The crabbing has been pretty good for this time of year, as normally February is pretty dead for Dungeness. I haven't heard of anybody limiting inside the bay but boaters seem to be catching 3 to 15 keepers a day, depending on who you ask. Snare casters are generally catching dinner from shore, and a pair of guys last week caught 15 Dungies between them. The ocean water has salted back up and the surfperch have returned to the beach with a few of the regular surf fishermen doing very well over the weekend on redtails.
     April 13 is the official opening of salmon season here (Point Arena to Pigeon Point). The current regulations are here if you want to see them. The minimum size is 24 inches until April 30th, when the season closes. Don't worry, it will reopen on May 1st, but the final determination of the seasons duration will be made in April. It looks like it will probably run through October again. For a look at the current options see here.  Something to look forward to in the future is a push to restrict salmon fishing further to leave more salmon for the killer whales in Puget Sound. Since there aren't many Chinooks left in Washington they're looking at the Sacramento and Klamath fish as being important whale food. Probably the'll just end up removing some hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers (and replace them with CO2 generating power plants. I thought those were bad?) to make room for more salmon spawning habitat. Spawning habitat is good, but how about hatcheries? Grow a surplus? Make (relatively) clean power and salmon? I'm sure that's too easy.
   California halibut season is open year-round but the catching is generally limited to when the water is warmer (57º-65º). You can catch a halibut in colder water but you'll spend less time catching more fish in the right conditions. San Francisco and San Pablo Bays have many square miles of shallow water to soak up the sun and warm up sooner than Tomales Bay. They're catching a few halibut now but it will get much better in the coming weeks. The water in Tomales Bay is actually warm enough to be interesting (57º) right now. The salinity is low near Hog Island (21 PSU compared to a norm of about 31-33) but closer to normal near the mouth. The clam channel has had some early fish in the last few years and may hold some now. They probably won't bite, but they're probably there. Don't worry, though, spring is officially here, so the West wind will soon have the water chilled down to the forties.