Swampy sent over this report tonight: "Evening Willy,

Spent the day on the bay with good results. Easy anchovie bait near the yellow marker. 6 halibut to 12 pounds for three anglers north of hog with the tide change being key. Glad to get some meat this trip. See you next time.

Swampy"  The halibut fishing may be down, but not out. There were several other halibut caught today with "north of Hog" also being in common. Also, most of the fish were caught in the afternoon. My guess is that some fish came in. Hopefully there's more following them. Nice work on the fish, Swampy and crew.

    Angela Sala found the fish today, too: "First haul of the season, and I’m one happy gal!  A 23” and a 30” both caught on jigs.  The past few days have been rough with the windy conditions, so I’m quite grateful to have had such a beautiful day today!

-Angela Sala, Lincoln CA" Nice fish Angela! It looks like these fish were some of those "north of Hog" fish. Good work with the jig.

 

   So what do you do when you're on vacation but the weather turns to gale force winds? I guess you troll the back by Marshall for bass.. I guess that because the only boat we launched today did that and caught bass, white sea bass and striped bass. Flatfish are hard this year, and likely will continue to be hard for a few years if the past salmon closure is any kind of indicator. Gage and I were looking at the halibut results, year over year, from Sportfishingreport.com, and they showed a drop of 50% or better in the catch per fisherman since 2023. Go catch what's biting, is the result of that, and the twins,+ show it.  Two striper near Pelican and two white seabass near Marshall were the catches of the day. You go, Alexanders, Johnny Sandbar (a Gerard Fitzgerald nickname if there ever was one) and Martha. The catchning may suck, but certain people figure out how to catch nonetheless. Nice. Fricking. Fish. 

 

    Oops. I'd like to say that the fish have been coming in so hot and heavy that we can't keep up, but the reality is that we dropped the ball (the fishing is still really bad for halibut) so here's another report from Thursday: "Late report: Rob Benjamin of Santa Rosa picked up two halibut to 27 lbs on live anchovies at the green can." Nice work, Rob. The anchovies are thick in the water and that's what the fish are eating, so swimming a few of those around seems like a good idea to me. Good work, Rob, and sorry about the wait. The green can, back in its previous location, was one of my favorite fishing spots. Halibut seem to like edges, like slopes, and a rock or reef in among the sand. The previous spot was in 30 feet of water on a steep slope. I didn't think the new location was good enough to concentrate fish, but Rob here seems to say different. 

     News from today was, unsurprisingly, bad. There were some fish caught, but not many. Rockfish were tough, mainly because the weather outside was bad. Tomorrow shall be worse, weatherwise, they predict. There were fish caught today, halibut, but not many. I didn't get the Robert Rath report today but that's good, because he skews the report towards a false positive. The reports I heard were not good. Maybe the fish aren't coming in. You get a killer in your midst and you think everybody is stacking bodies. Turns out, even when it's good, only a few are killing it. Fishing is awesome, partly because anything can happen and probably will. The bird pile off of Dillon Beach proper continues today but nobody is fishing it as word is out that salmon is the result and that's not what they're looking for. It sure looks impressive, though. 

 

    Robert Rath jigged up this 31 pound halibut yesterday. It bit in 30ish feet of water off of Dillon Beach. So did a 20 pound striper (Gage) and 28 salmon (released, obviously). The striper and all but two of the salmon bit tube jigs, too, Redrums and Bigfoot Baits. The other two salmon ate live anchovies at the bottom. Everything was on the single hook and the releases were clean and the salmon never left the water. The salmon hatcheries have (not you Coleman) done a fine job of making and delivering salmon to the ocean for us to catch, as evidenced by the number of fish caught in the two day season and the number of fish being released by fishermen in the ocean. It's a shame we can't keep any. But it is nice to see that there's a physical reason why there should be a season if not a legal one. You go, Mokelumne. And nice fish, Robert. It was pretty cool watching his rod try to come up but the tip stayed in the same place for five seconds, then the rod did three big pumps and held steady again. "That's a big halibut" said Gage, and he was right. After it became clear that there no further white-fleshed fish to catch off of Dillon Beach proper, we retired to the bar with some live anchovies for a sand sole and two more halibut. Today, Robert limited his boat on halibut on the bar on live anchovies. Finally, a few more fish are coming in. There were a few yesterday and for sure quite a few more today. If about 10,000 more show up the fishing should be pretty good. For now the halibut fishing sucks less. 

  This is a view off of Dillon Beach yesterday. There's more outside the bay where the baitfish would rather be, but at the moment the colder water from the wind has sent quite a few anchovies into Bodega Bay proper. Next time the wind drops for a few days there should be some fish on the other beaches. Maybe some of those fish will be keepers. The bar has a few arrivals; Hog is brutal slow; and the farther back bay is just really, really hard. Good luck!

 How do you make a slow halibut bite even slower? Maybe a tsunami? Well, it can't make it better. I heard of maybe five halibut today, four of them from the mouth to the rocks just north of Dillon Beach proper. I haven't heard of much from Hog Island for a bit. There's some bait (mostly anchovies) coming and going but just not that many halibut chasing them. I guess that after 2.5 years of no salmon the halibut have dwindled. Go figure. A positive note, if you want to call it that, is that effort is dropping as interest in saltwater fishing is dropping. We will probably see a bump in interest as tuna start hitting the docks, but even the guys from tuna central in San Diego are complaining of a lack of interest. I'm not sure what could be better than bluefin, but if bluefin fishing gets boring for you, well, don't watch The Deer Hunter. 

    One of the few fish caught today was by this guy. It weighed 21 pounds and was caught outside the bay on a Bigfoot Baits jig in 50 feet of water. One or two of the other fish landed today were also caught on the jig. They definitely work if you can find a spot with fish in it. That's the hard part. Also, there may be squid around, and if so, it will likely concentrate what halibut there are out in the ocean in 50 to 100 feet of water. Gage here spent a portion of his morning trolling for halibut on McClure's but caught nothing but salmon. Eleven salmon released. A pair of gentleman yesterday released 16 salmon while trying to catch a halibut while trolling off of Dillon Beach. If you see a hatchery guy (not from Coleman) you should hug them if they let you. They have done fantastic work. There are a lot of salmon in the ocean, just not enough expected to return to the main stem Sac river. So the biomass of salmon shoos off the fish we can legally catch but cannot be kept themselves. FYI, if there was ever a chance to land a salmon from shore in Dillon Beach, that time is so now. It probably won't happen, but normally it definitely won't happen, so good luck!  And photos if it happens. There are tons of anchovies pushed up against the beach and almost as many salmon trying to eat them. Watch for pelicans and then run to them. You know, for stripers. They are out there and feeding on the same stuff in the same ways.