Another deadly boating accident out of Bodega Bay yesterday. I have no knowledge other that what I saw in the news, but I can say that the weather was likely a factor, similar to the other two accidents. It was not good yesterday with a large swell and small craft advisory winds. The boat was pretty big and that may have been a factor in deciding to go crabbing anyway, but bad weather multiplies the effects of any unexpected event. The pictures look like they might have got a crab rope in the prop (a line in the wheel, they say) and that would kill the engine and be pretty much unfixable on a shaft drive like this boat. Strong winds would push any boat around and make driving over your own rope (or any other out there) likelier. They called for help, but it takes it a bit for the USCG to get on the boat and get to wherever you may be in the event of a mayday. They weren't super far (Salmon Creek) and they probably dropped anchor, but a big boat in the wind and swell can drag anchor pretty easy and pretty fast. It looked like the boat had an auxiliary motor but it didn't help in those conditions. I assume that they did all the right things, but the conditions were such that it didn't really matter. What would have been a bummer on a calm day became a life ender. Let's all choose better weather days.

    The crabbing is still slow but the effort continues. We are currently at peak current as we just passed the full moon. That equates to tough times inside the bay. A (very) few people have done well inside the bay this week with a few boats catching as many as thirty keeper Dungeness in a day. Most people have caught much, much less. The current didn't help in the catching the last part of this week. Big current is bad for crab, and big current is what we had. Big current almost killed another person in a small boat yesterday, as his inflatable with an electric trolling motor was unable to beat the outgoing current and he got sucked out into the breakers and flipped over. A super good guy and his family were out crabbing and as they returned to pull the boat out they were hailed by people on the beach to alert them to a person in trouble in vaguely defined terms. They ran off and thankfully found the dude. He was in the water and wearing hip waders, which made him hard to get out out of the water and into the boat. They did it though, got him in by just sheer badassness. They really wanted to save him, and they did. Life jacket, no. Probably don't be that guy. He may not have known, but now you do. Life jackets may not save your life but they sure won't hurt. The boat was recovered today and returned to its owner. The current is bad, but should be slowing as the moon shrivels, for a bit. 

   The rockfish was slow early in the week, when you could get there, but as the weekend approached the window for going out the bay closed as the weather shut it down. There may be opportunities in the next couple of days but then after that, well, surf's up! For those of us looking to go offshore, or even out of the bay, well, bummer. It appears that we may get two to eight inches of rain in the next ten days. That should make the steelhead happy. Good for them. For crab, as I started, inside Tomales is mostly bad, but outside, if you can get there safely, the crab is better, maybe not as good as we would like, but better than inside the bay. Limits, for those that move around a lot. 

    

 

      I received this picture yesterday afternoon. It seems that there are, indeed, albacore out there. The trick to finding them is to see which way I go, then do the opposite. I went south. North had actual fish. John Brezina and Ed Parsons went north and caught nine fish yesterday. They even let a couple go. Today there's reports of fish off of the Bodega Canyon, as the water is sliding south. This information will help nobody, as the weather is turning to crap and it will be a while until the offshore is doable again. But look how happy Ed is. Well, good for you.

   Dammit.

    This weekend the crabbing was about the same but the crabbers were happier, on average. Perhaps the reports of bad crabbing tempered their expectations. Whatever it was, their were a couple of guys killing it inside the bay and a lot of people scraping by. Huh. Sounds like something else. Similar notes in the outer bay and points north with a slight edge towards killing it the farther north you went. But even some far northers got skunked, so run your gear early and often and move if it ain't happening.

 

   Does the rockfishing suck? Mostly, the word is yes. But that talk doesn't make it on to Joe Winn's boat. Not catching here? Move. Here? No? Move. How about here? Holy crap, it's trying to drag me out of the boat! This monster weighed 33 pounds and actually bit a legal lingcod that had just been hooked. One hook, one limit, bam! I need to try that. Heck, we all do. But unfortunately, we all can't fish with Joe Winn. His boat is nice but it ain't big enough for all of us. Damn it.

    Another report from today comes from Kelley Roy: "Wanted to let you know we had a great day on the water today. Went up north for 2 limits of nice grade of crab and quick work of 2 limits of decent grade of rocks.

Crabbing was  slowly picking away at the low tide but really picked up towards high tide. Felt like Cabo out there under the gorgeous sun.

Best Regards

Kelley" North is very generically where Joe Winn went. Joe also caught a lot of crab. Will you catch a lot of crab and rockfish if you go north? Truthfully, probably not, but chances are better if you do. They are out there but you need to find them. A twenty minute soak is enough to figure out if there's crab there. No crab? Move. If the crab are there they can be in the net in a few minutes. If they aren't there you can't catch them at all.

     Thursday the ocean was beautiful. Not quite flat calm, but almost. Quite a few boats hit the water in search of crab and rockfish. Quite a few boats also had issues with catching those things. Neither the crab nor the rockfish wanted to play ball. One boat that had caught their limits of Dungeness at Abbott's Lagoon in his last two trips found himselfgoing home without limits today. Another boat tried 10 Mile in a couple of places and only caught one keeper. The Outer Bay has a few crab if you work hard at it but it seems that north of Salmon Creek there's some good crabbing and rockfishing if you can find them. 

    Here's a report from yesterday:  "  

Good  morning Willy,

I was part of a mass fleet of boats crabbing north of Bodega Thursday.  I got out early enough to find a small patch of real estate to work my 8 hoops and 2 rings in 80-94’ of water.  Two pulls of the string produced limits for the two of us with a 30-45 minute soak.  Others I spoke to did not fair as well so it seems I got lucky and found that sweet spot.  It was a very slow bite for rockfish at Ft. Ross reef, but we did manage to box a couple in addition to limits of ling cod.  Overall a productive day on a beautiful flat calm ocean.

Regards,

Brad Stompe "  Nice work, sir. Rockfish have been hard to find in the shallows. I stopped at Point Reyes yesterday and we caught about half limits of rockfish but we saw two other boats there from San Francisco Bay. That's a long way to go for rockies. I'm guessing that things are tough all over if they are running that far.

   Gage, brother-in-law Greg and I tried for bluefin and albacore yesterday from north of Bodega Canyon to Cordell and only had one bite. The bite was from a striped marlin. 56 degree water seems to cold, but we never got the chance to explain that to him as he jumped away into the distance. Strange days.