Gage sent me photos of his successful morning surfperch mission. Looks like the camo Berkley Gulp! Power Sandworm was working for the barred perch and Gage's thumb was the killer for the redtail. He was fishing straight out from the entrance gate at Lawson's. No stripers, but a nice morning on the beach.

    Russ Meyer on the Explorer caught this 17 pound halibut south of Hog Island today. He overheard a few kayakers talking about another couple of fish being caught in the same area today.

     These gentlemen are standing by a 28 pound halibut that was also caught near Hog. Mason Lessard was the captain of this voyage. Previous to these halibut today I hadn't heard of very many, but maybe the warm weather has them biting. About time....

     The wind is keeping most of the boats ashore but the surfperch have come in to play, so at least there's some fishing. The perch are scattered up and down Dillon Beach and are hitting the Berkley Power Sandworms and fresh caught sand crabs.

    This fellow and his friend braved the wind today to catch these perch. I'm not sure what kind of voodoo they were using to get their lines out into the gale, but it worked. The weather was better yesterday and some rockfish hit the decks but I didn't hear about any salmon. The crabbing got even slower this week. The best bit of news I heard was that a commercial crab fisherman pulling gear off of Morro Bay heard some skip over the radio of a boat catching albacore. If true, it would seem to indicate that the theory of a post-El Niño reset on the albacore is real. We could actually have albies here in August. I may even feel well enough to try for them myself, by then. The worst bit of news I've heard is that, due to the recent warm water years a disease killed off all of the starfish which allowed the urchins to overpopulate and graze the coast bare. The abalone are starving to death in such numbers that we are almost sure to have no season for several years if we are lucky. I like the albacore story better.

     

    On his eighth trip out, Nick finally got his fish and got on the bragging board. At 20 pounds it's the largest weighed in here so far this year. It bit a live bait near Hog Island this morning. 

    If you want surfperch you should come out. It appears that a sandcrab molt is in progress, especially among the tiny ones. Thousands of 1/4"-3/8" sandcrab bodies line the beach and the perch are eating them. The one in the picture ate a Daiwa SP Minnow. There's a few baitfish around near the beach as well, so there's got to be a few stripers in the mix. Gage and I gave it a shot last night but all we got was sore shoulders. The full moon is next week, though, so get your casting arms in shape.