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.