The big sea on Thursday must have pushed some more crab into the bay since there seems to have been a bounce in the numbers. One group caught 14 Dungeness on the pier yesterday and some other people had similar numbers over by the number 5 hole. The outer bay had not much to offer for he guys that left them overnight or longer as the swell had sanded in in pots and opened the doors. A few hours with fresh bait caught dinner for some. Here's a report from Thanksgiving Day from Tomales Outlaw: We managed 9 nice dungeness around the Marker 5 hole on Thursday morning. With the bar being a solid wall of breakers the outer bay was, well, out. Apparently not too many people pay attention to your blog as we saw quite a few buoys going under in the current. We had to sort through many undersized crabs. It looks like the crabbing will be good again in couple months, but the bay seems a bit fished out now. Good clean livers can still get a few though. On a side note my buddy did a 3 hour soak off Pelican point Wednesday for nearly empty pots. Happy Holidays.

Outlaw

This pile of crab came from pots in the outer bay that had 24 hours to do their work. Looks like they worked well. The beer came from elsewhere. Ten Mile has been disappointing for most of the guys that have tried there recently, except for a few nice ones in 40 feet of water by the Keyholes. The bay is still giving up some Dungeness but you really have to work for them now. The pier has had a few but not many. One gentleman told me he'd caught three all day on Tuesday but had six this morning on the overnight soak. 

Just a photo of what you and I are missing. Who wants to fish on glassy water, anyways? Real men take a beating to get their dinner.

Here's a map of northern Tomales Bay. The yellow circles are the confirmed good spots for Dungeness. The green circles are not as good but worth trying if the other spots aren't panning out. Most of the yellow areas are also high current areas, so consider yourselves warned. Your gear will disappear, either underwater or out of the bay, if you let it stay in these areas through a strong current. Crabs don't like the current running fast, either. The boaters that worked these areas, especially by Marker 5 and near the mouth of the bay, did pretty well this weekend. Outside the crabbing slowed for some, although the outer bay is still pretty good if you can soak your pots overnight. Ten Mile was OK, although at least one fellow got skunked on Dungeness down there. I've been told that it might be his choice of stripers for bait, although some other folks have done alright with them. There were quite a few lingcod caught over the weekend. The largest I saw went about 15 pounds. There was also talk of a white sea bass caught off Tomales Point near buoy 2 but I never talked to anyone that actually saw the fish. Here's a firsthand report from Tomales Outlaw: We had a pretty good day Sunday ending up with 23 Dungeness for 4 of us all in the bay. Our outer bay pots did not bring in any dungeness just 6 red crab. We had to work hard for these crab and took a while to find them. My mother was along and she is still pulling pots at 69 years young!!

I put six pots down on Ten Mile today and three in the outer bay. After four hours, Ten Mile had 22 Dungeness for us but only three from the other pots. The lings were still biting well and we returned a half dozen keepers (intentionally, not the usual way I return them) while trying to fill our limits of rockfish. We finished out our limits on nice-sized blues at Elephant in 100 feet of water. It would appear that the north end of the beach is played out as most of the commercial pots are avoiding the area between Abbott's Lagoon and the Keyholes. The Towers had a good grade of crab but you have to place your pots carefully to keep them out of the strings of commercial gear. After tomorrow morning the weather looks good for a while. The pier has actually had a bit of decent action with a couple guys going home with four or five Dungeness in the last few days. Not everybody did that well, but there were a few.