I was looking for an upbeat report to start this off, but no go. Crabbing? Just okay. Fishing? Let's talk about the crabbing. Maybe I'm just upset by recent news. I heard last week that Roberto, a halibut killer that I did not know personally but a guy that was acknowledged here as a halibut magician, passed away. Good for the halibut, I guess, but I was hoping that a salmon season would do the trick to help.  Roberto was an indicator like birds diving or baitfish boiling that you were in the right spot. Birds know things and recognize things that we don't because we aren't wired like them, and their knowing is necessary for their continued living. Roberto had that kind of knowing. He couldn't express how he knew, but what he knew was dead on. A little story:

  Years ago, Frank Green, one of my halibut mentors, started talking about some fisherman he'd been seeing catching lots of halibut while Mr. Green had been catching, well, less. Frankie called him "the Mexican." Whatever his name, he was catching a lot of halibut and tagging them, mostly, as he kept his limit and then started tagging the multiple other halibut he caught and released. If you caught a decent sized halibut with a tag on it, probably Roberto tagged it. The story is that Frank was trying to figure out what Roberto was doing, and he couldn't just by watching, so one day Frank dropped in for another drift on the bar just downdrift from Roberto and then let his line out far, so that he eventually snagged one of Roberto's lines. He then reeled in the "tangled" line to clear it and get a look at Roberto's setup. As I recall the story, Roberto had a single, small treble hook with a live anchovy pinned to it. I have tried this myself, since then, when I can catch anchovies, and yes, it works really well. I like the Owner ST-36 treble in size 8 through the nose of the anchovy. Will it make you as good a halibut fisherman as Roberto? Hell, no. But it can help. And maybe keep a little bit of Roberto around a while longer.