Good news first. While the crabbing is far from red hot inside the bay, it ain't bad, either. I only spoke with two of the returning boats today but one had nine Dungeness and the other, sixteen. The snare-throwers are still catching some from the bank. The outer bay has more crab but you still need to work to find them. They ain't everywhere. Nobody has been down to Ten Mile since the weekend but nobody that went then complained about the crabbing or fishing. The crab aren't a thick carpet down there, either, but there's probably more good spots than bad spots. Run the gear and move it until you know you're in a good spot. Then consider rockfish. 

    The bad news: It looks like no traps until at least mid-December. There are still whales. Hey, at least most of us don't have house payments that depend on us catching crab. For those that do, sorry. Here's the link to the Assessment, and here's the link to the data. If you've been on the fence about buying rings, just know that it's not just this year for the restriction. Consider your purchase an investment towards your future. And if you look at the data, page 6 shows the largest concentration of humpbacks to be at Cordell Bank. What does that mean? Concentrations of baitfish, maybe? Big, fat whales gotta eat. So do big, fat bluefin. Correlation is not causation, as they say, but the next largest concentration of Humpbacks is just west of where the Santa Cruz boats are still catching tuna. Well. Cordell isn't far....