I saw a 15 to 20 pound halibut caught near Marker 5 this morning. It looked like 30 pounds but my perception might by skewed by all the teensy ones I've seen. It is nice to see a larger fish on this end of the bay.
   The surfperch bite has been pretty good with the best bite being during the lower tide ranges instead of the usual high tide bite. I haven't seen any more stripers but I've been told about a few possible missed opportunities. The Dungeness crabbing has been painfully slow with the crab in the middle of the clutch (Clutch definition: When a boy crab and a girl crab love each other very much....). The weather wasn't any good for rockfishing this past week but is supposed to be good this weekend.

    Here's the fish that proves that the first one wasn't a fluke. Actually, this was caught on a fluke, jigging, about a long stone's throw from the seawall.

    I just walked out the door and got a hot tip that there's a few larger halibut around as well. Ben Miller caught the 24 pounder (left) and Morgan Young caught the 28 pounder. At least one of these fish bit a jig. And they didn't go as far back as Hog. Nicely done, gents.

   The weekend reports were pretty good for the rockfish and pretty slow for keeper halibut. The rockfish were best from Elephant Rock to Point Reyes and out deeper. Just remember, the 40 fathom depth contour isn't the actual depth, it's a line of waypoints. You need to fish landward of the line. It looks like this:

   Zack the fishcounter had a nice photo of an 11+ pound yelloweye caught "North of the Farallones." There is fishable and unfishable water in that area and knowing one from the other is as important as knowing a yelloweye from a canary (hint: it's pretty important). Also, catching yelloweyes will not only earn you expensive tickets from the men and women in green, it also will kick the rest of us back to the 180 foot curb. Please pay attention, if not for your sake, then please, for me.

   For the halibut over the weekend, there were quite a few caught but not too many of them large enough to bring home. Looking at the temp chart from the Bodega Marine Lab's Tomales Bay Buoy, I think it't time to start looking at Marshall and closer to Hog. Perhaps we'll find something a bit larger there (or at least legal). 

Here's a report from the beach yesterday, from Steve Smith:"Thanks for the update on the striper caught by Gage. I fished yesterday afternoon and got 10 nice red tails all on sand fleas. Nice photo of the sand crab activity on the beach. Tons of em. Very healthy environment. Time to start tossing some plugs for striped bass!" I thought so too, and it worked out that I caught a striper on a Daiwa SP Minnow. Gage posed with it. It may even have been legal but we put it back.

    The halibut are still biting the trolled smaller baits in the "way back". Rockfishing was okay today but it got a little breezy in the afternoon.

   Gage caught another striper last night. He and I disagree on the level of "epic"-ness of the bite, probably because I didn't catch one. Let's just say that catching seems to be a possibility. Surfperch are still the better bet and are eating the same things as the stripers, Berkley camo sandworms.

    The dark, ruffly patch on the beach in this picture is caused by thousands of sand crabs sticking their heads out of the sand to filter feed. When you stick your hand into the sand the sand wriggles, there's so many sand crabs. Some of them are soft-shelled. These are the only things I caught on my striper lures last night, but I caught a lot of them. 

    Its been pretty windy the last few days, but wind doesn't keep a true surf fisherman home. The pictured fisherman has been doing pretty well on the perch and has brought home some really nice sized redtailed and barred perch. Last evening's perch fishing was rudely interrupted by a striper that also liked the Berkley sandworms. There's still a few Dungeness around in the bay but they require quite a bit of effort to catch a few. The forecast is pretty decent for the next few days.