John Daleuski was Johnny-on-the-spot again today when he took Alec Bennett and Leo Hernandez out fishing for striper for an hour or so. Long enough for Leo to catch his first striper. Leo says he prefers catching stripers to catching jacksmelt, the only other fish he's caught around here. Stripers are bigger and fight harder, I'm told. I'm going to have to try to catch one of those for myself. Nice fish, Leo and crew.

    I heard that this might have been Mike Mack's fish, but after spending a bit of time fishing in Alaska he's reluctant to claim such a paltry morsel. Luckily, others on the boat were kind enough to step in for some photography. The fish weighed 23 pounds and was caught, I think, on the bar. There are rumblings that the bar has some nice halibut. A pretty badass halibut diver tried for halibut on the bar on two consecutive days at high tide and saw... nothing. But three feet of visibility only allows you to see almost nothing, so nothing seen only means nothing shot, not that there's no fish there. But good luck spearing one...

     Kerry Apgar sent me this photo today: "Jules (my granddaughter) got her first halibut yesterday.  Just had to share!" Nice job Jules! Good fish. Looks like it was caught in Tomales Bay, probably near Marshall Beach. Why, that looks a lot like Paul Boley's boat! I wouldn't really know for sure, as I've never been inside it, but I sure as heck know what it looks like on the outside as I followed it around a lot. It's a fish indicator, like diving pelicans or waving nets. Of course, it's the captain that's important, but the boat is definitely more visible at a distance. I'm not saying what boat. Paul and I have a few secrets. The difference is that I don't know what Paul's secrets are and he's so good he doesn't care about mine....

    

    Gage and I went out after work and pretty much dropped in on a striper feeding spree. It was awesome for 20 minutes. In my first four casts I had three bites and two stuck all the way to the boat. All told, we boated five fish on Redrum tubes, and after that slowed I tried a Zo-Zuri popper and landed one more (and missed another bite). The current slowed and the bite died. But the most important thing to know is that I caught on a popper. Heck yeah! Surface strikes are the best. You know it's good when Gage brags about your fish....