Tuesday, August 3, 2021

 

   Curly Di Bella shows off what a 23 pound salmon looks like. Curly and Mike Mack had a pair of salmon yesterday, both caught by Curly as I understand it, but I imagine Mike had a bit of input as to putting this fish in the box. Someone has to drive the boat. Today was pretty good on the salmon catch numbers but it wasn't red hot. Better than the last few days will do, though. 



   Jesse Keilman and his friend from up Tahoe way caught their limits before 11:00 AM yesterday after catching only one in the two days before. Good day, good placement, and good job. If it was easy, everybody would do it. The fact that it ain't easy, usually, doesn't make it any less appealing, but in fact makes it more interesting, at least for those of us that are addicted to it. A crappy report calls to me. No expectations. There's only an upside. Sunday night Gage and I gave it try outside. We caught nothing but it was a beautiful evening to be on the water. The South chop laid down to nothing by twilight. It was the nicest water I've been out on this season.  
   Here's an email from our anonymous commercial fisherman: "Tied up mat the dock, waiting for our short 2-week opener starting Sunday, I’ve been listening to disgusted sports fishermen.  Yesterday a friend tried fishing Bird Rock and quit right away because of the way some boats were behaving. I have a couple of suggestions.

1.  When trolling, take a tip from the commercials and try to troll up and down rather than milling around each bait ball.  Commercials usually follow a counter line to keep out of each other’s way.

2.  Keep one person on watch all the time, even when fighting a fish.  Never underestimate the ignorance or just plain pushiness of some people.  Have  a good air horn handy.

3.  If you haven’t taken the Coast Guard Auxiliary safety course, do so.  You will learn a lot. A more extensive course is required of all commercials.

4.  When the commercials get their short opener, a few may brave the crowds and fish the shallows.  Remember that the fish are for everyone.  Commercials will be trolling up and down, along a contour line, and with their gear in the water they are very limited in how fast they can turn.  Keep watch, try to anticipate problems and avoid them.

5.  Guns are legal on boats, but remember that it is illegal to even threaten gun violence, and the Coast Guard is monitoring the radio.  Blustering threats can result in an arrest.

Let’s make it through the season without any accidents."  For the record, I'm not promoting the idea of guns on boats. I just think that it would make it easier for me to act on the ideas going through my head in response to foolishness. So I go without guns, generally. I officially recommend to the public, don't bring a gun. And also, don't give anyone a reason to use a gun. 

   And just to be complete, Brad Stompe said: "Hey Willy,

I saw the picture of assorted rockfish posted on your blog the other day which contained a tree and tiger rockfish.  I caught my first tiger rockfish somewhere between Bird and Pt. Reyes several years ago which I kept.  After getting home I decided to find out more about this fish that seemed pretty rare in these parts, not having caught one in 30 years of fishing these waters.  Here is a Wiki excerpt from the description...  Scientists have dated some fish to be up to 166 years old. It is very vulnerable, with a minimum population doubling time of 14 years.  I don't know why CFW allows take of this fish, but I decided there are plenty of other fish to eat without killing one potentially 166 years old.  I have caught several more since and have sent each one back to the bottom.  I know you are running a fishing based business and don't want to discourage fishermen, but maybe just providing this information to those that don't know would help encourage other conservation minded fishermen to reconsider keeping these unique old timers in our backyard." Something to consider. I don't actually believe the otolith numbers of age. There's no dry season or exceptionally cold season at 300 feet of water to make a ring like a tree. How many growth spurts does a rockfish have in a year? The very similar Treefish supposedly gets to only 25 years old.  But in my eight years on a party boat in the 1980's that caught its share of fish, I never saw a Tiger rockfish.The first time that I or my grandfather (the party boat skipper) saw a Tiger was in 2010 or 2011 off of Bird Rock. After that, we have boated several more, once three Tigers in three drops. Are they rare? Absolutely. Are they less rare than they used to be? It seems like it to me, but what do I know? I'll bet that they expanded their numbers and did some relocating during the Great Rockfish Lockdown of the early 2000's when the rockfish were absolutely overfished and many restrictions were put in place. There was a void in an ecological niche that allowed them to increase, similar to yellowtail/olive rockfish now being a regular catch in shallow water when they used to be only out in the deep. Opportunity knocked, they answered. Would I keep one again? Well, now you made me feel like a jerk, so even after saying all that, probably not. 
     Here's your obligatory Eddie Kim and Doug Bagley with limits of salmon photo for this week. They were back by 10:30 with fish from 18 to 25 pounds at Bird. All fish on straight bait. 



5 comments:

  1. Guess you gotta fish the right days….

    Willy could you please let me know the next right day;)

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  2. Agree with up and down trolling, there were many boats in the fleet circling and zig zagging and these are things I like to do but not in crowds. Also for you that rely on technology you aren’t going to be able to follow your tac line so get your eyes off the instruments and watch where you are going - be safe and catch fish!

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  3. Willie,

    Not only do they produce annual rings, they also produce daily rings. See this article I wrote way back when: https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf-content/1991/893/woodbury.pdf

    While sampling for rockish at Lucas Wharf in Bodega Bay, I came across a very large male shortspine thornyhead and removed its otoliths. It nearly took a hammer and chisel to break one of them in two. I lightly burned the cut edge, applied some oil to it and set in under the microscope. You start at the edge and work back to the center (birth year). It was around 160 years old. I was a little skeptical so called a colleague down in La Jolla and he told me that he had seen Dover sole ages in that ball park.

    I also attended an international otolith conference in the mid-1980s and was amazed at how many people around the world worked on otoliths. You can really learn a lot from them. The strong El Nino that we experienced in 1983 resulted in very poor growth that year as observed from looking at their otoliths.

    David

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  4. Hey there willy!

    The same reason you talk about yellowtail showing up in the shallows is the same reason you are seeing more tiger rockfish landed over the years. I also suspect the origins of these tigers may have came from CB...

    I’ve seen quite a few landed the past few years as well. roughly 100-200 miles south of you. They aren’t necessarily rare due to stocks, it’s more along the lines of being rare due to:

    1) Tiger rockfish preferring the deep rocky canyons, pinnacles, or reefs that sporties and even us commercials can not target due to distance depth restrictions, RCAs, etc.
    AND
    2) California being the furthest southern end of their geographic distribution.

    It is correct that it is a slower maturing fish, but as the saying goes...there’s plenty of fish in the sea. So don’t feel as guilty if harvesting them, because it’s the same thing as catching a chilipepper rockfish shallow in 180-270 ft of water. Doesn’t happen often, but is a nice treat when it does. Chillipeppers are also slow maturing and live anywhere from 35 to 200 years old, but are prolific in certain deep waters offshore.

    Plus, DFW most likely knows where the tiger rockfish are hidden and found a decent stock on them in California for it not to be super regulated for sport and commercial fishing.

    Hope you have a good one. Be ready for the next wave. I’ll keep gage filled in ;)

    -a different anonymous commercial fisherman

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  5. Awesome to know. Great reports.
    I talked to a buddy commercial fishing out of Bragg the salmon fishing has been on fire up there the last few days!
    What a season!
    Though I got my ass kicked by the salmon last week.
    landed one for 3 hookups in two days.
    With the reports coming in might have to trade the Nv archery tag in for another go at the big salmon.

    ReplyDelete