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. 

 

    

   I didn't get this gentleman's name but his leopard shark yesterday weighed 18 pounds. Not pictured, his halibut from the day before also weighed 18 pounds. I was hoping to weigh in another 18 pound something today from him but I don't think he fished. The would probably be pushing his luck, as the fishing hasn't been awesome, especially with the south wind yesterday. Yesterday most boats had zeros for halibut, a few had one, and Mike Mack came in with two for three fishermen. Today, Mike had two on the boat again, but he tied in numbers with....

   .... Patty O'Hair, who fished with the Nursements. Patty's fish weighed 10 and 14  pounds. Live bait, drifted, killed these fish. Well. Patty killed them, really, but she used livre bait like a weapon.

     I got this photo from the Coastodian this morning with the message, "15 year old first halibut. Live mackerel" That's a nice starter halibut. I hope it lit a fire. I've heard of a few live mackerel catching halibut recently, and it shouldn't be a surprise. Small, tasty, calorie-rich fish tend to be fast because they have to be. Everything wants to eat them. Be fast or get eaten. Or even, be fast and still get eaten, but at least the thing that ate you is winded now. Mackerel make fantastic live bait but for fish slower than tuna or jacks it is sometimes necessary to hobble the little sprinter to make it catchable for the target fish. I've caught more halibut on injured mackerel than spry ones.  

     Normally I like to use birds as indicators of fish activity. Boats can work, too. Commercial salmon opened yesterday and last night the horizon in front of Dillon Beach looked like the photo above. Somebody caught some salmon here, it seems. But good enough to stick around for another day? Likely another, better bite will turn up.

    Except, here's tonight's picture of the horizon. I think Carol Anne said it best, "They're here." Awesome. Good for the commercials, as they have had a hard time. I hope they get them. But we have to wait for five weeks for our start. Conditions will change, and change again, and probably again. There's no telling what awaits us on June 27, but I'm hoping for goodness. It might even happen. 

     Last thing, as an afterthought. The crabbing usually starts to pick back up this time of year, but this year, after it slowed down around the clutch and molt, it then...got worse. At least it did "on the beach", in the shallow, less then 100 feet of water crabbing in Bodega bay and Ten Mile. And you can't even leave a trap out for a week to see if you can scrape one up with a long soak as traps closed at 6:00 PM Friday night. 

   There's somebody that's been saying there's no fish in the bay. Wait, that was me. As I've said to my wife many times, I was wrong. (Many times... Still married, though, so...) Morgan Young and his crew say that there's fish to be caught, because they did catch them. Well, to be true, there were fish to be caught for them, but after they caught 26 fish, including stripers to 19 pounds and halibut to 23 pounds, well, there's probably still fish to be caught but less of them. This was over four days, but three of those days were really crazy windy. I'd say nice job, but it was way better than that. Damn.....

     .....and speaking of damn, that's not quite what Gage said when he saw this picture this afternoon. Ed Parsons caught a 22#, well, not supposed to say the word, so let's call it a seabiscuit. It bit a live sardine. Your results may vary. And will. The seabiscuit club is very hush-hush about details. They're not wrong, as pressure equals less fish, but hey, here's a photo of a happy dude. Nice job Ed.

 

 

      A good fisherman will work a spot in which he knows he will have success for a long time. Gage worked this one for seven years and finally set the hook yesterday. That is skill, or at least he says it is. It turns out that there is something that Gage loves more than fishing. Congratulations Gage and Amanda!

      The wind howled at the Landing (and most of the rest of the coast) this weekend. Combined seas hit 18 feet and the water temp dropped to 49.5º at the Point Reyes waverider buoy. Good for the salmon but a bad time for anyone on the coast. Of course, the windy weather happened to land on some very low tide days. There was one boat that rolled over this morning just off the beach on their return from the clam islands but water conditions contributed less to the incident than did boat overloading. Were they okay, you ask? Well, luckily they had attached their life jackets to their plastic "single use" shopping bags full of clams, so when the boat rolled over the clams floated safely and the poorly-swimming clammers could cling to deployed  life saving devices, even if that was not the designers intent of use. My suggestion would to be use the PFDs as designed, you know, wear them, but I guess whatever floats your boat. Or keester. The big tides also kept the crab count low, as high currents generally equal low crab counts in the bay. Fish counts today were like crab counts. Maybe tomorrow....