What a month it's been. The crabbing has been better than it has been in a couple of years. It's not awesome, but probably about 40 to 50% of peak crab. That's better than the 10 to 20% we've had the last couple of years. Lots of 4" crab in the hoops would seem to indicate a really good season in a couple of years. There's a cycle and we're finally off of the wrong end of it. That said, not everywhere is good. That's peak crab, and we aren't there. We still gotta work for 'em, and the work can be very difficult. The outer bay has been pretty good but the numbers are dropping off. I didn't hear of any skunks from there but numbers for some have dropped to single digits. There's still some guys killing it, but if you're like me you need lots of crab around to catch a few, and the outer bay has many less crab now than a month ago. Ten Mile has been lightly crabbed, so far, but even there you better work your gear if you're looking for limits. There's blank spots even in the promised land. Points north of Bodega Bay have been very productive for some but still require a test before just leaving your gear for rockfish. Trust, but verify. Inside Tomales Bay they're still catching crab but again, the numbers are dropping. I didn't hear of any boater skunks this week but a lot of single digit catches. Shore snarers a lot of non-catching of Dungeness but there were still quite a few happy casters. The few that ventured farther from the parking lot seemed to have better results, go figure. I generally do better with less competition, as I only need to attract the thing I'm trying to catch, not out-attract critters from somebody else. I'm just not that pretty. 

    The east wind this week made rockfishing hard in the Ten Mile to Carmet gap as the wind made productive drifts very short at best. It eased around noon most days and let a dedicated few catch some out front, although the guys that went and fished in the lee of the coastal mountains had much better success. Locally, a few guys caught a few fish. Sam Winglewich caught a nice pair of lingcod right off Tomales Point yesterday. Gage caught a nice limits of rockfish on Wednesday but he was snapshot fishing where he'd find a school of blacks/blues and drop on them, hooking one (or occasionally two) before drifting off the school as he reeled up.