So there were some more halibut caught in the bay this weekend. I've learned a bit, and it turns out, whatever I say is probably crap, as it seems my prediction model has failed this year, but failed in the way you want it to fail, as in it under-predicts. There are halibut being caught now in Tomales Bay, not many, and not good, but fish, and some of them legal. So it's not that there's no fish, it's just mostly bad. Longer days will will bring better odds and success. Ocean rockfish is open and they're biting, deep and shallow. Shallow are fun, and deep are more numerous and more expensive to get to (gas prices) so good for them. 

   In the halibut realm, I heard of a keeper by Inverness and a witnessed lost jumbo by a kayaker at Hog in the last few days. I don't think that, makes halibut "Game on!" in Tomales but it bodes well. The good times are coming, although I don't think that three years of no salmon and all halibut bode well for an awesome halibut year. All halibut and no salmon make Jack a dull boy, and makes a fish that reproduces and grows very slowly a punching bag for sport fishermen eager to catch something. I'm totally guilty of that, and three years of laser focus on halibut have made us pretty good halibut fishermen, way better than before when we had other distractions. We still caught pretty regular last year, but that's because we fished for halibut. Every. Day. Or pretty much that much. And at a certain point, we left the bay as the easy water had been played out. It will be worse this year, probably. Or not, it's fishing, but it seems to me that too much pressure on one fish leads to, well, less fish. That sucks for all of us. I hope that we get a relatively decent salmon season, both for my sake and for the poor halibut. Because I learned some things last year, and I can't share them, nor should I, as if they're good for me they'd be bad for halibut in general if the word got out. Okay, here's the biggest thing I learned last year: If you've ever seen rockcod suspended over a rock in shallow water, you can use the same knowledge to see suspended halibut feeding actively over a sand bottom. Who knew that dropping in an actively feeding, out of the sand halibut would result in multiple hookups? I've only seen it a few times. but holy crap, they bite. Don't tell Gage I said this.