The halibut fishing is still hard. Three years of abuse is, well, abusive. But the fish are still trying to compete, as small schools (pods? I've heard it used, whether it's right or wrong...) of fish enter the bay optimistically in search of mates or food. Either way, they find us. So the fishing story is that, as usual, a few guys are doing well and many fishermen aren't. Does that sound familiar? It ought to. That's fishing in a nutshell. So, the few guys I spoke to, for the most part, caught nothing. Bur...

    Here's Cameron's take: "A day trip led to early (3 hours on water) halibut limits plus one striper at the bar for Connor Padon and crew. All on the jig. He mentioned something about luck. No comment." Luck is always a part of fishing, but doing the right thing the right way at the right time sure ups the odds. Conner spends a couple of weeks a year here grinding for halibut. Grinding sucks, but sitting on the water for hours and hours for days and days will teach you things, and I think Conner's "luck" may be influenced by his "experience". Nice work, Conner and buddy. IMHO, those jig fish are the best, and you popped five. Jealous? Yup.

      Gage had a good morning on the bar with stripers and halibut in the mix. And then....

     Gage would like to tell everyone that if you have an old folding knife that likes to fold up when it shouldn't, throw it over the side. Five stitches later, he won't be fishing tomorrow. Good for the fish. Good for Kaiser. Not so good for Gage. 

    

 

        Many of you have probably already heard of this fish, weighed in at Bodega Tackle. "13 year old Julian Her from Marysville caught a massive 63.7lb white sea bass out of tomales bay today!" Nice work, young man. Possibly IGFA record work. That's the kind of thing that makes you think that there's a bunch of them and you have a chance at catching one. We all know that the reality is that there's no other fish. No way that anybody else is going to catch one. Especially not Tom Carter, a man known for not catching....

   Pardon my French, but Holy Crap! Tom Carter, against all reasonable odds, caught his second (yes, #2 lifetime) white seabass. This one weighed 34 pounds. It ate, just like Jerrie Carter's halibut, a live sardine. Who doesn't like sardines? Clearly, seabass and halibut really, really like them. Love is a tough word. But a strong like for sure. Good job, Tom. Don't be surprised when people will say, " You mean Jerrie caught it?" We all know. You know too. Jerrie does the catching. And yet here you are. Catching. The world is unhinged. But good on you sir. Nice work. 

 

    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!