One of the best parts of summer at Lawson's Landing is the two weeks when Jim and Scott Alexander and Larry Varela come to fish. Part of that is that their timing is good for the fishing, usually. This year was a bit rough with no salmon (to be kept; there's lots of salmon out there) and a population of halibut that has been ravaged by (going on) three years of frustrated salmon fishermen. They went home today, but yesterday they caught these four halibut in the afternoon on the troll off of Dillon Beach in 25 to 35 feet of water, only having to shake a dozen or so salmon. 3 to 1 salmon to halibut in the outer bay is an outstanding average. Four halibut is also pretty outstanding right now as the halibut catching has died off, waiting for a fresh batch of fish to move in from the deep. Good work, gents. The fish won't miss you but Gage and I will.

     There have been some other halibut caught this weekend. Anthony Piccardo picked up a pair right off the seawall in the afternoon, and yesterday Richard Porterfield picked one up on a jig in front of the Boathouse. Steve Cato picked up a pair of halibut just this side of Hog Island on Friday after being chased off the bar by salmon (first world problems, eh?). Finally, today, right before they had to run back to the Landing to pull out with the tractor, Mike Mack and Spinner had several halibut bites and a few to the boat in a half hour. The fish they saw had spots, and as the old timers said, it could be that a batch of fish are coming in. Good, because we need them. 

     Man, I hope we get a salmon season next year, if only for the halibut's sake.

 

     Angela Sala missed a halibut yesterday but her boat captain found one: "Hey Willy!  Tomales Bay finally loosened her grip and I landed this beauty today!  31” on a jig.  

-Paul Burns, Lincoln, CA"   Nice work, Paul. I have fished with my wife quite a bit and know that it is hard to get those fish to see your hook when theirs is right there. That ain't easy. It's like snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Nice fish, too.

   Gage took his girlfriend, Amanda, out fishing this evening.  Gage caught, well, nothing. But he gaffed a nice halibut on Amanda's line. This fish was caught on a jig on the bar after 7:00 PM. Not an early bite but a good fish.

    Here's a strange report from a couple of days ago: "Wednesday Report:

Evening Willy,

Should have been here yesterday. We ended up with one halibut to 10 pounds today. Good bait again near the yellow marker. Had a fish bomb from an osprey today that had my pup wondering what was up. A great trip, see you next time.

Swampy." I guess if you're going to get bombed, a fish bomb isn't the worst kind. Swampy went from six halibut to one halibut, even with fish being dropped on him from the sky above. Fishing is easy, and fishing is hard. This year, especially hard for halibut. Little groups of fish moving in occasionally but most days, very few fish. Today was a very few fish day. 

 

      Swampy sent over this report tonight: "Evening Willy,

Spent the day on the bay with good results. Easy anchovie bait near the yellow marker. 6 halibut to 12 pounds for three anglers north of hog with the tide change being key. Glad to get some meat this trip. See you next time.

Swampy"  The halibut fishing may be down, but not out. There were several other halibut caught today with "north of Hog" also being in common. Also, most of the fish were caught in the afternoon. My guess is that some fish came in. Hopefully there's more following them. Nice work on the fish, Swampy and crew.

    Angela Sala found the fish today, too: "First haul of the season, and I’m one happy gal!  A 23” and a 30” both caught on jigs.  The past few days have been rough with the windy conditions, so I’m quite grateful to have had such a beautiful day today!

-Angela Sala, Lincoln CA" Nice fish Angela! It looks like these fish were some of those "north of Hog" fish. Good work with the jig.

 

   So what do you do when you're on vacation but the weather turns to gale force winds? I guess you troll the back by Marshall for bass.. I guess that because the only boat we launched today did that and caught bass, white sea bass and striped bass. Flatfish are hard this year, and likely will continue to be hard for a few years if the past salmon closure is any kind of indicator. Gage and I were looking at the halibut results, year over year, from Sportfishingreport.com, and they showed a drop of 50% or better in the catch per fisherman since 2023. Go catch what's biting, is the result of that, and the twins,+ show it.  Two striper near Pelican and two white seabass near Marshall were the catches of the day. You go, Alexanders, Johnny Sandbar (a Gerard Fitzgerald nickname if there ever was one) and Martha. The catchning may suck, but certain people figure out how to catch nonetheless. Nice. Fricking. Fish. 

 

    Oops. I'd like to say that the fish have been coming in so hot and heavy that we can't keep up, but the reality is that we dropped the ball (the fishing is still really bad for halibut) so here's another report from Thursday: "Late report: Rob Benjamin of Santa Rosa picked up two halibut to 27 lbs on live anchovies at the green can." Nice work, Rob. The anchovies are thick in the water and that's what the fish are eating, so swimming a few of those around seems like a good idea to me. Good work, Rob, and sorry about the wait. The green can, back in its previous location, was one of my favorite fishing spots. Halibut seem to like edges, like slopes, and a rock or reef in among the sand. The previous spot was in 30 feet of water on a steep slope. I didn't think the new location was good enough to concentrate fish, but Rob here seems to say different. 

     News from today was, unsurprisingly, bad. There were some fish caught, but not many. Rockfish were tough, mainly because the weather outside was bad. Tomorrow shall be worse, weatherwise, they predict. There were fish caught today, halibut, but not many. I didn't get the Robert Rath report today but that's good, because he skews the report towards a false positive. The reports I heard were not good. Maybe the fish aren't coming in. You get a killer in your midst and you think everybody is stacking bodies. Turns out, even when it's good, only a few are killing it. Fishing is awesome, partly because anything can happen and probably will. The bird pile off of Dillon Beach proper continues today but nobody is fishing it as word is out that salmon is the result and that's not what they're looking for. It sure looks impressive, though. 

 

    Robert Rath jigged up this 31 pound halibut yesterday. It bit in 30ish feet of water off of Dillon Beach. So did a 20 pound striper (Gage) and 28 salmon (released, obviously). The striper and all but two of the salmon bit tube jigs, too, Redrums and Bigfoot Baits. The other two salmon ate live anchovies at the bottom. Everything was on the single hook and the releases were clean and the salmon never left the water. The salmon hatcheries have (not you Coleman) done a fine job of making and delivering salmon to the ocean for us to catch, as evidenced by the number of fish caught in the two day season and the number of fish being released by fishermen in the ocean. It's a shame we can't keep any. But it is nice to see that there's a physical reason why there should be a season if not a legal one. You go, Mokelumne. And nice fish, Robert. It was pretty cool watching his rod try to come up but the tip stayed in the same place for five seconds, then the rod did three big pumps and held steady again. "That's a big halibut" said Gage, and he was right. After it became clear that there no further white-fleshed fish to catch off of Dillon Beach proper, we retired to the bar with some live anchovies for a sand sole and two more halibut. Today, Robert limited his boat on halibut on the bar on live anchovies. Finally, a few more fish are coming in. There were a few yesterday and for sure quite a few more today. If about 10,000 more show up the fishing should be pretty good. For now the halibut fishing sucks less. 

  This is a view off of Dillon Beach yesterday. There's more outside the bay where the baitfish would rather be, but at the moment the colder water from the wind has sent quite a few anchovies into Bodega Bay proper. Next time the wind drops for a few days there should be some fish on the other beaches. Maybe some of those fish will be keepers. The bar has a few arrivals; Hog is brutal slow; and the farther back bay is just really, really hard. Good luck!

 How do you make a slow halibut bite even slower? Maybe a tsunami? Well, it can't make it better. I heard of maybe five halibut today, four of them from the mouth to the rocks just north of Dillon Beach proper. I haven't heard of much from Hog Island for a bit. There's some bait (mostly anchovies) coming and going but just not that many halibut chasing them. I guess that after 2.5 years of no salmon the halibut have dwindled. Go figure. A positive note, if you want to call it that, is that effort is dropping as interest in saltwater fishing is dropping. We will probably see a bump in interest as tuna start hitting the docks, but even the guys from tuna central in San Diego are complaining of a lack of interest. I'm not sure what could be better than bluefin, but if bluefin fishing gets boring for you, well, don't watch The Deer Hunter. 

    One of the few fish caught today was by this guy. It weighed 21 pounds and was caught outside the bay on a Bigfoot Baits jig in 50 feet of water. One or two of the other fish landed today were also caught on the jig. They definitely work if you can find a spot with fish in it. That's the hard part. Also, there may be squid around, and if so, it will likely concentrate what halibut there are out in the ocean in 50 to 100 feet of water. Gage here spent a portion of his morning trolling for halibut on McClure's but caught nothing but salmon. Eleven salmon released. A pair of gentleman yesterday released 16 salmon while trying to catch a halibut while trolling off of Dillon Beach. If you see a hatchery guy (not from Coleman) you should hug them if they let you. They have done fantastic work. There are a lot of salmon in the ocean, just not enough expected to return to the main stem Sac river. So the biomass of salmon shoos off the fish we can legally catch but cannot be kept themselves. FYI, if there was ever a chance to land a salmon from shore in Dillon Beach, that time is so now. It probably won't happen, but normally it definitely won't happen, so good luck!  And photos if it happens. There are tons of anchovies pushed up against the beach and almost as many salmon trying to eat them. Watch for pelicans and then run to them. You know, for stripers. They are out there and feeding on the same stuff in the same ways. 

 

       I got this report and photo from Steve Brott:"This man, Jody Stover, had invited several people out to join him this past week. He enjoyed helping his fellow fisherman get out on the water and just fish.

He had minimal success early in the week but was rewarded with some nice fish for a Monday morning.

Thank you Jody for getting me out on the water, I am happy you put some in the box, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy."  True this. Jody is a great guy, but even good people can have a hard time catching halibut, especially when they aren't biting. And they aren't biting. Fishing sucks, and catching sucks worse. Jody and his fishing partners this week had a hard time. Over a week, all I heard of was the one halibut caught by the partner. It is good to hear that on the final day he caught two and his partner caught one. Good for you, Jody. You deserve it. Better than that, you earned it, over the week of fishing. 

 

   Gage sent my this photo today with this report: "Kenrick and Hugo and Karsten with a couple nice fish from the bar, drifting dead herring." This is one of the better reports as it has been pretty, well, bad. When Mike Mack and Spinner launch before 7:00 AM and return at 4:45 PM with only half limits of halibut (that's two for the boat) the fishing is slow at best. The guys that returned with nothing would say it was bad. As there's more of them than the Mike Macks out there, let's call it bad. That said, these smiling guys caught fish. Nice fish, as Gage said. That striper looks to be just about the right size to give a pretty good accounting of itself, and I'll bet there will be stories told of its fight for its life for some time. As it should be. Very good work, guys. Those fish should taste extra sweet.

   Branden Mendoza sent over this photo and report: "Hey Willy. We put in some time today to see what we could find. We trolled from Nick's cove to Inverness and back. Managed 6 shorts, 2 bat rays, 1 thresher shark that put on a hell of a show before ripping the line and finally at the end 1 keeper at 23". Nothing crazy but it made for a great dinner. We were trolling white hootchies behind flashers on all poles today. " What, no white sea bass? No stripers? It sounds like you hooked almost everything else. Sometimes (Often? Always? You make the call) action is its own reward. Bat rays are a tough reward, but a thresher is pretty cool. They can PULL. Generally harder than your gear will allow. Good onn you for your keeper. Keep dragging those white hootchies back there and you will be sending over white sea bass photos, eventually. Chartreuse works, too.....

     The best action over the last couple of days would on shallow water rockfish. It wasn't that good for the rockfish, as they still haven't recovered from the closures 25 years ago, but the salmon action was hot. You gotta release them, carefully, but the tug is the drug, as they say. Gage saw a photo of a fish that was 40+ pounds, easy. There's lots of salmon out there; the abbreviated two-day season proved that the hatcheries are (mostly)  doing their jobs. Can't we just target the ones that are being made for us? Just asking. But there's a reason I'm not rockfishing, as I can resist everything except temptation. 

 

     It looks like someone is getting this halibut fishing thing figured out. Richard Porterfield's family decided to stay at home today so poor Richard had to land these by himself. The larger one weighed 21 pounds and the "small one" wasn't much smaller. Richard went outside the bay and followed the diving pelicans to find a school of anchovies that he jigged up for bait. I think they worked. That was the good news. The bad news is that, as far as I know, these were the only fish caught on the bar today. Many tried, one succeeded. Was it the bait? It probably helped, but I'm pretty sure that Mr. Porterfield was not the only guy drifting live anchovies. It sure didn't help Gage and I for our one, long, biteless drift. We have a pretty strict policy on not repeating failure, so we left. Nice job Richard. I bet you'll have someone to talk to next trip.

     Yesterday Gage went to McClure's and trolled. He tried different depths until the bites started coming. He finished with two halibut and two 20 to 25 pound salmon (released). There are a few biters out in that flat water and some of them are actually legal to keep. Be aware, the Man In Green (or Woman In Green, depends) has been out in a variety of boats checking fishermen. It appears that their main focus is salmon. After the two day season we all now know what we all suspected: There's a lot of salmon out there, just not enough from one particular place. There are a lot of salmon getting released from rockcod gear. Guys that might have seen one or two incidental salmon in a season are seeing three or more in a trip. You still can't keep them. The scuttlebutt around here is that a guy got busted out of Bodega with a salmon and lost his boat and a $10,000.00 fine. First off, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Second, this rumor may have been started by CDFW. But finally, even if it's B.S., there's no good outcome from getting busted with a salmon now. And they're looking. Hard. Stick to the white meat. The plus side of this is that it proves that the salmon factories (hatcheries) are (mostly) doing their jobs, along with the trucking, and there's extremely catchable numbers of salmon if were allowed to catch marked hatchery fish.  Just saying. Thanks, hatchery guys.

    So, where did Gage and I go after we left the bar? After Gage's day yesterday, where do you think we went? We did not troll, as we had some wonderful live bait caught in the outer bay, including, but not limited to, anchovies (5" to 6"), jacksmelt (5" to 10"), night smelt, herring, and a squid. I was sure that squid would catch, but it got bit twice and the fish never got the hook. Poor little squidward. The second time was one too many. He will be missed. Anchovies had all of the hook sets, both on halibut and rockfish (released, as we were fishing too many lines for rockies). Remember, that one in the bait tank that you can't catch is totally the one you need on the hook. Single #4 live bait hooks worked well for us. Gage's big halibut weighed 23 pounds. The striper came earlier in the day, not from McClure's, but could be anywhere by now as I released it. 

 

   Tom Brodsky sent over this report yesterday: "Hello Willy, Chan caught & released the 25lb striper on a redrum tube today. Also an incidental Salmon (released) trolling for Halibut on ten mile." Good work Rom and Chan. The fish are hard to come by right now. A week ago when I said that James Ludovina should come, well, he should wait a week. Give the fish a week, James. Then come out.

 

    Here's a picture from Thursday. Conor Padon and his junior Padon are showing their catch from the bar. Conor smacked two srtipers and a halibut on jigs. We (Gage, Richard Porterfield and I) took two trips to catch the same thing. As far as I know, this was the best result from the bar on Thursday. The crazy good bite of Tuesday night rapidly devolved to scratching a few fish here and there. The bar has been slow and Hog, slower. But, fish are being caught.

    Megan Hirschfeld caught this 23 pounder at Hog today. No other biters, but the team effort paid off for one big enough to share. I didn't hear what this fish bit, but most of the fish coming in now are the results of grit and perseverance, as there aren't that many coming in. Grinding is a valid method. Nice work, Team Hirschfeld, as they aren't coming easy.

    Big fish of the day is this 30 pounder. Cameron sent this message with it: "Lapp crew, 30 lbs. First and only bite by the weather buoy on "one of those stupid tubes with the green thing on it."" I think that's a Bigfoot Bait Jig, as some of them have the green thing in them. Tip of the hat for catching a damned good fish on a lure that you clearly had no faith in. Maybe now? I will say that a lot of the time I think that anything presented in front of a fish will catch. But the tubes, when properly jigged, will dart around like a scared baitfish, and that seems important. It can surely help an indecisive fish make the right (or wrong, if you're the fish) decision. Nice fish, folks. Keep jigging.

    So as Gage, Richard and I went out on Thursday we passed a Klamath boat with three people that looked familiar. Holy crap! It was Frank Green, David Gonzales and the Jigger John. I didn't hear anything further until today when Kerry Apgar sent me this photo. That's a halibut and a white seabass for you folks playing along at home. Kerry also said that the seabass was really tasty. Dammit. I'd like to think that those were my fish, but when the jigging is happening the world likely belongs to people with "Jigger" in their nickname. 

   I gotta get a new, functional nickname. 

   Also, the fishing, aside from these fish, was pretty slow. High boat that I heard of was four fish at the bar and a mix of stripers and halibut. Their bait was caught outside the bay proper and was mostly anchovies, but there are a few big sardines out there. Hog has been dead but  clearly a few fish have trickled back. No spot is good but there's possibilities. 

 

     Well, that ended pretty quickly. There were quite a few boats on the bar today at a couple of different times but not too many fish caught. High boat that I heard of was Conor Padon with two stripers and a halibut, all on tube jigs. We had to go fishing twice just to catch up. Gage, Richard Porterfield and I caught two stripers in the morning/afternoon and Richard caught a halibut this evening on a separate trip. There were other fish caught on the bar at various times today but it wasn't even slightly "hot." One fact I neglected to share was that on Tuesday night both Chris Brown and Doryon Dye reeled up halibut that had a second, smaller halibut following it. The only reasonable explanation is that those second halibut were spawning males, as generally it is the stupid horny guys that get into trouble because they can't see it as they are horny-blind. I've been that guy, I know. It seems like when the halibut come in to seriously spawn (as they're doing now, or have done) they bite initially and then lockjaw for a week or so. Post-coital malaise? It doesn't matter the name, the results are the same. The fish quit biting. They will start again, tomorrow or maybe next week. Halibut have small stomachs and feed less than a fisherman would hope for, but eventually they will bite again. There is a ton of bait in the outer bay 

 

    These two halibut came pretty quick this morning. The big one went 24 pounds and did not fit in the net. They grabbed it by the gills and dragged it into the boat like men. This is why men often have bloody hands. They caught them just inside the bell buoy (TB) on tube jigs. Nice work, men. Don't forget to show off the scars. "Did I ever tell you how I got this scar?" "Yes, Dad. Please, don't tell me the story again." "There I was, on the Tomales Bar...."  

     You know what they say," The family that fishes together often curses in front of their children." Not so with the Padons. That's probably mostly because they catch a lot, and catching takes a lot of the edge off. Success will do that, I'm reliably informed. I believe that this is Mrs. Padon's first jig fish. Catching halibut is fun, but hooking one by working a jig in the correct manner and feeling that "thump", well, it can be addictive. They had three bites on the jigs today but this is the only one that stuck. It looks like a pretty good one though. The bar was kind of slow for most guys for the bulk of the day, but after 5 and the tide change an evening bite lit up again. I only had one bite, but I saw one boat land five fish while I was there (Nice work Loren Poncia and team on the Early Shirley.) and another had four (Team Dark Lord, way to holler at Gage). Cannon Brunkhorst jumped in with Gage this evening and they caught three. All on tube jigs and mostly Bigfoot Baits but there were some Redrums in the mix.

    Gage and Chris Brown caught and released several halibut this morning, looking for the right one. This 28 pounder was apparently the right one. I struggled to catch a wrong one, so please excuse my snark. Nice work, Gage. 

    Also, Cameron said to call out James Ludovina. James, I hear you're busy. Understood. But they're biting. Right. Now. 

   

    Nick Donnelly reports: "Saturday and Sunday were a grind with the south wind and poor drift conditions. scratched a limit one day and only a single fish the other day and a bunch of ray and shark and couple more missed hookups, all on Bigfoot jigs. only action I got on lives was a stolen chovie that the hook never stuck" Unsurprisingly, the guy that caught fish ain't wrong. The live bait action has been tough. Dead bait? Tougher. But the jigs have worked? Why? I haven't a clue, but what I do know is that why doesn't  matter if it works. Nice job Nick. Them fish don't hook themselves.

   The Coastodian sent over this picture. There's some stripers around, it seems. For the record, Richard was fine with me posting this but Gage said no. So I can't say where, but it was close and apparently painful. Nice frickin' fish, though.

   Speaking of striper fishing, here's a picture of Cameron and I hooked up on a double. I hooked a fish and he casted on my hookup and got his own fish. So  most importantly, mine was first. He still caught more than me.

  So. Steve Cato has been trying hard this season. He tried hard last season, too, and he caught a few, but this season the fish have been tough. And, to be fair, they have been tough for everyone. A couple of years of no salmon lay hard on every other fish. But today, tough be damned. He took Cameron out to the bar (like a stray dog; If you feed him you can't get rid of him) and they caught fish. I believe the total was two stripers and three halibut. The pictured one went 21 pounds. All fish on Redrum and Bigfoot jigs. Live bait entertained but did not hook a halibut. What kind  of world is it that fish bite junk faster than real stuff?

        The Chris Brown hasn't been out to visit since Prime Time last year. It has now been scientifically proved that when he arrives to fish, it is go time. All of the pictured fish were caught on Bigfoot Jigs. They're biting. You may have heard Gage's whoops and hollers this evening. I sure did while I was fishless. Doryon and I couldn't buy a bite until Chris and Gage left with their limits. Then we started catching. Limits all the way around, but some of us started sooner and finished earlier. It doesn't matter, as the feeling of a fish biting a jig is special on its own. I highly recommend it. They're biting. Best time to get bit, it seems. 

       Not much to report, as the halibut catching inside Tomales Bay has been, well, bad. There are fish getting caught, but not many, and this is July when it should be many. Yesterday we saw almost no halibut come in, but the almost fish was 33 pounds. The big fish was caught by Colton Millel of Kenwood and was hooked "straight across bay tucked against far edge of channel, 9am, redrum tube." Very nice job on a difficult fish during a difficult time. There's been a few stripers in the mix as a few roving "wolf packs" have been showing up here and there from the bar back to Hog. There will be a flurry of action and then back to the usual nada. Tough times, but the water is warming and the bait is here, and while it may never get epic this year it will get better. And then get worse. Such is fishing. I love it.

 

     Here's a Ron Johnson submitted Wednesday report: "pics from today fishing  on the Bar. I mean Hog. My son Eliot visiting from Oregon and I fished with Miller Time." Yes, the San Francisco bar isn't the only bar with halibut on it. Nice work on finding the fish, gents. The SF bar has way more halibut on it currently, but Tomales has some, and those some will be heading further into the bay to hopefully re-energize the fishing at Hog. It needs it. Bait catching is still difficult but there's a few smelt in the outer bay and along selected weed patches. There are also some schools of small anchovies at the yellow buoy that can be fished with small single hooks. Gage and I tried the bar this morning around the turn of the tide and had eight bites with two fish landed in our first four short drifts, Then the incoming tide brought in cold, clear water and we had no more bites. We left when the water dropped below 50º. As the forecast calls for much less wind and a more summerlike pattern, the water should warm back up soon and the bar action should fire back up. Soon....

 

     Tom Brodsky sent me this report last night but I missed it. "Willy, took my friends grandkids fishing the last 2 days. Here's the lingcod Noah caught in the outer bay yesterday. Today 40 Rockcod in 1-1/2 hours off of 10 mile. Sorry no photos." A flat ocean and poor halibut bite is surely bad news for the rockfish. So is Noah, by the looks of it. Nice work of the rockfish. 

     Tom was out after the rockfish with a new crew today and both he and Ron Johnson sent pictures of this fish to ask if it was a cowcod. It is a tiger rockfish and they aren't very common around here. Most importantly, it is also a keeper. 

 

   David Cerini was having some trouble catching a fish, as the fishing has been pretty slow. So what does a killer do when he's having trouble killing things? Up your game. Mr. Cerini jumped in the water yesterday, along with John Morozumi, and they looked for halibut. Ten feet of visibility showed them....no halibut. But, while on the edge of a school of needle head (what's smaller than pinhead?) anchovies, across the bay from the Boathouse, Davey saw a gray shadow emerge from the gloom. After determining that the hoped for white sea bass was actually a thresher shark, he started to lower the speargun, as generally, spearing a thresher is a great way to get dragged through the water for a long time or maybe get bit. But, the thresher, sensing Davey's need to kill, turned sideways and paused in front of him. When a forked-horn buck leans up against the barrel of your rifle during deer season, well, you shoot him. You can get past the smell of burned fur. Davey shot, and for a second the shark was stunned and he thought he got away with it. But threshers are built out of speed and power, so Davey couldn't get past the dragging and wrestling part. But he won. The thresher weighed 36 pounds gutted. He's smiling in the picture, but there may be a longer pause before he pulls the trigger on another thresher shark.

     The fishing has been slow, partly because the wind we've had has finally blown a plume of 48º water into the bay. That will slow things down on the north end of the bay for sure. The southern 3/4 of the bay has still had fish biting and a few people have even limited out. The fish in the back aren't big and you must carefully sort them as most aren't keepers. There were a couple of halibut caught on the bar today in that cold water, so more may be lurking there and be even bitier when the water warms up. Time will tell.

    

 

        Mike Mack caught this 28 pounder yesterday. I don't know what bait and where he caught it, but I suspect a jacksmelt and near Hog Island, as that has been his method as of late. That's the largest halibut of the year here so far. 

     Cannon found another one today. This one weighed 14 pounds if I remember correctly. This was the only fish for the Doghouse today. If Cannon is only catching one, the fishing is pretty slow.

           Vance Staplin texted me this photo today. Apparently the happy kayaker pictured here wanted someone to take his picture. I guess Cannon missed another white sea bass. It appears that there's a few around.

 

    Cannon didn't fish yesterday so there was no reason for me to post anything. Here is today's obligatory Cannon photo. Not pictured is the striper he caught in the afternoon after jumping on a jet sled with some striper whisperers. There are fish out there for other people to catch but Cannon has first pick while he's here.

    Oscar and Angela Aceves found one that Cannon missed. The white sea bass weighed 15 pounds and bit a trolled bait near Marconi. I've heard about a couple of these being caught in the last month but this is the first one hung on the scale here this year. Nice work, Team Aceves. The WSB's don't come easy or often.

     It wasn't as windy today as yesterday but it sure wasn't the weather anyone wanted. Still, the fishing wasn't as bad as the wind and the first few boats back had a couple of halibut a piece. Yesterday there weren't too many boats out fishing but only a few fish were caught. Oscar Aceves had a pair of halibut from Marconi and Gage and I caught three halibut and a striper at Hog but I heard of no other action. Gage and I were able to catch our bait reasonably fast but we used a lot of oily chum. It turns out that freezer-burned bluefin is actually good for something. We left a slick behind the boat, and I had difficulty holding anything after, but the jacksmelt approved. 

 

     Catching bait was really hard today. Catching halibut was hard without live bait, but Cannon Brunkhorst found one that liked dead bait. This one weighed 20 pounds and was hunkered down in 47 feet of water. There were other halibut caught today, mostly on dead bait and jigs, but nobody from here landed one as large as Cannon's. I did hear that there's a couple of large ones that got left behind. Tomorrow is supposed to be windy but the worst is supposed to pass by Friday. I imagine there will be plenty of fishermen trying the bay this weekend. Please try to make space for Cannon. And his head.

 

     Quinn and Dave came out to see if the surf had any stripers in it. Dave caught a couple almost immediately and released them, but after Quinn fought this 29 pounder for a half hour, Quinn decided to keep it. That's a big striper for here and a huge striper for for here in the surf. Nice job, gents. 

    Cannon Brunkhorst had only just arrived here when Quinn dragged in the big striper. Moments later he found himself jumping in a Whaler with Gage and Cameron to try fishing the surf from a different angle. Cameron and Gage didn't catch but Cannon connected to this 18 pounder. It took him around the boat a couple of times. The last time may have been a victory lap to tease Gage. Nice job, Cannon! Not pictured today are the majority of striper fishermen that did not get bit. 

    Tom Brodsky and friend gave the rockcod a try today: "Hey Willy,

Limits of rockcod up to 5lbs today down off 10 mile.

Yesterday 17 rockcod and 14 Crab in outerbay." The halibut fishing was slow again today, so taking the opportunity to fish the ocean with the good weather today was a darn good idea. I bet it seemed like an even better idea when they ate fresh rockcod tonight.