Another Saturday picture. I forgot to grab this this fisherman's name from the board yesterday, so today, we get to see Lawson Lawrence of Orangevale with his 21 pound halibut. I don't know where it bit, or what it bit, but I think Lawson here is pretty proud. His expression would make me very scared if I were a halibut, but I'm not, so, whew! Once again I'm glad to have my eyes one to a side. 

    Here's the kind of report I look for: "Hey Willy. Quick report from the Fish Dog boat. Friday we picked up 4 halibut and Saturday we got boat limits for 3, a little bonus striper and a safely released salmon. The salmon bit a live jack smelt in 12 feet of water at the bar. Besides losing a barn door through the net, we had a productive couple of days of fishing and fine tuning our gaffing skills. Plus, it was nice to have Robert floating alongside Saturday to video tape us boating our last 3 halibut to finish of our limits.

-Tyler Holland"  Nice work, Tyler and crew. Good job on putting Robert Rath to work. He loves it. Through the net sucks, but gaffing makes the process singular: You are using the gaff, and if you miss, YOU miss. That's one reason why gaffing is awesome. There's many others. But there's no excuses for failure, just explanations. Also, less points of failure with a gaff. One. Unary, one less than binary. I looked it up. Nice job, Tyler and crew, and apologies for wandering off on the gaff thing. But I love gaffing...

     Steve Cato caught this 18 pound halibut today. It bit a dead bait while he was jigging on the other side of the boat. Jigging works, but we accept all biters. Nice fish, Steve. But if Bud Adams is reading this, Steve still wants to fish with you. He can catch, but he still has more to learn, sensei. 

     The fishing today? No different than the last week. Hard. Catching was hard, too. This year we are experiencing wind. Wind isn't new here, but wind running into mid-August and beyond is unusual and unwelcome. The water is cold. The fish are biting, a little, in the cold, and there's probably more fish out there than we know, as cold fish mostly don't bite, but it ain't good with 52º water. The mornings are calm but by noon you should have accomplished whatever you set out to do, as things are going to get more complicated. Hog Island has been good for Mike Mack and crew but for the rest of us mere mortals the fishing sucks. There's a few fish dribbling in the bay, optomists hoping for a change in the weather, as am I, so the bar could light up on any day. It wasn't today, and by the way the wind is blowing today, it ain't tomorrow, either. Maybe Thursday? Don't hold your breath. The 10-day forecast is for more wind, dammit.