I was going to report that the outer bay was good for Dungeness after hearing a few reports. Then I heard a few more reports. So, I'll say that there's a possibility of good things in the outer bay, and also you can get skunked. Better than half of the fishermen I spoke to did poorly, but here's a report from George Homenko from last week that got me confused: "Went out off of Dillon Beach on Monday.  The mouth had a moderate swell and was breaking on the edges, but after you cleared the Tomales Bay Gong the sea condition were pretty nice.  Set 8 rings 50 to 60 feet of water with a soak of between 30 and 45 minutes and within two pulls we had two limits.  None of the crab were jumbos but they were Dungeness crab.  Bait varied from chicken legs to fish heads, didn't seem to make  to much difference.  We did flavor some rings using Scotties containing anchovies, squid and cat food.  That seem to help a little.

Set the same pots out side on opening day and a week later in the same places and got nothing except a lot of work hauling rings.  I think it definitely getting better from what I would call a dismal start.

By the time we picked up our gear we had over our two limits in less than two hours.  On the way back to Miller Park we checked with some of the crabbers inside the bay and it was much slower going.  Shared our smaller catches with them."  It is likely that the weather of a few weeks back may have pushed some crab in, although the reports from deeper water never seemed very good. For sure it wasn't the tsunami, as it we less than 1" here. Whatever it was that shook them loose for the guys that got them, cool. For the rest of us, keep moving the gear and a slow soak is generally better than a longer one. So, like voting, pull early and often.