Sorry, but I was out of town. Here's some reports, briefly, in no particular order, as I'm sort of brain dead right now...

    "Evening,

Saw some halibut caught today and got a couple in the boat as a well. Jake’s girlfriend (first time fishing) caught her first fish today, the smile says it all. Uncle Bob got his first limit with a 17 and 15 landed by Al who got  a clicker as well. Enjoyed a good day on the bay.

Swampy" Very nice, Swampy. This email was from Friday. Looks and sounds like some fish were caught. No reports of fish chewing the gelcoat off of boats, but fish, which still sounds pretty good. Nice work on catching, Swampy, but you're not supposed to be exposing young people to addictive things, like catching. Another poor soul following the path to tackle shop damnation....

    Branden Mendoza sent over these pictures and report: "Hey Willy. Got back on the water after some time off due to surgery. We did our usual flasher hootchie combo. Landed us a ton of shorts a giant bat ray and a nice 32 inch halibut. Overall a nice day and we were happy to be back out. Also managed to snag a mackerel on the sabiki. " Good to see you're back. Nice work on the keeper, as I haven't been able to catch anything but shorts in the back. If you catch another mackerel you might try trolling it while you're halibut fishing. The macks will troll alive all day if you don't pin their mouths shut and my first seabass bit a (drifted) mackerel. Halibut like them, too. Nice fish, sir.

   On Saturday sport salmon opened up north. While we wait until the 27th for salmon to open here, Mike and Mara Nursement went to Fort Bragg and put some pink meat in the bag. Says Mike, "200ft of water 60pulls 24oz weight watermelon flasher small and small watermelon apex." Yes, it's not here but soon it will be. And it looks like there's fish north and south of us, so it seems our chances of success will be good, weather depending. 

   

  Also on Saturday, Vicky caught this 25 pound halibut. I'm not sure of where or how, but halibut now outnumber white sea bass on the big fish board. 

   I'm afraid that this time I have no name or the weight of the fish but I do know that this striper was caught from shore, probably near Sand Point. I also know that surf stripers are the best. Well done, sir.

   When Eddie Kim texts you and asks if you want to go fish with him and the Pacific Queen Killers, you say yes. Then beg the wife to go. At least, I did, and begging works. Even luckier, the fortnight of no bluefin biting ended during our trip, as the New Lo-An found the fish late Thursday at a place called the Condom. We ran most of the day Friday from our yellowtail bite at the Coronados to almost the Cortez bank to get some blueys. It was good. I can still hear Eddie Kim yelling "Biter!", probably because he did it so often. After my drive home a team of locals assembled and we processed fish, ate sashimi and drank beer and champagne. It was good. And late.

    Also, this:

    

    Wow, check out that upwelling! The wind sucks (and there's been a lot of it) but it is fighting the "ocean heat wave" by bringing up that deep, cold water. Only once this year has the water temp dropped below 50º at the Point Reyes wave rider buoy and it didn't last. June is supposed to have the coldest water of the year here, and it does, but not as cold as it should be. That said, there should be enough upwelling and warming for the plankton to bloom and the anchovies and salmon smolts to eat, if not their fill, maybe enough. Water temps are tracking like in 2015, and if you want to know what that means you can look back on this very blog and see the reports. 2015 was a strange year, but another year like that might damage my shoulder from all the high-fiving. It's looking like a repeat, of sorts. Strange things are afoot in the parking lot of the Circle K. 

   I heard of a few fish inside the bay this week. There was at least one white seabass caught near Hog and Gage picked up a bass with stripes in the same vicinity, both on Wednesday. There's been a few halibut in the same area. There are occasionally catchable sardines and mackerel by Hog to use for bait but it hasn't been as consistent as one would hope. Those sardines would probably make great salmon bait when the time comes. They're blue label-sized beauties, when you can find them. Crabbing has been really bad in the outer bay and down and Ten Mile for Dungeness but a few are still being caught inside the bay. Not many, but any is better than what I've heard from outside. 

 

   Malachi Curtis sent over a new report today; "Back on the water with my dad Monday and after a slow day with a few missed takedowns I finally connected with my first halibut, 29 incher around 1:30. Monkeys off the back now so hopefully we can get a few more." If you had a good time catching that fish, Malachi, and it looks like you did, you may have just switched monkeys. Welcome to the club. Success is addictive, or at least, that's what Gage tells me. There's not a lot of halibut out there after three years of abuse, but there's still some volunteers willing to bite and the reports I've heard aren't bad, but aren't good. There's some fish, and a few guys are getting them. The bite has been from Tom's Point down to Marshall. I've heard of a few limits. Please note the scar on Malachi's halibut, lower left. It appears this halibut may have pulled through a gaff at some point in it's past. Or a diver's spear. I think that when we start repeat catching the same fish, the fish bucket is getting low. I expect a few more will venture into the bay from outside, as the bait seems to be coming in (in tiny schools) but the ocean has been reported to be pretty barren. Halibut, like many fish, prefer eating to not, so it seems that some of the hungrier models may find their way into our neighborhood.

    

 Here's a report from Malachi Curtis: "New to the Tomales game but we are slowly figuring it out, really appreciate your blog. We got these striper and shark on Wednesday. Stripers were 28.5 and 30.5 and the shark was just under 49. Shark was release but the striper came home. It was a slower day for us but the striper both bit within 30 seconds of each other. The halibut continue to elude us but yesterday I caught a 6 inch coho smolt while jigging up bait. Didn’t get a photo as I wanted him to get on his way asap. "  Good call on returning the coho ASAP. My friend Mike has released several this week while catching bait. They're so cute with their googly eyes. Efforts to bring back the coho on Tomales Bay creeks have been fruitful but number targets have yet to be met, so not considered successful. But the number of smolts in the mix of baitfish make it seem like their efforts are working. That, or there aren't many baitfish. Maybe both... But nice job on the stripers. They do seem to move through in small packs, and often one fish means several are around. The halibut have been beat up the last three years and catch numbers have plummeted. There are still some fish but hard work and luck are necessary. Mostly luck,  but grinding has its place. As I was a grinder for a long time, let me explain that grinding in the fishing sense is to fish dawn to dusk (or similarly long times) in order to catch some fish. Grinding is good when you're learning, because you have to, but also because, if you're paying attention, you start seeing and doing the things that improve your catch. It took me forever and I'm not done figuring it out. 

     I took Mike Nursement out fishing on Thursday. It rained on us for the first part of our day and was blowing pretty stiff out of the southeast for the whole day. We went to the bait spot at Pelican Point and caught, after 45 minutes, one coho smolt. That not being acceptable bait by any measurement, we gave up on drifting liveys and went farther back to Marshall where we trolled up twenty-ish short halibut and one 12 pounder. Mike wanted everybody to see his gaff job, as it was center-of-mass of the head. It was a good shot, and especially important as it was the only keeper bite we got. There are a few keepers out there but as far as I can tell they ain't thick on the ground.

      I really need to remember to check my email before posting, as I miss some good reports. Here's the actual whole report from the Cooastodian, rather than my thumbnail I reported yesterday:

     According to Richard, "Hi Willy 

My friend Owen likes to fish and had never pursued halibut.

He figured it out pretty well, coaxing these two in the boat with the help of two live mackerel. 

The one smelt I foraged was also converted into a large fish.

Together we boated over 36 pounds of fish. I told him yer gonna need a bigger ice chest.

The weather Sunday was much preferred over Saturday. The light drizzle washed the skunk off nicely."  Nicely done, Richard and Owen. These halibut aren't quite jumping in the boat this year, but you guys are going to give people the wrong impression.  Well, that's good for my business, so keep at it. 

    I got this photo from Mike Nursement this morning. "Good morning, this guy told me they got bigger yesterday and a 28' striper" The pictured fisherman had a bucket with several barred and redtail perch in it. The big sandcrab molt hasn't happened yet, but it is coming soon (probably sometime in the next five weeks) and the surfperch fishing should get even better.