Here's a report from Ed Biagini. : "I just read your article of the 27th and wondered about lost pots. I set 8 rings at 10 mile yesterday and lost 6. I've never had that happen and have been going down there a number of years and never lost a pot. Do to a bad shoulder, I have promar 32" rings with 2 small 6" floats. They are a little harder to spot, but with bright colors I always find them.  I figured if I used big floats, rings might drag. I don't use leaded line. Also have small amount of weight in them. I set them out pretty far apart. What was interesting was that one of the rings was where it was supposed to be and had a crab in it. The other ring I retrieved was nowhere close to my gps marks. I was heading for a different waypoint and there it was. It was the pot with the big float and it wasn't even close to any of my waypoints. Also, strange - it was completely clean. If it dragged that far, you would think there would be a little gunk in it. I've been trying to check to see if there was some kind of strange current running yesterday?

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Ed Biagini, Inverness, Ca"  the tides are Sorry about your lost gear. If it's any consolation, you weren't the only one to lose some gear. The low tides in the afternoon likely contributed to the strong currents in the ocean. At least, I've noticed stronger currents around the full and new moon, so I'm assuming the tides are a factor in currents, even in the open ocean. There's a lot of kelp of other floating crap to help redistribute crab gear, even without the stronger currents. Usually that would be just a ring or pot or two. I heard a few stories of rings lost and then found after the current slowed, but the found gear was all pretty heavy and didn't walk. The strong currents inside the bay made catching crab very difficult today when the current was ripping but a few guys did well earlier in the day when the currents were more moderate. Tomorrow is the last day for shallow water rockfish for the year and then we get one last month of deep water (over 300') to finish the year.

 

  

Here's a report that I lost and just rediscovered. Sorry, Nate. It's from the 19th. : "Hey Willy, Robert and I ventured south with Scott Mason and his buddy Andy on Sunday and bagged 4 limits of quality crab north of Abbotts. It was Robert's first time pulling hoops so he was nice and tired by the end of the day. About 1/2 the crab were jumbos and the rest were in the 6-6.5" range. Averaged about 2 keepers per pot until we found a couple good areas- then it was easy. Rockfishing was slow and the current was fast so we didn't spend too much time with the rods and reels. Looking forward to hitting the deep water again in December if the wind and swell decide to cooperate. 

Best,

Nate Baker"  That's one of the better reports I've heard from Ten Mile. Good work on the crab and good work on wearing out Robert. I'll bet he's ready to go do it again. 

       The crabbing has been mostly meh, still, but a few guys are doing well. Inside the bay is still mostly bad but a few guys have things figured out and done pretty well. Most of the rest have been doing well to get three or four keepers. So, same story, different day. There's a few pockets of finicky crab that can be yours if you do you right things in the right places, apparently. The guys I talked to weren't sharing particulars. Outside of Tomales Bay proper, the outer bay has been. well, okay, I guess. Some guys have done quite poorly there, but some of the happiest (and catchingest) guys I spoke to today were crabbing there. Having lots of nets and not waiting seemed like the recipe for better results. Move around. Repeat. I heard a report today from Ten Mile. There were a few crab caught and a few rings lost, hopefully to be recovered tomorrow morning. The crabbing was not good. There were more smiling people from the outer bay. Farther north, above Bodega Head, things were better but you can't just drop and catch. Drop gear and pull with little soak time. Move. Then move again. Then, probably move again. Almost reasonably low gas prices are your friend. Rockfish in shallow (where it is legal) has been unreasonably difficult, but there is actually a reason; after not really recovering from fishermen being forced into the shallows in the first part of this century numbers are down and will remain so until the heat is lifted for a reasonable amount of time. There are still fish to be caught but unless you're on the water every day it kind of sucks. 

    After three days of gusts over 40 knots and almost 8" of rain, the crabbing inside the bay has actually been better. Good? Hah. No, but it seems like the weather shook something loose and the crab are moving around a bit. I heard a few sad reports from the outer bay, not many crab, but snare guys on the beach in the bay were actually catching a few keepers, which is a few more than they were catching. Basically, snaring has gone from no to maybe. Where I come from, "maybe" isn't bad. The beach is mostly gone after the storm, so snaring from the beach got more complicated, as no beach makes it hard to snare from a thing that doesn't exist, but the nubbin of sand that remains is apparently enough. Go nubbins! And, thankfully, the really bad weather this past week was so obviously bad that nobody tried to go crabbing and then died. 

     Another deadly boating accident out of Bodega Bay yesterday. I have no knowledge other that what I saw in the news, but I can say that the weather was likely a factor, similar to the other two accidents. It was not good yesterday with a large swell and small craft advisory winds. The boat was pretty big and that may have been a factor in deciding to go crabbing anyway, but bad weather multiplies the effects of any unexpected event. The pictures look like they might have got a crab rope in the prop (a line in the wheel, they say) and that would kill the engine and be pretty much unfixable on a shaft drive like this boat. Strong winds would push any boat around and make driving over your own rope (or any other out there) likelier. They called for help, but it takes it a bit for the USCG to get on the boat and get to wherever you may be in the event of a mayday. They weren't super far (Salmon Creek) and they probably dropped anchor, but a big boat in the wind and swell can drag anchor pretty easy and pretty fast. It looked like the boat had an auxiliary motor but it didn't help in those conditions. I assume that they did all the right things, but the conditions were such that it didn't really matter. What would have been a bummer on a calm day became a life ender. Let's all choose better weather days.

    The crabbing is still slow but the effort continues. We are currently at peak current as we just passed the full moon. That equates to tough times inside the bay. A (very) few people have done well inside the bay this week with a few boats catching as many as thirty keeper Dungeness in a day. Most people have caught much, much less. The current didn't help in the catching the last part of this week. Big current is bad for crab, and big current is what we had. Big current almost killed another person in a small boat yesterday, as his inflatable with an electric trolling motor was unable to beat the outgoing current and he got sucked out into the breakers and flipped over. A super good guy and his family were out crabbing and as they returned to pull the boat out they were hailed by people on the beach to alert them to a person in trouble in vaguely defined terms. They ran off and thankfully found the dude. He was in the water and wearing hip waders, which made him hard to get out out of the water and into the boat. They did it though, got him in by just sheer badassness. They really wanted to save him, and they did. Life jacket, no. Probably don't be that guy. He may not have known, but now you do. Life jackets may not save your life but they sure won't hurt. The boat was recovered today and returned to its owner. The current is bad, but should be slowing as the moon shrivels, for a bit. 

   The rockfish was slow early in the week, when you could get there, but as the weekend approached the window for going out the bay closed as the weather shut it down. There may be opportunities in the next couple of days but then after that, well, surf's up! For those of us looking to go offshore, or even out of the bay, well, bummer. It appears that we may get two to eight inches of rain in the next ten days. That should make the steelhead happy. Good for them. For crab, as I started, inside Tomales is mostly bad, but outside, if you can get there safely, the crab is better, maybe not as good as we would like, but better than inside the bay. Limits, for those that move around a lot. 

    

 

      I received this picture yesterday afternoon. It seems that there are, indeed, albacore out there. The trick to finding them is to see which way I go, then do the opposite. I went south. North had actual fish. John Brezina and Ed Parsons went north and caught nine fish yesterday. They even let a couple go. Today there's reports of fish off of the Bodega Canyon, as the water is sliding south. This information will help nobody, as the weather is turning to crap and it will be a while until the offshore is doable again. But look how happy Ed is. Well, good for you.

   Dammit.

    This weekend the crabbing was about the same but the crabbers were happier, on average. Perhaps the reports of bad crabbing tempered their expectations. Whatever it was, their were a couple of guys killing it inside the bay and a lot of people scraping by. Huh. Sounds like something else. Similar notes in the outer bay and points north with a slight edge towards killing it the farther north you went. But even some far northers got skunked, so run your gear early and often and move if it ain't happening.

 

   Does the rockfishing suck? Mostly, the word is yes. But that talk doesn't make it on to Joe Winn's boat. Not catching here? Move. Here? No? Move. How about here? Holy crap, it's trying to drag me out of the boat! This monster weighed 33 pounds and actually bit a legal lingcod that had just been hooked. One hook, one limit, bam! I need to try that. Heck, we all do. But unfortunately, we all can't fish with Joe Winn. His boat is nice but it ain't big enough for all of us. Damn it.

    Another report from today comes from Kelley Roy: "Wanted to let you know we had a great day on the water today. Went up north for 2 limits of nice grade of crab and quick work of 2 limits of decent grade of rocks.

Crabbing was  slowly picking away at the low tide but really picked up towards high tide. Felt like Cabo out there under the gorgeous sun.

Best Regards

Kelley" North is very generically where Joe Winn went. Joe also caught a lot of crab. Will you catch a lot of crab and rockfish if you go north? Truthfully, probably not, but chances are better if you do. They are out there but you need to find them. A twenty minute soak is enough to figure out if there's crab there. No crab? Move. If the crab are there they can be in the net in a few minutes. If they aren't there you can't catch them at all.

     Thursday the ocean was beautiful. Not quite flat calm, but almost. Quite a few boats hit the water in search of crab and rockfish. Quite a few boats also had issues with catching those things. Neither the crab nor the rockfish wanted to play ball. One boat that had caught their limits of Dungeness at Abbott's Lagoon in his last two trips found himselfgoing home without limits today. Another boat tried 10 Mile in a couple of places and only caught one keeper. The Outer Bay has a few crab if you work hard at it but it seems that north of Salmon Creek there's some good crabbing and rockfishing if you can find them. 

    Here's a report from yesterday:  "  

Good  morning Willy,

I was part of a mass fleet of boats crabbing north of Bodega Thursday.  I got out early enough to find a small patch of real estate to work my 8 hoops and 2 rings in 80-94’ of water.  Two pulls of the string produced limits for the two of us with a 30-45 minute soak.  Others I spoke to did not fair as well so it seems I got lucky and found that sweet spot.  It was a very slow bite for rockfish at Ft. Ross reef, but we did manage to box a couple in addition to limits of ling cod.  Overall a productive day on a beautiful flat calm ocean.

Regards,

Brad Stompe "  Nice work, sir. Rockfish have been hard to find in the shallows. I stopped at Point Reyes yesterday and we caught about half limits of rockfish but we saw two other boats there from San Francisco Bay. That's a long way to go for rockies. I'm guessing that things are tough all over if they are running that far.

   Gage, brother-in-law Greg and I tried for bluefin and albacore yesterday from north of Bodega Canyon to Cordell and only had one bite. The bite was from a striped marlin. 56 degree water seems to cold, but we never got the chance to explain that to him as he jumped away into the distance. Strange days.

   Another overturned boat off of Salmon Creek this morning. One of two people in the boat recovered, condition unknown.  One missing. The seas are 11 feet at the weather buoy. The crabbing isn't very good and better weather is coming. Maybe wait.

    Today's crab report was more of the same. Really slow inside the bay. The best place in Tomales Bay for catching crab sounds like the spot north of Marker 5 alongside the sand bar. It is also the worst place to crab because half of the crabbers on the bay are working the quarter acre sweet spot. It is a Charlie Foxtrot. The buoys are thick and close enough to walk on and the boats either have their fenders out or they should, because even though you aren't at Scandia there's a good chance that you'll still be playing Bumperboats. Good luck. You'll need it. The rest of the bay has a few crab, but a very few. It's a bad Dungeness season to be a red crab in Tomales Bay, as they're the fallback plan. The fast current in the afternoon has made catching even harder and gear loss a near certainty. Good luck. You'll need it. 

   Outside has been better, as it usually is. Good? No, but better is good enough. The outer bay has crab, but like money, they aren't distributed equally. There's a lot of shuffling gear, and drop more gear on top of your rings that caught, and then be surprised that the none of the rings you dropped on the "hot spot" caught any crab on the second drop. The crab are sparse there, too, just less sparse than inside Tomales Bay. Ten Mile usually has a few good spots but I'm still waiting for someone to tell me about one. Again, there's some crab, but good luck. There's more places without crab than with. I haven't heard many reports from up north, above Bodega by Salmon Creek or further. I guess that it's possible that there's some good crab up there and that a whispered message has gone out to a select few that are running up there and smacking them. There's definitely some boats that have headed there in the last few days, whether it was a good idea to go or not. The weather is supposed to be good on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and if it holds I hope someone gets a chance to go there safely and report on it. Safely is the watchword. The crabbing is poor. Let's not push it. 

   Sunday night there was a kayaker that overturned after 5:00 PM and was rescued by a boater. Saturday another kayaker got sucked out of the bay and went through the washing machine of the breaking bar from the mouth to the beach in front of the Dillon Beach parking lot. In the dark. Hard pass. Glad he made it though. Kayakers: Wear a wetsuit. Don't go when the tide is ripping out. Have a buddy. If it's windy, drink beer on the beach. Other boaters: Have an anchor ready. Don't go when it's crappy. Everyone: Sometimes it's good enough to sit on the beach and drink a beer while looking at the water. Sometimes it's the best choice. Let's all make better choices.

    As I write this there are planes, boats and helicopters searching for perhaps as many as five people that are missing after their boat flipped by Bodega Head yesterday. I know no details but just want everyone to be thinking safety. No crab is worth your life.

 

The crabbing is only okay at best. Outside the bay was better with the best reports from here running 20 to 25 crab to a boat. Inside the numbers plummeted with a lot of zeroes. The ripping outgoing tide in the afternoon didn't help in the catching but did lose a lot of gear. That outgoing tide also had the bar breaking pretty steady. A kayaker got swept out of the bay after dark and lost all of his gear in the surf but was able to swim in to Dillon Beach and at least keep his life.