Other people caught fish and crab today, but Gage wants you all to know that he caught this 23 pound lingcod. As you might notice, it was a hitchhiker on a 2-3 pound canary. It was our largest fish by far. We ended with four lings 5 to 23 pounds, twenty rockfish 2 to 6 pounds, and 20 commercial-sized Dungeness down on Ten Mile. We put our rings in 70 feet of water and fished in 120 feet and bounced back and forth. There's definitely a proper time for a soak with nets and it seems to be somewhere between 20 minutes and an hour. When we pushed toward the two hour limit our numbers dropped. Also, everybody that paid extra to get a conical hoop net should know that it was money well spent. I believe that our single cone caught at least 10 of our 20 crabs and beat our three ring nets pretty easily. I think that is partly because it was difficult to raise any of them straight up and the crab bailed out of the flatter rings quickly. The "Type B" hoop has walls. As there will likely continue to be whales in the ocean in the coming years, I think that we may have to add another couple "B"'s to our collection. The few other guys that I spoke with did well on the crab down there and caught some rockfish, too, but Gage wants me to assure you that they didn't do as well as him. 

    Inside Tomales Bay the Dungeness crabbing is slower but not dead. One gentlemen fishing from shore told me that he and his friend had caught 12 Dungeness and 5 big reds from the beach. He was camping here for a few days so I don't know if that was a daily total or for a couple of days, but either way it ain't a bad number. I believe that he was using squid for bait in his snares. The powered boaters are returning with 0 to limits in the bay with the average running pretty close to four keepers per boat. Remember, if the average is four and a couple of guys caught 20, a lot of people caught very few. Remember, if you're not catching in a spot, move. It may not get any better but it the catching won't get any worse.