Last post I said, regarding white sea bass, "Maybe next time." Well, like the others caught on Sunday, this one wasn't a keeper, but it happened "next time." That is probably the first time that I said it and it came true. Gage and I had a pretty good day, starting our trolling in Inverness with a quick keeper halibut hooked, seen, and lost. We throttled up to almost three knots to see if we could stick them better. Nope. We finished the day in Marshall with four keeper halibut to ten pounds, three short halibut released, one short white sea bass released, one fish seen and lost, and six missed screamer bites. Not bad, plenty of action, but it took twice as long as as a few weeks ago. There are still quite a few fish laying on the bottom in the way back of Tomales Bay. But those fish aren't concentrated at Inverness. Same fish, more area. There were four other boats that I know of that launched from here today, and the three that I'm aware of fishing in the back had two keeper halibut between them. They also had a number of shorties and one of them had a lot of short strikes (he was further back for those, by the second sailboat. Probably shorties, but I'm guessing that Mr. Brezina sleeps poorly tonight.) I would have said that the fishing was awesome today but the fact that the other boats that didn't do as well as we did are also some of the guys that taught me how to fish. If they aren't killing them, it probably isn't good. The largest difference between what Gage and I did and the other boats was that we probably ran as many rods as everybody else combined. We had six lines in on my 16' Whaler. Brute force. We had our first tangle of the year today! That's late in the season, considering when we started and how many lines we run. Say what you will, but we have a school of bait under our boat all the time. It seems like it works. 

     For those interested, we were trolling, as were the other guys from here. I hated trolling when I started fishing out here. How boring! And it is boring, until you figure some stuff out. After you start covering a lot of ground effectively you start to like that trolling thing. Catching is generally better than not catching. Today the catching was done mostly by Zoom Flukes behind dodgers, with the final keeper coming on a herring in a Krippled Anchovy head behind a dodger. No bites for us on straight bait, even though that's what worked best the last couple of trips. Several rods allow for several options, so maybe you can figure out a combination that works for you.

   In other news, at an hour after the low tide today the water at Hog Island was 62º and had sardines flipping out of the water at times, sometimes every direction you looked. The jacksmelt were very aggressive, however, and were grabbing the sabiki hooks four times out of five. But the fifth time had big (up to 8") sardines. My algebra is a bit rusty, but I think the math says that bait plus warm water equals halibut.  I will be saving a lot of gasoline next week, weather permitting, and giving Hog a try.