Beautiful weather this weekend, some swell yesterday but flat today, east breeze and high 60's temps. The red crab are biting but the dungeness are still few and far between. Some sharks being caught near Hog Island, not much else going on. At least it's pleasant sitting on the beach.

The oil has not come here and is not expected to reach Tomales Bay in any sizable quantity, so Fish and Game has allowed fishing and crabbing in the area north of Point Reyes, including Dillon Beach and Lawson's Landing. Early reports of Dillon Beach being closed due to oil were plain wrong. That being said, if you visit us in the next few weeks please be aware that a few oiled birds have flown here from the spill area and if you see on oiled bird please report it to the gatehouse workers or the at the store by the pier so help can be arranged. As far as numbers of dungeness crab being caught, those numbers are very few. The commercial crabbing effort will be more concentrated in this area due to the closures to the south, so the few dungeness being caught will likely get fewer. Red crab numbers are OK, especially if you have a boat and work the other side of the bay or along the edge of the eelgrass beds.

There are some crabs out there but not alot of them. Guys who got limits on the opener are down to 2-3 crabs for a 24 hour soak with 8 pots. I don't know if they're still loading up on them off of Carmet but if they are catching any it's probably better than 10-Mile. I personally caught 2 dungeness at Abbott's on Wednesday. I had more weight in shrimp from 3 shrimp pots than from the crab in 9 crab pots. I think I may stick to shrimping for a while.
On another note, the first draft MLPA maps are out at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/nccrsg-options.asp . The first 6 are from the stakeholders group and probably have more weight. Look at all of them and you'll see a pattern. Bye-bye Point Reyes.

Another salmon today, not as big as yesterday's salmon, but any salmon this year is a damn fine fish. Yesterday also saw a pair of 5' leopard sharks landed. Other than that the crabbing was slow on 10 Mile, 0-5 crabs per pot, the average being closer to 0. Supposedly the Bodega boats are doing well off of Salmon Creek and Carmet if you can find room between the buoys. The weather is beautiful at least, warm air and flat water, so at least the trip out and back is pleasant.

Most boats who crabbed at 10 Mile caught 3-5 crab per pot and did better in 60-120' of water south of Abbotts. Several boats reported seeing a lot of bait out deeper and one boat landed an 18# salmon while waiting for his pots to fill. Larry Anderson filled a 5 gallon bucket halfway up with coonstripe shrimp as well as catching a few dungeness crab. Not too bad a day if you could get across the bar.

The bar is breaking off and on but one boat has already returned with crab. Two day soak, 40' of water, no crab. 120' of water, 5 crab per pot average. Not great for the opener but it probably won't get better as we get further into the season. More reports to follow.

No fishing to report, just a heads up that the ocean may be rougher than we'd like. 8-10' swells predicted for Friday and Saturday which could mean breaking waves on the bar which would mean bad things indeed if you caught one any way but exactly right. I don't know what exactly right is, so I'm not going if the bar is breaking and I'd suggest the same to everyone else. Check the conditions before you launch, and if it's bad, go to Bodega Bay.