Crabbing should be pretty slow now, as usually February is about as slow as crabbing gets. The crabs didn't get that memo this year, luckily, and so the crabbing has been pretty good, considering. That is, when the current in the bay isn't racing along and/or the bar lets you get out to the outer bay. And when the wind and rain give us a break. So, I guess I should say that sometimes it doesn't suck. But I've seen a few guys get limits and most boaters are getting a few Dungeness. A few of the shore snarers have been doing pretty well, too. 

  It appears that that commercial boat on Salmon Creek was unable to be hauled off. On the good day to do it a combination of factors conspired to keep it aground. It seems that it will be leaving in pieces instead. I hope the boat owner had good insurance, as only the homeless get their boat "situations" taken care of for free. I guess freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. 

  The salmon return numbers are in and they are good and bad. Returns for the Upper Sacramento were abysmal. Returns to the Coleman Hatchery were also bad.  Other rivers had good returns. Those other rivers also had hatcheries that trucked some of their smolts down to the bay. Coincidence? I think not! There's a good chance that some if not most of the fish that did return to the Upper Sacramento were trucked smolt strays. I honestly don't care. I'm not stuck on "natural" fish. If you take eggs from wild fish and spawn them they're still the same kind of fish. If you raise a human child in an orphanage that's still a human, right? Hey, it we can't manage our rivers well enough to allow the fish to spawn, maybe manufacturing fish is the only answer. What am I saying? Of course the Governor's new salmon plans will make all the difference and there will magically be enough water for everybody! Yay! But back to this salmon season. The minimum magic number of returns is 122,000, and this year we had 133,638. There were almost 12,000 jacks, which are less than any time since at least 2010 (except last year's 6,945 and we know what that got us). Coleman wanted a minimum of 12,000 fish to return and they got 4,534. It's really up to the scientists and their complicated jack count math to predict numbers, but they don't look awesome from here. That said, in the past they have used both successful adult numbers or successful jack numbers to justify opening the season when the other numbers didn't seem to be good enough, so.... who knows? There may be short season just to let us fish enough for them to be able to blame us for overfishing when the numbers crap out next year. You know, give us enough rope to hang ourselves, as they say. And I'll be swinging right next to you. I've had a crick in my neck for while now. At least it will feel good for a little bit.