I received this report yesterday from Rick Murphy:"Hey Willie

Late Report, my buddy Hugh got this 27lb trolling off McClure's yesterday. Fish came at 70’ otw in 85’ of water. Right at first light then 3 scratched baits in the next 30 mins, nothing after that." It looks to me like your buddy needs to buy a larger ice chest if he's gonna continue catching fish like that. It's a good problem to have.
    There's still a few salmon being caught from Elephant down to the first parking lot on Ten Mile. Unfortunately the large swell this week has given the ocean rocks a nice bikini wax and all that surf grass is floating right where you want to troll. The swell has also made crossing the bar at the mouth of Tomales Bay a bit sketchy, sketchy meaning potentially fatal. Storms in the Gulf of Alaska will send a long-wavelength swell down here and apparently it has been stormy in the Gulf. At least there's still a few halibut in the bay.
   
    As far as the sport Dungeness crab season opener, my guess is that it will happen on schedule with a possible "clean before you cook" warning. Lobster has a lower "action level" than crab (20 ppm lobster, 30 ppm crab) and have had higher domoic acid levels than the crab over the last few years, yet sport and commercial lobster opened without being tested beforehand. A recent test has shown the lobster to have some domoic acid, so the State has closed the commercial fishing in the area of the test and issued an advisory to sport fishermen. The season remains open for sport guys. More crab have been sent in for testing and there's a good chance that they could come back clean, but if not, we will probably still get our chance to go.  Maybe.

     In completely unrelated news, it looks like the CDFG Commission is considering reopening abalone in 2021. That's my glass-half-full take on the new regulations under consideration. It could also be that abalone won't even be considered for reopening until at least 2021. I like the first one better.