On Wednesday one of the regular pier crabbers caught 7 Dungeness in his first pull of the morning. Thursday, another regular caught 13 in his first pull and landed two more throughout the rest of the day. Most everyone else were catching far less, but at least we know that the crabs are here. Boaters on the bay are consistently catching a few Dungies. Outside, the outer bay is definitely showing signs of wear with numbers and size both dropping. You can still count on catching dinner, at least.

The crabbing is still ok but definitely not red hot. Dungeness numbers in the bay continue to drop with most people still catching a keeper or two but not many limits. The pier catching is erratic with some days being pretty good but the majority of days are slow. The outer bay still has a good quantity of keepers, if you can get there past the bar. The swell has been large and the bar has been breaking, so think twice before trying shoot outside. It is much better to eat crab than have them eat you.

The good news is that there are less commercial crab pots down on Ten Mile. The bad news is that they're leaving because the number of crabs is dwindling. My catch for Saturday was 26 Dungeness in seven pots in a three-hour soak. We limited on rockfish and caught three lingcod. The outer bay was showing signs of wear as well, with sizes and numbers dropping. Inside the bay was business as usual with some guys doing well and others lucky to catch a few reds.

So far today two guys have limited out on Dungeness on the pier. Also, if anyone is interested, there is a whale in the bay, directly across from the pier. You can crab and whale watch.

There were some nice rockfish landed yesterday with some of the blues weighing five pounds. They were caught "out off of Ten Mile" along with some nice Dungeness. The outer bay had Dungeness limits for the guys soaking gear there, but you can tell that there has been over five weeks of high-grading going on. The average size isn't nearly as impressive as it had been. The pier is still pretty good if you know what you're doing.

The crab bite is slowing down out in the ocean. Yesterday's totals from the four boats that went out, each with two guys, ranged from limits of mostly sport-legal crab on the high side to a low of four. Ten Mile had crab for me last weekend but only barely. We averaged 6 crabs per pot for seven pots on a three-hour soak. The rockfishing was good and we limited out while we waited for the crabs. Some of the best results were off the pier yesterday with at least two people catching limits and the others catching dinner. The early crabber today had three Dungeness by 8AM. Your results may vary, but these midweek pier guys are doing as well or better than the boaters.

We're having some of the nicest weather of the year and there is hardly anyone here to enjoy it. The crabbing on the pier slowed down again, probably due to the fast currents, but there's still a few keepers coming in. If you run down to Ten Mile be prepared to dodge a lot of buoys. I heard that there's 500 pots just by the Keyholes (Kehoe Beach). There's still good numbers of crab down there, but probably not for long.

Here's a firsthand report from last weekend: "My contribution today is spent 3 hours with 2 traps and a snare around Marker “10” and got skunked! (well aside from some undersize rock crab and a humongous starfish..).  How can crab be so fickle?" Unfortunately the crab is like wealth; it is unevenly distributed. 

Here's my sons, Cameron and Gage, with today's catch. Cam got a 4.5# copper and Gage caught his first ling (Cam's first gaff job). We limited out on Dungeness on Ten Mile and caught half limits of rockfish in two hours. Other folks did well on the rockfish in front of Bird Rock. There were some nice Dungeness caught on the pier this weekend, but as usual, some did well and others, not so much.

Apparently the crabs were just waiting for everyone to go home. I saw one limit come off the pier by lunchtime today and most of the other buckets have Dungeness in them as well. Steve Towne landed a limit from his boat in the bay before 9:00 AM and another boat landed four limits before 1:00 PM. The currents have slowed down this week, so that might have something to do with the good crabbing as well. Great weather today and more forecast for the weekend.