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.