The Dungeness crab in the bay remains slow with high catches numbering up to eight. Red crab are making up the vast majority of the crab dinners. The surfperch slowed down with the big swell but should be picking up again this week with the moderate swell forecast. Lots of herring swimming in and out of the bay but I have yet to see someone hook into something interesting.

    We lost a friend and the Dungeness lost a foe this week when Randy Evans passed away suddenly. "Randy from Reno" was a pretty regular feature on our pier during Dungeness season and was someone I turned to for advice on catching crab in the bay. We will miss you, Randy. The crab won't.

       Slow Dungeness crabbing here and the big swell slowed the surfperch catching the last couple of days as well. The herring are still spawning by Marshall but I haven't heard of someone actually catching one yet. Luckily there's some entertaining (terrifying?) videos on Youtube. Here's a scary one:

     Joe Gantley sent in these photos of his rockfish and Dungeness trip from December 28. Joe and crew had a nice haul for a half-day's work.

    The only thing going here now is the surfperch, but that's been pretty good most of the time. My surfperch expert has had daily results from 2 to 19 fish caught in a few hours. If anyone is wondering, that would be a Berkley Gulp! product in the mouth of the perch.

   The surfperch are still biting really well on the Berkley Gulp! Power Sandworms. The medium tides seem to be the best times for catching.

   Today's the last day for boat rockfish until April 15, so you've probably missed it already. These fish came in an hour right after noon on Thursday, so there's still time.

    The cold water slowed down the bat ray bite on the mud flats but this thornback ray was still hungry for squid. We usually don't see any of these critters, so it was weird to see caught two this year. 

    The Dungeness crabbing has been really slow with a few lucky (or skilled) people picking up a couple here and there. There's still a lot of red crab and most of the full buckets are full of them.

   Nick made it out for one last trip last Saturday and got this nice 16 pound ling as well as his limit of rockfish. Don McCorkle parked his boat over limits for all three aboard, actually. 

    Nick spotted this dead whale floating out there and his Christmas wish is for the carcass to drift far from here. No sharks nibbling on it, yet.

    Eddie Kim went out or a final trip of the year today and landed three limits of rockfish and three lings. Looks like we've got a few more days of decent weather and of rockfish season if anybody else want's to get in on the action. There's still a few crab being caught but the rockfish and surfperch fishing have been the best bets for the day tripper.