the second largest member of the croaker family. A rather rare trophy, the white seabass has eluded me and my, uh-hum, Zane Grey-like angling prowess (feel free to laugh at any time) for nearly a decade, ever since I hooked into two on a trip to San Clemente Island and lost both.

I had heard the stories about the powerful croaker, peeling out line on spirited runs and tasting more exquisite than most saltwater fare.

In fact, Terry McDermott, an Agoura Hills plumbing contractor, mistook his first and only white seabass for the thresher shark to which he had just fly-lined a live mackerel.

``It was a hell of a fight. I had a short trolling rod, like a tuna pole, so that I could put some torque on that shark, but it bent the rod right to the water,'' McDermott said of the catch off the Rincon area north of Ventura.

After three runs and a half-hour fight, McDermott brought what he thought was a thresher to gaff. It turned out to be a 66-pound white seabass.

``Not until we got it did I have a clue. The captain of the boat was shocked'' that a white seabass would put up such an epic battle.

That's the kind of story I was hoping to duplicate this week. But I never had a chance; Mother Nature saw to that. On Tuesday it was gale-force winds and a small-craft advisory that ruined a trip aboard a private vessel to Santa Cruz Island. Gusts to 70 knots - more than 80 mph - canceled an earlier party-boat charter to Santa Barbara Island, the tiny outpost in Channel Islands National Park where one-fish limits of croaker to 40 pounds and heavier were the norm just 10 days prior.

``The seabass have been full speed in the morning, while the yellowtail have been full speed in the afternoon,'' the fish report read, noting that most were being taken on live squid, 3/0 hooks, 25-pound line and -1/4- to -1/2-ounce sliding egg sinkers. Jigs with and without squid skirts also were producing.

All that action and nothing to do but mope. But somehow, in my mind, even getting skunked (which happens to me with some frequency) is better than a canceled trip. Our friend McDermott agreed.

``At least when you are out there, you think you have a chance. You always have hope. Yeah, not going is worse,'' said McDermott, who knows a thing or two about boating in foul weather. Years ago his 30-foot sportfisher sunk when 12-foot seas pushed it into the rocks at Anacapa Island; he and an angling partner had to be plucked by a Coast Guard helicopter.

But enough whining about the weather already. While I can't extend many fishing tips from recent excursions, Cal State Northridge biology professor and white seabass expert Larry G. Allen offers a closer look at the fish.

One word came to his mind when Allen was asked about fishing for white seabass: ``Squid.'' Whether it's live or fresh dead - that is, it has died within the last six to eight hours and hasn't been frozen - squid is the bait more critical to angling success on white seabass than any other local game fish, he said.

Typically, the March and April spawn of squid coincides with the prespawn of the white seabass, when the game fish is building up energy stores to spawn. This year the whole process has been pushed back because of colder water.

White seabass is one species that biologists, recreational anglers and commercial harvesters all agree has been overfished, though who's to blame is a point of contention. The commercial harvest topped out in 1959 and only recently has shown signs of recovery, largely the result of a ban of gillnets in its spawning grounds and $1 million-a-year hatchery project in Carlsbad that annually releases about 100,000 white seabass, Allen said. The sport-caught take peaked in 1949 and has declined ever since.

Since the mid-1960s, a legal-size white seabass - 28 inches - has been considered an uncommon sport catch, somewhat akin to albacore tuna but targeted with less fervor.

``I didn't catch a legal until about five years ago,'' Allen said, ``and I've fished my whole life.'' That's one more white seabass than I've caught.

Like its brethren, the white seabass - second largest in the croaker family behind the endangered totoba of the Gulf of California - communicates via croaking sounds.

Three white seabass may be taken sport-fishing, except in waters south of Point Conception from March 15 to June 15, when only one fish can be kept.

The world record white seabass is 83-3/4 pounds, boated in 1953 off San Felipe, Mexico, but 11 of 18 line-class records were established at Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands. So find some squid and a weather window, and get after the elusive great white seabass.

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Photo: (Color) White seabass became a rare sport catch after being overfished in the 1940s and '50s.

William Boyce/Special to the Daily News