Halibut isn't over yet, even after the blow this weekend. It's not awesome, but there's still a few. Tom and Jerrie Carter caught one today and heard another in another boat. There's hope, but is looked like they fished for bait longer than they fished for halibut, so maybe not a lot of hope. Well, in a few days nobody will care about flatfish as crabs will soon be on everyone's mind. Shore snarers have been reeling in quite a few and (hopefully) releasing them. I think a lot of them are repeat offenders, as not everyone is poaching and a crab won't learn. I'm pretty sure that octopus are far smarter than crab and I've seen an octopus caught twice, so... Even with the duplicates, it looks better than last year, and it should be, as the difference between zero and the number of crab caught was not far. It doesn't leave much room to get worse. Of course, it can always get worse, but we should be on the upswing on the Dungeness population cycle. Still close to the bottom, mind you, but farther from it. Only Saturday will truly tell the story though.

   Speaking of Saturday, the wind doesn't look horrible (not good, but not gale) but the swell looks like the bar could be interesting. First thing they're calling for a 6 foot swell and the tide coming in until 9ish. Probably cool, but caution should be the watchword. Later the tide turns and the swell picks up. The afternoon will be bad on the bar. Hopefully the crabbing in the bay is good enough to hold everyone's attention and nobody needs to try outside. Let's be safe.