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.