So I once noted that anybody fishing for halibut in February is an idiot.  I saw a  guy catch one in February and he was drifting over the bars in the middle of the bay. And then Gage caught fish in the ocean today. I'm not saying that only special people catch fish at special times, only that special people catch fish when they're not supposed to. Gage limited, to 15 pounds. 
I was right , which is the main thing. 

          I can state with some excitement that lots of crab are being caught inside Tomales Bay. Most of the boaters I spoke with over the last week have been pulling pots and hoops full of crab. Good times! Except almost all of the crab are shorts. One of our locals, while running his hoops near Marker 5, dumped 150+  short crab back into the bay and had three crab that were exactly 5 3/4" for his effort. Those crabs went back as well. Lots of "clickers." Way more "next season, maybes." Way, way more. I haven't heard any reports from the outer bay, as you pretty much couldn't there from here for the last couple of weeks. Big swell has eliminated any "safe" passage over the Tomales Bar lately. There has been a steady flow of commercial boats working pots out there, and that's an indicator. Not a good one. For a commercial guy out of Bodega, the outer bay is a balance between fuel costs and poor crabbing. Catching a few in your front yard can be better than catching a few more farther away for more diesel. It means crabbing sucks. This is that time of year, as the crab tend to clutch around now and lose their interest in food. You know there's a short list of things that get between a man and his food, and this is the big one. The urge should pass in a few months, hopefully well before the whales make their triumphant return. February and March are always the slowest crabbing. So the good news is, it will get better. 

     The pelicans have been feeding in front of the Boathouse the last few days. I don't know if that means the herring are coming in or going out, but some fish are getting eaten as they pass over the bar in the middle of the bay. There's been a few surfperch caught lately, not a lot, but some. The ocean is still 56º, so there may be a few halibut out there biting although nobody's talking if they're catching them. There's still squid spawning down on Ten Mile, and if we don't get a week of west wind before March 1 there may be a white seabass window around the moon. Probably it will just be squid catching opportunity, but that's not that bad. Have you purchased squid lately? Catching your own is money in the bank (or freezer). Boat rockfishing opens on April 1, just in time for the wind to roar, but if we get a window my frying pan demands its tribute. 

     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.