Dungeness crabbing is still on the slow side, especially inside the bay. There are some Dungies being caught but not a lot of them and they're mostly, let's say, not pretty. Marker 5 has been okay and a few guys are catching some by working really hard to the east of the yellow buoy. Halibut fishing has been similar, slow but a few guys are doing well. Gage and had our good day last week, but since then there's been an elevated effort that may be cooling the bite a bit. Even with a cooler bite, the fish counter mentioned that one day last weekend she counted over two dozen halibut brought in at Miller Park ramp. The assumption is that they came from way back. The few boats from here that tried for halibut last week caught their only fish way in the back. Some effort was expended trying to get a halibut near Hog or further north to bite, but those efforts were not rewarded. Yet. Conditions are looking correct, we just need the last ingredient, the halibut. Soon. By the way, the word is that the limit on halibut will be two starting on June 1st.

    On the 15th of May rockfish opened outside of line of waypoints roughly describing the 50 fathom line. Cordell is still verboten, but Rittenburg Bank is now kosher. There was a weather window today so Gage and I took the Dark Lord on a 30 mile run to the previously forbidden zone. It was a bit choppy on the run out and took about an hour and 45 minutes to get there. The ride home was about an hour and twenty minutes. The fishing wasn't long and we limited on quality rockfish in less than an hour. Only two lingcod, which is way slower that I remember for them there (Back in my days on the party boat we would limit on lingcod there. Perhaps the season is too early, as would normally run there in August and September), but the mix of yellowtail, olives and bocaccio (Bocaccio were notoriously wormy back in the 1980's. These fish are large but younger and I didn't see any critters in our filets today) with one big vermilion made for a good pile of filets. We conducted a very scientific taste test this evening, frying up a gallon Ziploc of filets in a thin beer batter, and the universal response was to go get more. There were five boats there that we could see, including the New Sea Angler, but as the year progresses and the weather gets better it seems likely that the barely one square mile of reef of Rittenburg is going to get worked over hard. Today the schools of rockfish were stacked almost a hundred feet high in 320 feet of water. I recommend a trip, either in your own boat or booking a trip on a party boat. This is the fishing of forty years ago. My ears are still ringing from Gage's whooping and hollering. Go, This tiny Cordell lite will not be as awesome for long, and if enough yelloweye are determined to be "taken", the deep water season will end early. 

    I was submitted this photo and request: "Hey Willy,   How about posting this on your blog (for a week or two🤣). Got to make sure your battery is in good condition before you leave. 😊" Good advice, even when it's also a brother-in-law burning a brother-in-law. Actually, maybe then it's especially good advice.