Hello everybody. Time for the Sea Forager Coastal Update! But first, here's what we're up to in the next few months:
Mega Low Tide Monster Clam Tours with spots still open (TICKETS HERE):
1. December 31st, 2pm
2. January 29th, 2:30pm
Sausalito Herring Festival 2018: Stay tuned for details, The Fishwives sea shanty trio will be performing!
Crab
Crab image by Leighton Kelly, all rights reserved.
Dungeness crab season opened with a fizzle. The inshore/shallow water numbers have been disappointing. The folks who tied more rope onto their pots and dropped them in deeper water have been doing better—but not great. The snaring crew on local beaches have had an equally hard time of it. Though Sea Forager operative and surf caster extraordinaire “Champion de la Banana” says he caught a four pound crab from the parking pot of a small Beach near Pacifica, yesterday. The bite at the big Pier seems to be better at dusk/night. El Champion suggests getting there at 5pm. Remember no license is required to fish Pacifica Pier and you can soak two pots per person—and this year, you'll need them both.
First offload 11/17
Now let's really delve into this for a minute. The numbers are really terrible for opening week. I'm talking mostly about the commercials, but everybody is feeling it. But if you're a commercial fisherman and your entire career is based on crab numbers (salmon has become a break-even fishery at best), then you're hurting right now. Here's a text sent to me by a deckhand buddy of mine, from a boat off the Marin Coast, it arrived while I was writing this:
“It's bad. Real bad. Guys are going to starve or go bankrupt... the big northern boats came down here and raped the crabs for four years and went home and fished. Now all the crabs are up there and they had the rules changes so we can't go fish up there... I will have no retirement and a broken body if I keep working like this.”
But then to sort of put this in perspective, yesterday I spoke to an old timer at the dock. He said this:
“A lot of these kids started fishing in boom years and they expect it's gonna be wide open crabbing every time they go out. It isn't, it never has been. There've been whole decades like this. Get used to it.”
Two insider perspectives on a slow start to crab season.
Perch
The notorious perch assassin "Pissed Off" Pete with recent "pogey" limits for two guys.
I don't know. I just talked to a few of my perch scouts and they tell me they've been slaughtering large redtails and barred perch in Pacifica—wait for it—every now and then. So as far as every now and then bites go, the best by far has been Mussel Rock. I don't usually burn spots. But anyone who is actually willing to walk all the way down to (and back up from) Mussel Rock for the sketchy promise of a now and then perch bite deserves all the help they can get. I myself am no longer inclined to engage in mountain climbing in order to catch surf perch. But hey, some folks are gluttons for punishment. Also be forewarned, I've had my truck broken into several times in the lot there. (Sea Forager hooking you guys up with the awesome fishing locations!)
Striped Bass
Jerry B's home made broken back smelt and the type of fish that keeps biting it.
You know, there sure have been a lot of little stripers in the bay lately, especially for November! I'm going to assume that they are mostly gone now, but reports from earlier this month were pretty durned good. For anyone who has taken my City Tour, the start location for that was the hot spot two weeks ago. But the whole stretch of shoreline between there and the Bridge was simply loaded with 16-19 inch stripers. Probably due to shoals of pinner anchovies everywhere. Sea Forager member “Brisbane” Gerald Lee, caught two barely legal bass on a modified Sabiki, which was no small achievement—and maybe the first time I've heard of anybody scoring a striped bass double-header. Good work “G.”
Herring
Herring back in 2016
If you are interested in catching the totally awesome local herring, or witnessing a spawn, or watching the incredible variety of birds that appear at herring spawns, or snapping some really awesome photos of a super-urban fishery then you should probably start following me on twitter: @seaforager
I will be tweeting herring spawns all winter. I used to lead guided herring tours, but it was sort of like herding cat(fish). So now I just tweet when the spawns are happening as a Sea Forager public service (Yeah, I'm a nice guy). It was very nice to see that my tweets were heeded at Coyote Point last year. Just do me a favor. Try to refrain from taking more than two buckets. Max three. I find it really discouraging when people load up garbage cans. It just strikes me as insanely greedy and potentially wasteful. And remember, selling sport-caught fish is a big no-no. The more people abuse the no-limit priviledge on herring the more likely DFW is to step in and set the bag limit at 25 pounds, at which point the greedy few (who are also the ones most likely to complain about it) will have no one to blame but themselves. Oh and be aware, the DFW is watching the sport herring fishery very closely.
Seaweed
(All rights reserved) Image by Leighton Kelly
Allastair Bland is the best outdoor writer in the Bay Area right now. He also seems to be the only person writing articles of deep import to local fisheries and outdoor issues that I myself am most concerned about. Allastair has two recent articles about alarming trends in the health of our kelp beds. The first of these is about local California kelp beds and the recent infestation of purple urchins:
The second article looks at this problem on a global level:
I am always sensitive to alarmist literature as it applies to fishing. It seems like everyday someone wants to tell us that the ocean is screwed and everything is going extinct. But man, this particular issue is serious. Kelp is the base of the coastal marine ecosystem. And to see this going on at numerous places around the planet is alarming to say the least. But, remember, the fact that kelp die off is happening in the midst of a 3 degree change in ocean temperatures is purely coincidental. Because after all there is no real consensus that Global Warming is real: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus.
Seriously though, I've seen very little change in the intertidal seaweeds I am most familiar with this year. Nori was abundant, sea lettuce, rockweed etc., all seemed to be robust. This may seem to be doubly weird because there are a lot of purple urchins in the intertidal zone. But the intertidal areas where I pick my seaweeds are simply too shallow for urchins. In any case, kelp grows fast. So hopefully this is just another one of those boom-bust cycles so common in the marine universe, and not the beginning of the end—as Allastair seems to indicate it might be.
Minus Tides
There are some big tides coming up in Dec and January. For poke-poling, tide-pooling, clam digging, mussel picking et al. Here they are:
Sat 12/02/17, 15:44, -1.1
Sun 12/03/17, 16:32, -1.5 (my tour starts at 2pm... might be sold out)
Sat 12/30/17, 14:45, -0.8
Sun 12/31/17, 15:31, -1.3 (my tour starts at 2pm)
Mon 01/01/18, 16:20, -1.7
Sun 01/28/17, 14:31, -0.8
Mon 01/29/17, 15:18, -1.2 (my tour starts at 2:30pm)
Tues 01/30/17, 16:06, -1.4
And that's going to do it for winter 2017. I will likely post a herring update when the spawn's get going in late Dec/early Jan. But until then, I'll hope to see you at, on, or in the water!
Kirk-out
11/20/17
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