Coastal Update

Sea Forager Coastal Update September 2016

 

Fall 2016 Update

 

                            The author holds forth on one of his favorite subjects, the black perch aka: "pogey"                        

 

Hey everybody! Time for your September 2016 Coastal Update!

First off, with my book finally out and available, there is just a whole lot of Sea Forager stuff going on this month. Sea Forager Seafood CSF turns THREE this month! Wow. We've got lots of events to celebrate at. And thanks to all the folks who came out for the big book relase par-tay at the Exploratorium. Below please find various events and book readings scheduled for later this month. Hopefully you can come out and say hi if we pass through your town on tour!

   

 Now, here's your update:

 

Salmon

Strange days.

At long last, we sent out salmon fillets to our customers two weeks in a row. These fish were all caught by Dave Toriumi on The Pioneer. He kept saying “Hey, you're lucky, I'm the only guy out there catching anything.” Which I figured was just a bit of fisherman pride speaking. But then the bite that I was expecting to go off, never happened, the end of the month closure kicked in, and three days of stiff winds kicked the entire fleet in the stern. And now here we are. I guess David was right. He was the only one (at least in these waters) catching anything.

The good new for shore fishermen and sporties is that the net pen fish in HMB have started showing up in the harbor, and I hear the shore casters up in Benecia have been getting fish every day for the last few weeks. So things on that front are looking up. Expect that when the winds die down and the swell dies there will be a lot of fish piled up off Bolinas and it will be time to call The Outer Limits or the New Rayann, (the best two boats in the fleet, where salmon are concerned).

As I'm writing this, I got a text from a boat out by the green can in HMB. Limits of salmon for 4 guys. So maybe the bite is picking up.

Perch

Well there was a brief window in July where the bass pluggers in Pacifica and OB, were catching massive redtail perch on – get this – hair raisers! Needless to say, by the time I was available for beach casting, the bite was off and there were only rumors of the massive fish of yester-week. C'est la vie, C'est la mer! Anyhoo. I just got off the phone with Sea Forager advance scout and double agent the notorious Champion de la Banana, who informs me that even the most excellent Pinoy shore casters down along the Mussel Rock to Sharp Park beaches have been striking out on perch. And that's the word right now on perch. Lots of small silvers and medium sized barreds and not much else.

Forage Fish

The big schools of sardines and mackerel that were hanging out around the harbor in HMB and from the Golden Gate to The Bay Bridge, appear to have moved south. With some reports of mackerel off of Monterey and a few showing up at the SC Wharf and Capitola. Lots of jacksmelt around if you're in it for the kiddies (jack smelt are fun for kids to catch) and... strangely, small pampano, for those who can get offshore in the HMB area.

But man, the anchovy abundance this year has been really incredible. Last week there were huge anchovies in the surf near here. Sso big in fact that throwing a net on them did not gill them at all! I'm talking lunker sized, 8 inch anchovies. Trophy sized! Went down to the docks with my little boy Django (age 3.5) and caught quite a few pinner sized chovies on micro-Sabiki... which was quite a hoot. Luckily we have friends on the docks who catch more than we do!

Gone

The surf smelt and night smelt fishing was just absurdly bad this year. The nightsmelt were pretty much done spawning by March (in any case that's when I gave up walking the beaches all night and returning with sore feet, aching back and nothing to show for it). The only surf smelt that I've heard of were caught by the few bass pluggers who saw some fish and just happened to have throw nets in the nap sack. So in other words there were like 4 people in this area that got any surf smelt this year. Still hoping for a late season resurrection... but it seems unlikely at this point. I have received very little intel from points further north... but from what I hear, it's been poor fishing all the way up to the Oregon Border...

Pauper Fish

For those of you looking to capitalize on an under-utilized species. The kingfish (aka: white croaker, aka: pauper fish) numbers outside the harbor in HMB have been insane. Marking them on the sonar I can't believe how gigantic some of these schools are. Yes, (as I wrote in my book), kingfish are loaded with worms, but for those who aren't squeamish, the meat is good, and they are extremely easy to catch on medium to large sabikis, fishing the bottom over sand and mud.

Striped Bass

Lots of lost souls wandering the beaches right now. It was going so well there for a minute and then, poof! The bite turned off. I keep looking for bass in my secret spot on a cliff near my house (when you are standing directly above the water at noon you can see everything that swims by), but unlike last year there hasn't been a bass to be seen. So that one bass I broke off back in May, (the one that I dove on as it swam back out to the sea—thereby solidifying my local reputation as a reckless, fool and lunatic), well, that was it for the year! Given that I ended up catching that particular fish, I must conclude, that... well... I'm glad I dove on it. Even if I'm still the laughing stock of the local beaches. Otherwise it woulda been a totally striper-less year. And my only memory of it woulda been the haunting image of that gorgeous fish swimming away.

 

Halibut

The halibut bite has been fair to great this year. There's still quite a few fish in the Crissy Field area, and up to Paradise Cay. Further north, lots of fish have been caught in Tomales Bay lately, and outside the Golden Gate at the North Bar and up the Marin Coast. But most of what I've seen has been caught by commercial guys running wire-line hoochies or four to six rods per boat and I haven't gotten a great deal of info from the sporties out there. I heard there were a lot of fish caught near Capitola yesterday (9/4) and Champion de la Banana mentioned some south bay fish down in the Coyote Point area (this past weekend: 9/3-9/4) In any case, they're still around so break out the live bait rig, the swim baits (for shroe fishing) and/or the kayak... it's not going to get any better from now till the end of “hali season.”

Lingcod

Very weird how many thousands of lingcod are out there right now. It strikes me as slightly insane that people are still buying swim baits and P-line bars and all kinds of expensive bottom rigs, when live kingfish are so readily available—and work so much better than anything else.

You'd think that with all the kingfish I've been using for lingcod bait lately I might catch the occasional hali when drifiting off the rocks onto sandy bottom, but I haven't caught a single halibut this year. Go figya! Do halibut not like kingfish? Or is the fat content just not enough to entice a hali? Why then do they so readily slam a topsmelt or a shiner... open to opinions on this. Anyone out there catching hali on kingfish?

Low Tide Foraging

 

Well seaweed season is at its end, and with the clamable minus tides disappearing till November there isn't much to get excited about for the next two months. There's some decent poke-poling/littleneck tides from Sat Oct. 15^th to Mon Oct. 17^th but they're so late in the day, you won't have much of a window. Remember there are legal restrictions about clamming after sundown and here's the Biotoxin hotline number once again: 800-553-4133.

I'll be on the road promoting the Sea Forager's Guide, and I hope to see you out there. Heads up - due to the wildfires my reading at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur has been rescheduled for November 19th, so I hope to see you then or at another book party-sing along soon. I'll be doing a really fun sustainable seafood feast at the almighty CAMINO restaurant in Oakland on 9/15 - details for this and other events HERE. 

Oh and by the way... just a reminder: only 114 days till herring season! Huzzah!

 

Kirk-out

 

Sea Forager Coastal Update May 2016

 

The Fishwives sea shanty trio serenading the Bay Parade

Coastal Update Early Summer 2016

Lots of things coming up to share, but of primary significance is my official book release par-tay at the Exploratorium on August 25th. Book release? you ask. Well, in fact, yes. I went and wrote a book: The Sea Forager’s Guide To The Northern California Coast. This mammoth tome (see image below), took me a year and half, working all night, while running my sustainable seafood business, doing weekend tours and performing parental duties for two little kids. So I’m patting myself on the back and on August 25^th and you all are cordially invited to come out and pat it along with me!

    Lombard's Magnum Opus

Then in September we are packing up the family in an RV and hitting the road on our book tour to Portland and back, stopping in various bookstores and beaches along the way. Check out the dates on our events page and if you happen to be in any of these areas please come down and say hi! More details about that as we get closer....

I just booked new tour dates in June, July and August, so bring a friend and enjoy some summer fishing with me (bring a sweater).

Here fishy fishy...

Also, we have some new pickup locations for Sea Forager Seafood CSF (I'm looking at you Oakland, Berkeley, and Pacifica!), so if you're waiting for ridiculously fresh sustainable seafood and the story behind it, we may well be in your neighborhood now, have a look.  I'm looking for someone special to help with seafood processing and delivery part time. No experience necessary, just an interest in seafood, willingness to learn and a sense of humor. Growth potential and tasty perks. Email me for details and compensation info. 

Now let’s get down to business:

Seaweeds

I’ve noticed lots of early tufts of nori on the rocks in all the areas I like to throw a line in the water, so nori season is beginning. Next month will be better. And remember for nori you don’t need a huge minus tide and you don’t need to worry about snipping it. Just pluck it, (and rinse the base thoroughly to remove those tiny snails and sand grains) it’ll grow back later in the summer, no problem.

Kombu, Wakame, Bullwhip Kelp

As far as the kelps are concerned, you’ve got some mega low tides coming up in June (including the lowest tides of the year June 4^th to June 7^th), so start planning now. Some of the best seaweeds are best gathered on big minus tides. Any of those days (6/4-6/7) will be excellent for harvesting seaweeds (the Mendocino coast is the best area for this). I’ve been eating the fresh “leaves” of bullwhip kelp of late and really appreciating what a delicious thing that one is—without drying or steaming or anything. There’s still a ton of the invasive wakame (Undaria) under Pier 1.5 near the Ferry Bldg in SF… a virtual forest of it in fact. For anyone who’s feeling a bit adventurous. And I'll be doing a Mega Low Tide Tour in Half Moon Bay on July 7th if you'd like to join me for that! I also added a few more SF Coastal Foraging Tour dates too.

Dungeness Crab Season

A strange crab season, this one. Starting 4 months late meant that all the big market days for crab were long over by the time it opened. So demand has been a bit off and the price has stayed comparatively low—despite a paucity of crabs. Lots of guys pulled their pots when the season opened up north and none of them seemed particularly happy. I guess the question really is: was 2016 a portent of things to come? Or was it all just one big crazy anomaly? Time will tell.

As far as coastal foraging goes, everyone is telling me they’re getting lots of females with their snares, though the kayakers are still kickin ass on the local beaches with hoop nets and promars.

As of three days ago rock crab was still closed for risk of demoic acid poisoning. So avoid the rocks. Though it’s evidently now open in Monterey Bay.

Clamming

Man, I need to go get my clam buzz on. Seriously. I haven’t dug or raked a clam (other than the polluted ones on my tours) in like 2 years or something. Yes that is deeply lame. But the time is nigh approaching when this guy is going to begin his apprenticeship!

  Future clam digger: Django Lombard

I mean, seriously, at three years old its time he starts paying his way in clams. What does he think all these hours in the sand box were for anyway?

In any case, a trip to my secret littleneck spot is now in order. I should point out that clams caught inside bays and estuaries (with the exception of Washington clams) tend to be lower PSP risks than clams on the outer coast. And, like nori (the intertidal seaweed par excellence), littleneck clams can be reached on any tide lower than + 0.3. (at least you can get them on tides that high in my spot. Ha!)

Always hard to find true cockles in our neck of the woods,                                                                                                                                          which is strange when you consider how abundant they are in Oregon

As a side note, after years of searching, I found a wholesaler in SF that has access to native littleneck clams! These are the only commercially harvested Pacific littlenecks on earth. Thing is, he only gets 50 pounds a week, from Washington. The harvester evidently gets very small quantities of them while plucking his farmed Manilla clams. It’s always seemed strange to me that native littleneck clams are not farmed but Manillas are. Local littlenecks are, to my mind, much better than Manillas (or maybe it’s just that there’s more meat in ‘em). In any case, I’m going to start selling those littlenecks as a store item to my CSF members. Maybe this month! (California does not permit wild commercial harvest of bivalves so I have to get them shipped from Washington… L).

                Pacific Littleneck Clam 

Perch

Sing in me oh muse… what can I really say other than the truth? I am madly fond of catching surfperch… and madly unfond of eating them. Champion de la Banana, (aka: the great one), insists that I know nothing about cooking and nothing about fishing. For only a piscatorial imbecile could fail to acknowledge the total awesomeness that is surfperch meat.

The other day I was at the dock in HMB and this other old timer Julio tells me that the reason I have such a low opinion of surfperch meat is that I’ve (obviously) never eaten rubberlip seaperch--the veritable Chinook salmon of the surfperches. A fish whose meat is so sublime as to defy any attempt to describe it. But despite my skepticism I have to admit… I have never eaten a rubberlip perch. I have eaten virtually every mooshy, mealy member of the surfperch family from the barred to the calico to the pile to the pogey, even to the shiner and the dwarf… in fact here’s my latest haiku.

Embiotocids,

I have eaten so many!

Still, they disappoint.

So keeping this in mind I headed out to the shore last week on my allotted day off and managed to bag this brute (see headshot above)—totally by accident mind you, I was targeting calicoes.

Steamed rubber lip with ginger and green onions  

Newsflash: the meat of the rubberlip is just as mealy and gross as the meat of all the other surfperches. In fact, it sort of owned an off-putting effervescence of iodine. Though I’m not sure why that would be.

Try Try Again

While we’re on the subject of surfperch… it would be remiss of me not to point out that I caught what may be the state record calico surfperch (!) last month. This hawg weighed in at a staggering 1.93 pounds (and this after I had successfully midwifed her brood of perfectly formed babies into the surf). In any case, I took her home and filleted her and half a dozen of her smaller relatives into a credible if not outright delicious surfperch ceviche. And this my dear readers is the take away: when eating perch meat, ceviche is the way to go.

A new state record! This Calico perch weighed in at a robust 1.93 pounds (even after all her babies                                                                                           were squeezed out into the surf). Just received final confirmation from DFW. Almost 14 inches!

 

Salmon

The salmon bite has been decent to very good off of Bolinas for sporties and party boats. If you are looking to book a party boat trip go with The Outer Limits or The New Rayanne out of Sausalito. These boats are the best in the fleet for salmon and for nice deckhands and a generally great atmosphere.

As far as the commercial fleet goes, all the crab gear still in the water has made some very difficult fishing for the trollers. As a result everyone is trolling the shipping lanes—which has its own perils. A lot of the big salmon bangers aren’t even going to bother fishing till the crab season ends and the pots are all out of the water. If you were wondering why the price for salmon is so high. small numbers due to limited effort and perilous conditions (it’s really a crab pot obstacle course out there) are the reasons.

Striped Bass

Speaking to my neighbor on the subject of striped bass recently, we agreed that it takes approximately 1,000 casts to produce a single keeper sized striper. And I think that’s a liberal estimate. I know I’ve had stretches where it was more like 3,000 casts. Yesterday I started the day at about 987 so I knew I was due. I want you all to know that the fish pictured above, though nice, was not really worth my reputation. In short, I was fishing for perch when this 11.2 pounder slammed my Gulp worm. Though my leader material was good, my hooks were crappy discount jobs that I knew were gonna bend out in the backwash. And that's exactly what happened. After getting that fish all the way up the beach the hook bent out, he swished his tail and was swimming to freedom when I behaved like a total novice. A rookie. A chump. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the self titled Sea Forager, author of the forthcoming Sea Forager's Guide To The Northern California Coast, (including a chapter called "How To Avoid Killing Yourself Out There") dove in. 

As I left the beach three local bass pluggers in succession took it upon themselves to tell me what an idiot I was (one said: "dude, what the fuck were you thinking?"). I had to agree. Though I must admit, I'd probably do it again. 987 casts can bring out the desperation in a guy. Or can bring it out in me in any case. The fish was all the way up the beach, due east of me, and was coming back down in the swash, and there was one moment to either do something rash or let him get away, and I went for the rash. Got pummeled, nearly lost my rod (actually I did lose it, then recovered it 50 yards down the beach--the ultimate disgrace). I haven't done anything that stupid in the ocean in about ten years (the last time I dove in after a fish). And frankly I'm a bit horrified (and embarrassed) by my behavior. Though, again… this dinner (note BBQ bass collar, and shish-kabob veggies) sort of took the edge off that feeling, and as Champion de la Banana said, "it is only pathetic if you lost the fish, and you did not lose it!!" No, we did not starve that night:

I'm sure the HMB rumor mill will circulate the story of my suicidal rookie move out there. And frankly, I deserve anything they may say. But now, thank Poseidon, I'm back at cast #1, I'll check in when I'm nearing a thousand again…

Oh right… everyone is talking about all the striped bass in the ocean right now and the large numbers of pluggers at Ocean Beach (actually the OB contingent is more about soaking sand crabs than plugging) Linda Mar, Sharp Park, The Apts, Mussel Rock et al… would seem to indicate that someone is catching these fish, and, presumably, they aren't diving into the surf to get them! 

Actually, I am more excited about the re-unification of the greatest rock band currently inhabiting the planet, than I am about striped bass. Pictured here is Mickey Malchiondo, aka: Deen Ween, lead guitarist of Ween. Deener runs a charter fishing business when he isn't rocking-out. See you at the Saturday night show!

Word on the beach is that the stripers this year are of the 12-inch-to-just-legal variety. And that the preferred lure is a very small Hair-raiser with rubber grub, or a small swimbait. Lots of guys throwing bombers and poppers and SP Minnows to little effect.

As far as the bay goes, I don’t really care. I’m in this striper hobbie for the meat and I have no interest in catching and eating bass out of the bay. That’s just me. I’m sure they’re getting them in the usual places (ie: everywhere). Someone told me the Burlingame area has been good. Berkeley Flats too.

Halibut

As many folks predicted, this warmest of warm water years, is shaping up to be a great hali year. When party boats are out there targeting halibut in May instead of salmon, you know there’s a lot of flatties around. The commercial guys have been racking up quite a few fish so try to get out ASAP before they catch them all!

As far as bait goes, if you are not inspired to spend your time jigging up shiner perch or cast-netting topsmelt in Lake Merritt, you’re in luck. The live bait receiver behind Scomas in SF is now open. In fact it’s been open since salmon season started.

One thing about those ‘chovies, though… they ain’t cheap. Clean shimmering, gorgeous, wriggling, wonderful… but not cheap. So if you are not into the idea of laying out 40 dollars for a 4 pound scoop of live anchovies, grab a Sabiki rig, bait it with little cut pieces of store bought shrimp and drop it down with a 1-ounce weight parallel to any pier piling in the state of California and you stand a very good chance of catching a shiner perch, (or a top/jack smelt)—and all of these make for deeply excellent halibut baits. But honestly, live anchovies are probably twice as effective at catching hali as shiners. Not sure but I’m guessing the oil content in an anchovy just makes it a whole lot sexier to a halibut than a shiner perch.

Of course halibut are most effectively targeted with live bait, but herring popsicles (that you caught, cured and vacuum sealed this past winter, right?) or swimbaits or even hair-raisers will work too.

Hard To Cook

Halibut meat is really easy to dry out. Be aware of this. Be very aware. Attend to that fillet like it’s the last piece of fish on the planet. Don’t walk away. Don’t change the diaper. Don’t get all sentimental and listen to Prince and start dancing around the house (like I did). 10 seconds overcooking will ruin a piece of halibut as effectively as if you stood on it for 10 seconds. Capisce? Feel me? Am I being clear?

A lot of Bay Area chefs, both professional and non, prefer to serve/eat their halibut raw. I’ve eaten my fair share of raw halibut and I’m sort of on the fence about it. Good as it might be, a nice piece of broiled halibut, done properly, is what floats my tule canoe.

Lingcod

 

How lucky we are in our little corner of the world that we share our coastline with the ever voracious and hard fighting lingcod. Oh man. I love lingcod fishing. There’s no better way to spend the day than live-drifting kingfish off a rock pile in 60 feet of water. And then, as it turns out, the flesh of the lingcod… is so… so… underrated… so… misunderstood. Damn I love lingcod.

It’s such a big crazy macho sort of fish. And yet it’s meat is actually kind of dainty, and flaky and light. And then there’s the whole blue smurf thing. Star Wars milk-colored fillets. I’ll never forget when I served blue lingcod slabs to one of my Sea Forager subscribers and she e-mailed me the following:

            “Kirk, I was alarmed to see that the blue detergent soap that you

            must be using to clean your coolers has leached through the brown

            freezer paper and turned my fish fillets bright blue. See photo attached.”

Here’s an interesting article about what makes a blue lingcod blue

Small Fish

Once again my smelt (days and nights) have disappeared. How shall I convey my sorrow… how shall I impress upon you oh faithful reader how dark and full of despair the absence of osmerids makes me… here's a pic from happier times:

 

Haiku 3,879

No more cucumber

No more shadows in the surf

Alas, why go on?

How many desperate and lonely nights must I trudge the beaches scouring the swash for a fish species that appears to have vanished entirely?

It’s now a day later. Got a tip from Howe at E-Z Mart: someone gave him a bag of surf smelt last week. The fish were supposedly caught at Pacifica. Arrghh! I went down to talk to the striper pluggers at Linda Mar and it appears there was some surf smelt activity late in the day last week around Mori Point. That’s all I got on the beloved day fish. Two hours of plugging Mori around high tide revealed nothing. No fish in the swash. No seals or birds. Guess I missed it. Bummer.

As far as other small forage fish go, here’s the basic details:

Sardines: in the bay (Pier 32 recently).

Anchovies: in the bay. (Pier 7)

Surf smelt (?)

Night smelt (?)

Jacksmelt (Everywhere! But especially on the downtown piers)

Jack mackerel and Pacific mackerel: at Capitola.

 

Various approaches to cleaning a Pacific (chub) mackerel:                                                                                                                                             filleted, butterflied, and gutted/whole

 

Well… That’s gonna do it for May 2016, early Summer. I just added a few more tours if you'd like to come out. Check back in July or August for the next update. And remember our big book launch partay at the Exploritorium is on Aug. 25th, more details to follow. 

So until your next update, see you at, on, or in the water!

Kirk-out

Sea Forager Coastal Update Late Winter 2016

Coastal Update Jan/Feb 2016

Hey coastal fisher/foragers, it’s time for your mid-Winter 2016 Coastal Update! But first here are a few EVENTS we’ve got coming up:

SOS Seafood Festival in Princeton Harbor, Saturday January 30th from 10-5pm (tickets). Swing by the Sea Forager booth and say hi. I'll be on the sustainability panel at 1pm. 

The Herring Festival in Sausalito, Sunday, January 31st from 11-3p (free! INFO). The Fishwives, the official Sea Forager sea shanty trio, will be singing the praises of our favorite small fish, and you can enter to win fabulous fishy prizes! (Like, fish. Real fish.)

I'll also be providing the seafood, stories, and songs for a 7 course sustainable seafood pop-up dinner party with Chef Alex Hrvatiwn at The Little Kitchen in Oakland on February 8th.

In other exciting news, the Fishwife and I are heading to New Orleans for the Slow Fish global sustainability conference in March. The good folks at Slow Fish East Bay are making it possible, and we'll be doing some very fun fishy events with them soon so stay tuned for details!

Herring

 

Well, as per usual the south bay went off first. That was back on Dec 27^th and the spawn was epic. On the 28^th I saw spawning fish along the rocks behind Embassy Suites, from the Sewage treatment plant (nice!) all the way down to Fisherman’s Park. And then across the channel to Coyote Point Jetty.

Then a few days later it was the China Basin shoreline, from Toxic Park to AT & T, with a massive spawn inside McCovey Cove. Then the following day they moved further along the Embarcadero from McCovey to Pier 39. Then last week it was all about Tiburon, Romberg and Net Depot (Cal City). Then Saturday and Sunday, Point Richmond went off. Honestly I’ve never seen so much spawning in so many different places in such a short span of time (3 weeks). Makes me wonder if they’ll be done by early February, or if there’s a second wave on the horizon with all these spots going off again… time will tell.

Clupea-nomics And Thoughts On The Fisheries

Unfortunately there really did seem to be some over-harvest happening down in the south bay (duh, really?) with guys carting away serious truckloads of fish. A lot of people were calling me with grave concerns about over-harvesting (by sporties), and while I think filling up garbage cans and pickup beds full of herring (even though there is no bag limit) is problematic (where do these folks take them all pray tell? I mean there really isn’t even that much demand for fresh herring, not even a retail fish market in the middle of a very piscivorous, heavily populated urban neighborhood can handle 1500 pounds of herring at one go... or can it?) we should first look at the numbers, and compare the net flingers to the commercial herring fishery.

Making a conservative estimate of the main two days of the south bay spawn, lets say that a minimum of 200 people were chucking nets. In the entire time that I was down there I didn’t see anyone take less than three buckets (several guys were bragging that they had taken half a ton). So lets call it 150 pounds per net flinger… that’s on the low side, taking into account the gross abusers, but just to be fair, we’ll say 200 people took 150 pounds each. Ok. Let me dust off the calculator: 150 x 200 = 30,000 pounds, divided by 2,000 = 15 tons. So… over the course of two days at the height of the spawn, 200 local San Franciscans who no doubt will eat a lot of their herring, took as much as one herring gill net boat (manned by two guys) on a mediocre night. And let’s point out that less than 1 percent of that gillnetted herring was consumed locally. So the only people to benefit from it were the license holder and the deckhand (making 10-15 percent on that 300 per pound). Should I also add that the gill net stuff was choked, beaten, dumped on the deck, stepped on, piled 15 ton deep, sucked through a vacuum, re-packed in bonners, iced (not iced on the boat at all mind you) and shipped to Turlock for processing. What happens to the males? Or the non-gravid females? Two words: cat food. Or if you want to add another one: fertilizer.

 

So I mean… yeah, it really sucks that sport fishers take a shoot-the-buffalo-from-the window-of-the-train attitude towards herring. But compared to the commercial fishery, the rec take, even as insane as it seems right now, represents a pittance of the total herring catch. Even if my numbers are way off and you want to double or triple the totals… it’s still less than what a single boat is likely to catch in 2 days.

Oh and lest I be taken as a gillnet hater, remember that the commercial fleet is only fishing 5 percent of the 16,000 ton biomass (or 800 tons). At $300 a ton you lose one net and you’re basically breaking even for the month. Did I mention that it’s a back breaking job for a deckhand? Here’s how its described in the classic ditty “Shoals of Herring.”

Oh the work was hard and the hours were long

And the treatment sure it took some bearing

There was little kindness and the kicks were many

As we hunted for those shoals of herring.

Where was I… oh right… so in any case, I decided to stop posting about herring and doing the herring class and yada yada yada…. I just don’t have the time. Sorry. If you want herring info don’t e-mail or text me. Just sign up to my twitter feed. If I know where the fish are I’ll post it there. Occasionally. Also, when I was out at Coyote someone stole my entire crate filled with nets. So I lost five nets (200 bucks) if anyone wants to send me old (but useable) 4-6 foot, nets or go out on a limb and send me new ones, (as a selfless and deeply appreciated gratuity) for past herring services, you can send them to Kirk Lombard, PO Box 3032, Moss Beach Ca. 94038… just kidding! But hell, I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. Ha!

Don’t forget to say hello at the Sausalito Herring festival on Sunday 1/31!

Cabezon

 

 

 

I was halfway thru eating my steamed whole cabezon, when suddenly I remembered that we were right in the middle of a demoic acid closure for crabs. And what fish eats more crabs than ol’ Scorpaenichthys marmoratus? In any case, suffice to say, I’m still here… though, there’s something a bit unsettling about eating a meal that upon reflection you suspect may have been your last.

I really did enjoy my cabezon. In fact I enjoy eating few fish as much as a nice cabby. Though I have to say, I’m always somewhat disappointed with the meat yield. My gawd there’s a lot of head (and fins) on this (aptly named) creature. My point here is that there are a lot of cabezon in close to shore right now and if you are of the same mind as me, regarding the excellent quality of cabezon meat, this is your time to check the tide logs and get out for some cabezon poke-poling on the coast… just sayin.’ And don’t eat the roe!

Basura Smelt

Yeah. I mean goddamn this is a just a terrible fish. Not in that way that terrible sometimes conveys greatness. Not in any way, not like you might say Atilla the Hun was terrible. No, jacksmelt are just plain terrible. If you want to try them out and prove me wrong here’s how it works. 24 hours following the end of a herring spawn go down to the shore with a big ugly ass bobber and a three-way loaded with chunks of shrimp. Put a ½ ounce bobber on the bottom of that and just lob that puppy out into the incoming tide (preferably within two hours of the top) and just start filling up buckets of these miserable fish. Jacksmelt really like herring eggs and so can be caught in great abundance along shorelines where herring have recently spawned.

I should point out that I once had some really great steamed jacksmelt courtesy of one Ms. K. Tran. These fish were superb. It’s one thing to have them provided for you by a woman well skilled in the arts of Asian fish steaming, and quite another to scale, candle (for worms) butterfly and steam many hundreds of these motherfuckers. I’m sorry to swear. Really I am. I know there are kids out there reading this. How better for them to comprehend the occasional and appropriate use of this expressive and oft abused pejorative.

In short: lots of jacksmelt of late. Catch some, scale, butterfly, de-worm and invite me over for dinner. If they’re any good I’ll boil my hat and eat it, (or part of it anyway) I swear.

God Smelt*

That was a type-o (of Good Smelt) but despite my free thinkin’ leanings, I’m leaving it as is. In short it’s still too early for the God smelt, but they are coming. And rest assured I’m really really working overtime on my offerings to the earth shaker. Not sure if he’s heard me. He certainly turned a deaf ear to my smelt prayers last year. Hecatombs may be in order.

I’m on the fence about doing nightsmelt tours anymore because I am, frankly, uninterested in giving away my spots. Perhaps I could blindfold the clientele? Wanna do a nightsmelt tour? That’s the deal. You will be blindfolded and put in my trunk. 400 dollars per person (except for Morris who was promised a tour recently and does not need to be blindfolded because he’s leaving town). Now that should end the queries. Oh one thing… I will on occasion take single mothers with kids on the night smelt tour. So if you aren’t that, don’t call me… ha!

* I am here drawing a distinction between those sweet, cucumber-scented, aesthetically appealing and utterly delicious smelt species that fall under the category of true smelts (family: Osmeridae). As opposed to those stinking, deeply scaled, worm ridden, gargantuan false smelts of SF Bay (jack and top) belonging to the family Atherinopsidae, the new world silversides.

Mussels

So I just want to point out that two of my readers of these updates reported an ill taste from mussels gathered on the Marin coast. Both of these folks said there was an off putting smell/taste to the mussels gathered from the Muir Beach/Slide Ranch area, and one of the two reported feeling ill after eating them. I have no idea if this is due to demoic acid or some other nastiness in the water but why bother picking mussels until we have a definitive green light from the health department on crabs? That’s my thought on it anyway. If the crabs ain’t clean, how in the hell could the mussels be?

Lost Street Cred

Of course, I may lose some street cred for saying this but in my own humble opine, wild gathered mussels aren’t as good as farmed ones (yes this represents a total reversal of opinion—go ahead call me a hypocrite). Of course, the thing that you went out and foraged yourself is always going to seem better. But you know, de-bearding, scrubbing, and cracking my teeth on sand particles is not really enjoyable to me. You could make the case that they are fuller and meatier, but you could also make the case that they are far more dangerous (especially in el Nino years like this) and rubbery than Penn Coves, Taylors, and even PEI’s. All farmed mussels are checked for PSP toxins weekly, and are pulled and put in purge tanks until all the mud and sand are gone. Raised inside sheltered bays of the west coast they’re beards are negligible. Honestly, we had some friends over for a mussel boil a few months back, and it took something like 4 hours to clean and de-beard 20 pounds of M. californienses. I honestly regretted not grabbing a few bags of Penn Coves when I left the warehouse that Friday. Live and learn… or I should say, live and change.

David Bowie

 

I can’t quite believe he’s still dead. Surely if any public figure was beyond all this mortality nonsense it was David Bowie. I’m just really so disappointed in him for dying. In the past few weeks the employees at the warehouse where I wrap fish have suffered a truly brutal phonic assault… nothing but Aladdin Sane and Hunky Dory. And it isn’t apt to ch-change, until he does the right thing and resurrects himself.

Surf Perch Challenge 2016

 

The perch bite is wide open on the coast right now. I mean holy hell. I caught 20 perch in 3 hours at ___________ (catch and release) on my way home from work the other day. I’m finding that rocky/gravelly beaches, or beaches bordered by rocks on their north and south ends seem to be better than flat sandy beaches right now. And I’ve never seen so many durned calico perch in all my years. A happy development as I am a big fan of calicoes even if I don’t really like eating ‘em. In fact, I don’t really like eating perch… though my perch ceviche definitely doesn’t suck. In any case, fishing for surf perch with ultra light tackle or flyrod is really really fun (though I’m not a fan of the stripping basket). I mean seriously, if I could just do one activity for the rest of my life it would probably be that.

If anyone out there reading this feels inclined to prove to me that surfperch can be caught and cooked with success, I am open to being convinced, but until then, I will remain skeptical. 

Sea Weed

I am seriously going to harvest a lot of seaweed this year. In fact the idea is to go about this commercially. I only mention it because on my tour the other day I saw the first tiny tiny (almost imperceptible) tufts of nori coming up on a few intertidal rocks and it got me… well… kinda jazzed. More on this in the spring. Though I have some awesome hand harvested dried seaweeds from Mendocino available through Sea Forager Seafood!

Bait

 

 This is the so called sand worm of Ocean Beach, a native shimmy worm: Nephtys californiensis

I’m a big fan of bait animals. And I’m so happy that I finally decided to dig up some marine worms and get them identified at the Cal Academy! Though I doubt this revelation will have any but the absolute nerdiest of you guys dancing in the streets. Thank you Chrissy Piotrowski!

I brought two polychaete specimens to the museum. The first was that crazy sand worm you see perch fishermen digging up all the time on Ocean Beach: for the record that ocean beach worm is: Nephtys californiensis. A native species of “shimmy” worm, named for its ability to shimmy down into the sand at lightning speeds.

The second worm I brought in was a mud worm from under a rock in the bay. This thing, which I assumed was an invasive pile worm from the east coast, turned out to be another native species: the clam worm, Allita brandti. This is the same species that washes up dead in the mudflats of Princeton harbor every summer by the hundreds. It’s hard to believe how big they get. Like the size of gopher snakes and whatnot. In any case this should really hold you over on polychaete worms for a while. No you can’t eat them. Eating worms is gross.

OK that’s gonna do it for Jan 2016.

Demoic Acid still raging on the coast though there have been a few good tests of late… more on this in Feb.

Until then, see yu at, on or in the H2O

Kirk-out

Herring update 12/29/15

Big spawn in progress. Two days and counting. Here's your clue:

 

 

 

Herring Update 12/27/15

 

Here's the haiku clue as of 07:41 Dec 27, 2015:

 

They came in last night

The point being C. latrans

The flood should bring more

Sea Forager Coastal Update Nov/Dec 2015

 

 

Hello Coastal Fishers and Foragers it’s time for your November/December 2015 coastal update (at long last!)

Heads up in December I've got a SF Coastal fishing & foraging walking tour on Saturday December 5th at 12:30pm and a rare Mega Low Tide tour in Princeton Harbor. (Tues Dec 22nd at 12:45pm) I only do seven of these per year so if you’re interested, my main focus on that tour is looking at mudflat invertebrates (ghost shrimp, piddocks, fat inn-keeper worms and horseneck clams). It’s always fun and I notice there are still a few spots left so if you want to come do it, now’s the time. Also makes a great gift! (ahem...) 

Now Where Was I?

First off… sorry for the delay here… it’s just been a very, very busy time. Our seafood business (Sea Forager Seafood CSF) has been going strong and I’ve been simultaneously on dead-line for my soon to be released (Spring 2016) Sea Forager’s Guide to the Northern California Coast. Not to mention we have two kids and all that that requires!

In any case, I’ve been itching to get in an update here to keep everyone abreast of the crab situation and also to check in about what has been a very strange and noteworthy year.

Dungeness Crab

OK. Here’s the deal. The ocean temperatures in our area this year have been really really warm. Really really warm waters in this area can cause all kinds of problems (read below).

What’s Going On?

 

 

So the Fish and Game Department working in conjunction with the Health Department decided to shut down the sport fishing and commercial fishing openers because of high amounts of demoic acid found in the viscera and (more importantly) in the meat of Dungeness crabs and rock crabs. I don’t recall the actual numbers but suffice to say some of the infected crabs were way over the allowable amounts. (Rock crabs were actually through the roof bad, but this shouldn’t surprise anybody because they eat a lot of bivalves) The condition that demoic acid causes is called PSP (Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning) and it can in some instances be fatal. To be clear the last fatality from PSP in California happened in 1982. Since then the health department has done a great job setting quarantines and testing for contaminated shellfish, and if you want to get the latest updates don’t call me, call this number:

1-800-553-4133

This is the same number I give out on my walking tours. It’s the OEHHA biotoxin hotline. I want to point out that I’ve seen numerous people fishing for and eating rock crabs all summer in the bay and on the coast. To my knowledge no one has gotten sick from eating them. Just keep this in mind amidst all the hysteria.

PSP

PSP is caused by a naturally occuring phyto-plankton called Pseudo-nitzschia. In warm water this phyto-plankton blooms and causes red tides. Pseudo nitzschia does not tend to reach the densities that produce the “crimson tides” of the Gulf of Mexico, where everyone looks at the water and immediately knows what’s going on and this is what makes it so deeply insidious. In any case, demoic acid tends to show up in filter feeding organisms like bivalves (clams, scallops, mussels, oysters) and small fish (anchovies and sardines). Dungeness crabs are opportunist carnivores and one of the things they really like to eat is clams (incidentally, this is probably why they taste so good—most animals that eat clams are tasty) and because of this they can pick up the toxins second hand. Rock crabs, as mentioned above, have tested even higher for demoic acid because (I hypothesize), they eat more bivalves than dungies.

Closure 

So what I hear at the wharf is this: the DFG and the Health Department will be testing the crabs once per week. This whole “closed for 180 days” thing is just what they are saying so they don’t have to post new closure information every week. Now keep in mind that these toxins take about a month to leave the body of a crab (this is not science, this is what a crabber told me on the dock—but he’s a pretty smart guy, degree in biology and he swore he read it in a report).  But regardless of whether that’s true or not, you have to figure they are going to err on the side of caution. They also are going to face a minor insurrection if they don’t allow the sport fishermen to go out and catch crabs for a week before they open the commercial season. (Sport fishermen always get a week or two to catch their crabs before the commercials start thinning them out—and that folks, is the time you want to be in the water or snaring from shore).

The short answer here is that the crab opener will probably be put off for at least one month, maybe more. What we need is rain. Rain and less sunlight. And guess what? We’re getting both. As the water gets colder and the rain cycles it around a little, the nasty diatoms will die off or move away to warmer waters. As the winter progresses there will be less sunlight, the water will get colder and the crabs will hopefully get rid of the toxins. That’s the hope anyway. Honestly, this is the first time a crab season has been impacted by demoic acid in California, so it’s not like anyone knows exactly how long it’s going to take. All I can say is I really (really) hope this is just an el Nino related thing, and not a trend caused by global warming.

I hope that answers your questions on this subject. Now, let’s move on to the brighter side of global warming (gallows humor here folks, it’s all deeply troubling) ie: the strange and exotic species showing up in local waters! 

Small Fish

The PSP scare concerning crabs and bivalves also applies to small fish like sardines and anchovies. But to my knowledge small fish are only problematic if you’re eating their guts. (That’s what the health department says). But who eats fish guts? (other than people who should probably be removed from the gene pool?) 

Just kidding. It takes all kinds. In any case, don’t eat the fish guts if you’re worried about getting PSP. And remember, more people have been catching and eating mackerel and jack mackerel this year than I’ve ever seen on this coast. And not a case of PSP, to my knowledge, in any of them.

Mackerel

As alluded to above, it’s been an insane mackerel season and it’s not showing signs of stopping! To be clear, this isn’t a fish we typically catch a lot of in SF Bay but the last report (before the rains came in a few days ago) from agent 007 (Champion de la Banana) was that folks were “Killing them at Fort Point and Fort Baker” piers. I stopped at the Ferry Building to get my artisanal hipster coffee on the way to work and saw these guys on Pier 14.  

 

 

             (Technically its illegal to use more than 3 hooks inside the bay…)

 

I would imagine there’s a few at Pier 32 (Red’s Java House Pier) right now, if you want to drive and park rather than take the BART to your fishing spot. Agent 003 (Mark S.) reports he caught fifteen small macks in one hour on Fort Point yesterday (Sunday). So the rain evidently did not drive them out. One note, a lot of these mackerel have been in the 6-8 inch range.

In any case. No need to bait the Sabiki rigs like these guys in the video were doing, unless you just like doing a lot of extra work for no reason at all.

Sardines

 

 

There’s been a few sardines showing up in Priceton harbor (HMB) but these fish haven’t moved in shore. They were caught out by the jaws by my buddy Mikey “Cave Man” who works with the local Greek lampara boat there. It’s nice to know they’re still around. Hopefully they’ll move in close to shore soon. Though with the water getting colder now, they’ll probably vacate the area. 

Cockles and Mussels Alive Alive-O

 

 

 

One can make a good case for continuing to catch and dine on small fish right now, but bivalves? Not so much. Too bad… there are some nice low tides coming up. We’ll just have to bide our time and hope the water cools down. (See crab section above).

Exotics

Although mackerel are uncommon in our area, they’re not exactly unheard of.  But bonito and bluefin tuna? Yeah that’s rare. Sorry to report the bluefin are now gone. If nothing else, I would’ve at least liked to have seen one. I got a couple of offers to go out and target them, and I don’t begrudge anyone who did it, but for me it’s kind of hard to justify. One friend of mind said “hey it’s hook and line fishing, and we aren’t even making a dent in the population.” But then I heard a biologist say: “what difference does it make of you shoot a tiger with a crossbow or a rifle? You still killed a tiger.” 

I’m on the fence here. As tempting as it was, and as little impact as I think the local hook and line fleet has on that population, it’s pretty hard to run a sustainable seafood biz and at the same time go out and kill the poster child of unsustainable fish species.

 

I got this photo off of Ken Jones' awesome fishing blog. Ken is also the founder of pierfishing.com. If you haven't checked these out, drop everything! This excellent bonito article comes to us from Jon at castandspear.com

 

But bonito?! There are a lot of bonito on this planet… and they were absolutely thick off of Monterey and Santa Cruz this past month. In fact they were still getting them 6 miles out of Princeton harbor before the rains moved in last week.  Hopefully that will pick up again soon. As far as eating them goes, bonito are definitely best pan seared or raw. If you grill them don’t grill them all the way through. An over cooked bonito fillet tastes a bit like a hamburger made of catfood.

Surf Perch

 

                    Black perch (aka: pogey) Embiotoca jacksoni

 

Despite their culinary failings I am just really into the surfperches. They’re so much fun to catch. In fact… I’ve even gotten a little better at cooking them. Eschewing the fry pan for the steamer.  It may be a bit counterintuitive but as it turns out the best thing to do with a mooshy fish is to steam it. Why resist the moosh? Embrace it and roll with it. I steamed a couple of surf perch this month, (using the typical Asian method as shown on youtube) and they came out… pretty good. Or maybe “not bad” would be more accurate… or passable. Yes, they were passable. As good as a steamed rockfish? Not by a long shot… but passable nonetheless.

Sea Weed 

There really isn’t anything happening on the seaweed front and there won’t be till spring. Check in then.

Herring

I’m definitely not doing any herring tours this winter, but I may continue to send out e-mail or text alerts. I’m sort of undecided. It’s a lot or work to do it for free. Honestly, just calling (or driving!) around to find out where the fish are and sending out texts to everybody takes time… which is a commodity I don’t have a lot of anymore (oh for the halcyon days of youth!) In any case just to be safe, if you really want to be on the herring list, you may want to make sure I have your details. It’s possible I may offer it as a paid service… 25 bucks for the whole winter gets you two updates per week (or something like that), but I’ll only do that if I get an overwhelmingly positive response. It’s actually a pretty cool service to have your own personal herring spotter plane (me) for a mere 25 bones—if I do say so myself.

OK. That’s going to do it for your Nov/Dec 2015 coastal update. If you are still looking for a sustainable seafood source, be sure to check out my new pickup locations for Sea Forager Seafood, we are probably near you now (or let me know a good place to be)! Members get 50% off tours too. Check back in January for more stuff on herring, crab and sturgeon. Until then… see ya at, on, or in the water!

Kirk-out

Sea Forager Coastal Update Summer 2015

 

Hi everybody it’s time for the Sea Forager coastal update… for early summer.

But first here's some tours and stuff coming up in the next few months: still a couple spots left for my Father's Day San Francisco Coastal Fishing & Foraging tour on 6/21 (then 7/25, 8/29) and my mega low tide tour on 7/6.

It’s been a strange season thus far, marked by a paucity of some regular summer fish and an over abundance of others. Alas, only Poseidon himself can predict the mysterious ways of the ocean--or even pretend to understand them. 

Small Fish:

 

 

True Smelts

It has turned out to be a very disappointing season for the fan of true smelts. At least locally. Night smelt have been spotty (though I finally did find them this past month) and surf smelt totally non-existent. Not really sure if this means anything. These fish tend to be cyclical and we’ve been due for a down turn for a few years. But still… it would be nice to see a few surf smelt. (Or even one!) I should also point out that we’re at the southern edge of the true smelt range.  Reports from northern California and the large number of night smelt at the fish wholesalers’ warehouses earlier this season indicate that the fishery is as robust as ever up north. So if you’re bound and determined to get your own, pack that A-frame and head to Humboldt.

Retiring From Dip Net Making

                             A Yurok Fisherman circa: 1918

 

I should point out that I am retiring as the sole A-frame dip net maker on the West Coast. It seemed like such a good idea! But I forgot how big a pain in the anal fin it was to make those friggin’ nets. So if you want an A-frame, you’ll have to go back to Craigslist and find a used one somewhere. They come along every now and then (yeah, like once a decade) but as for Sea Forager dipping into the dip net business, I’m done!

Mackerel

 

Never seen so many durned mackerel in my life! First the squid boats started getting them in Monterey. Then there were a few in Santa Cruz. Then all of sudden - woosh! - they swept through the HMB area including Princeton Harbor (and all the way to Pacifica Pier). Only thing, most of these fish are not true mackerel (Scomber japonicus) but rather the diminutive jack mackerel (Trachurus symmetricus).

Locally, jack mackerel are a good 1/4^th to 1/5^th the size of a regular Pacific mackerel so they’re small and bony.  (According to fish expert par excellence Milton Love they actually reach 32 inches in length! But the big ones live way, way offshore… like hundreds of miles. Only the little ones frequent shallow coastal waters). Nevertheless, their meat is quite good. I did not realize how good till this month because I have rarely ever caught them in the kind of numbers we’ve been getting them lately. Best way to eat them is grilled. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Three minutes a side. Squeeze a lemon on ‘em and call ‘em done. Nothing fancy. Some of my seafood subscribers did a boquerones style cure with jack mackerel fillets and it worked great. Only thing, these little guys are a tad smaller than your average herring so filleting them requires a very sharp knife and a high degree of patience.

         Hey, I just noticed the fish on the Sabiki package is a jack mackerel!

To get in on the mackerel go to Princeton Harbor at dusk and fish into the early evening, especially on an incoming tide. The fish have been swarming the harbor at night. The usual unbaited Sabikis work well but I find the big Sabiki with the white “feathers” is the best. Oh yeah, anything with more than 3 hooks is a royal pain to deal with. Jack mackerel are the ones without the stripes or spots. Just a spiraling lateral line on a pale blue-green background—pretty little fish these. 

Japonicus

 

As for the “real” mackerel, the larger Pacific chub mackerel, Scomber japonicus, they seem to be running in amongst the jack macks. But they are vastly outnumbered and you can expect maybe 5 percent of your total haul to consist of Pacific mackerel. 

 

Sardines 

 

I won’t lie I think I’ve eaten my weight in sardines this summer. All of them caught by me (sport fishing) and a few bought from The Sardella, the last hand-pulled lampara boat in California. 

But wait! You thought sardine season was closed! Actually sardines can still be targeted recreationally. And the commercial take is permitted as long as the vessel was targeting mackerel, squid or something else. In other words, sardine by-catch is still legal and will remain so thru 2015.

So again, these guys have been running with mackerel in the harbor on a good day you’ll get 50/50 jack mackerel to sardines and on a bad day, 90/10 jack macks to sardines. But that’s sort of a gold-plated problem, y’know?

Same sabiki rigs, same incoming tides for sardines.

Halibut

Really good halibut numbers for the sporties so far this season. It’s all been about the Berkeley flats this year. Predictably, the bite’s been dropping off on the big tides and then picking up when they mellow out a bit. Unfortunately, for Sea Forager Seafood, it’s been difficult to line up a good commercial halibut slayer as they tend to all stick with one buyer for the season—not sure why. The dockside price for halibut is actually higher than salmon and hasn’t gone down a penny since March. Go figya! Good for the fisherman and bad for everyone else. Local halibut is fast becoming a delicacy rather than a staple. But I figure this is probably a good thing. 

Strangely the shore bite for halibut has been pretty dismal this year, although there’ve been a few fish landed on Berkeley Pier… and get this… Emeryville Pier (!) which is the least productive public pier in the Bay Area (when I monitored the city piers for PSMFC Emeryville Pier was consistently the worst. Unless you like bat rays and polluted po’gies).

Striped Bass

Hawg striper carcass hanging on a fence outside San Gregorio General Store… Gee I wonder where this one was caught? (this appears to be a sort of neo pagan custom when the bass are running at Pescadero and San G.)

When the dust has settled and we anglers look back on the summer of 2015 ten years from now the thing everyone will remember will be the bass. Pick your spot. Last week the sand crab soakers around Sloat Ave at OB slammed them. And the week before that same deal at Taraval. Pacifica beaches have been red hot all season, and there have been good runs in HMB, San Gregorio (see picture) and Pescadero, lots of small schoolie-sized fish, but some hawgs too. Sand crabs seem to be the key, but the plugging’s been excellent too. Especially at dusk. Bass fishing in the Bay has been ridiculous. In fact, if you’re in it for the halibut a little too ridiculous!  I’ve been going with the big rattling SP Minnow that looks like a smelt (hoping that stripers remember what a smelt looks like) but swimbaits and hair-raisers seem to be de riguer for the coast right now… as per usual.  

Salmon

Yes, there appears to be a salmon season going on right now. If you can get out there and find them you are doing better than most. Waiting till the northern fish come back down to the Golden Gate as is their wont. Hopefully it picks up in July and August… right now there isn’t a whole lot to report.

Lingcod

Unbelievable numbers this summer.  And the size limit is still only 22 inches (for sporties). DFG gave us some very liberal rules the last few years and lots of folks are responding by getting their lings on.  Good reports from the shore-bound swimbait tossers and jetty walkers. And plenty of live bait (read: mackerel) for those who want to ensure success. The nice thing about ling abundance is that it indicates other stocks are doing well, well enough to keep the lingcod happy.

Sea Weeds

We are once again in the thick of it. Lots of nori along the local rocky intertidal areas near my comely abode in Moss Beach.  But one thing about living on the Coastside has been the absolute lack of an adequate area to dry my sea weeds! Having lived in SF for half of my adult life I sorta thought I had a handle on fog. Boy was I wrong. I mean seriously. I recently tried putting my nori in the dryer (at a friend’s suggestion) and that worked pretty well… except for the little crispy bits of nori that got stuck in the little holes in the dryer walls and are now all over my sweaters, underwear and tee shirts… a-hem.

In any case now is the time for seaweeds. Here’s a decent seaweed book if you need help identifying them.  Seaweeds Of The Pacific Coast, by Jennifer and Jeff Mondragon. I would like it if the color photos were a tad bigger. And often I find that one photo of a seaweed species is not enough since they come in many shapes and sizes, but over all this is a good starter book.

Minus Tides

As far as foraging minus tides go, the lowest tides remaining in 2015 are today (Tuesday, 6/16 and Wednesday 6/18) but they’re super early. Beyond that you’ve got some good mega low tide action happening July 2^nd through July 6^th. Then more mega minus tides July 16^th and 17^th and some good ones July 31^st  through Aug 3^rd.  After August 3^rd there won’t be any mega low minus tides (lower than -0.5) until late November—as per usual.

I'll be co-hosting a special locally-sourced seafood dinner party at 18 Reasons on July 24th, more details here. Yes, there will be sea shanties!

And that’s going to do it for your Coastal Update for early summer 2015.

I will be doing nightsmelt trips again if there’s any interest in it… but be advised, I don’t take anybody… and you will subject to excessive Sea Forager scrutiny, and will be forced to pass my arduous cardio-vascular testing process ;)

And as always, if you're looking for a sustainable, super-fresh seafood source (and the story behind it) sign up for Sea Forager Seafood! I've got pickup spots all around S.F., the East Bay and South Bay.

In any case, this is Sea Forager Kirk signing out for June 2015, hoping to see you at, on or in the water! 

Kirk-out

Sea Forager Spring 2015 Coastal Update

Coastal Update Spring 2015

Here ye! Here ye! Spring is in full bloom! No maypole dancing just yet but lots of stuff happening on our local shores, here's the skinny:

1. Striped Bass

 

2015 is shaping up to be an epic striped bass year. Shore pluggers have been steadily nailing the stripers since early April. On a personal note, I gave up on that iconic striped bass lure of the Bay Area, aka: The Hair Raiser, after what had to be my 10,000^th cast, and have been getting much more action with the fancier (and pricier) SP Minnow sold at various tackle shops. I seem to be getting more hits on the one that looks like a smelt, not the pimped-out one with the chartreuse sides, that everone seems to like. The SP Minnows cast really well too, though I have to say all my strikes have been within 20 feet of shore, so its not like you need to break casting records to reach the fish. Lots of bass caught in HMB thus far, and in Pacifica, and I recently heard of a nice bite down at Montara. Bay fishing for stripers has been excellent too by the way. Champion de la Banana reports “lots of bass, Champion!” in the Burlingame/SFO area. And in the East Bay near the race track there's been quite a few schoolies—tho not many lunkers.

Everyone always asks about the advisability of eating bay stripers. Yes, they are very high in mercury, so you should probably eat no more than 1 per month. Ocean stripers are probably a bit better, but one never knows where they have swum. And like I've said, stripers like to swim in some pretty sketchy places.

2. Cali. Halibut

The halibut season started with a bang in March. Slowed down, and then picked up steam again just before the big tides (and winds) moved in. Most of the action was around the Berkeley flats, and Point Richmond. There's been a few fish down in Santa Cruz but by and large it's been an East Bay thing this year. Expect the hali numbers to pick up as soon as we're done with the big tides.

3. Not With A Bang...

There were some fairly robust predictions for salmon this year and then the season opened and very few fish were caught. In truth, everyone agrees, the salmon are stacked up north near Fort Bragg, and won't be coming down here for a few more weeks/months. In HMB it took a day or two for the commercial fleet to find any fish to speak of. High boat was I think 26—for two days of fishing. Some fish were caught early Monday morning (today) in Bodega but most of these were in the 8-9 pound class. And many, reportedly, were a tad skinny. That's what one buyer tells me, anyway. So if you're really looking to get into some high class salmon fishing, we suggest: head north young woman.

4. Small Fish:

Sardine

Most of you have probably read about NOAA's recent decision to shut down the commercial sardine season. (Recreational sardine will remain open) I've received several alarmed e-mails from appropriately concerned “seafoodetarians” on this subject. I should remind everyone that it is now a proven scientific fact (whatever that means) that sardine populations go through natural periods of abundance and decline. These fluctuations seem to occur at 30-60 year intervals. So regardless of fishing pressure, there would likely have been a large drop off in sardine populations this year. The bad news is that NOAA grossly over-estimated the abundance of sardines last year and allowed the commercial take of way too many. Hence the hurried and somewhat frantic nature of this year's shut down. Go here for a more detailed diatribe on the subject: My diatribe on sardines.

Nightsmelt

Yeah, this pic is from last year, thus far in 2015 I haven't caught half as much as this.

What a difference a year makes. I looked in my fish diary from last year and saw that I had something like 1000 pounds of night smelt by May 2014. As much as it pains me to admit it, I've got a cumulative total of 12 pounds this year. Yikes. 12 pounds! So what happened? Well... ummm... not sure. But before I start screaming the sky is falling, warm water years tend to be hard on the little nocturnal osmerids we all like so much. They're evidently still slamming them up north—so maybe they all moved up there? I should point out that the 12 pounds I bagged was on the last quarter moon not far from my current domicile. But I'm not saying where. Sorry. Just look at the sand. The sand doesn't lie. Big grains = smelt. Fine grains = no smelt.

Surfsmelt 

Yeah I keep hearing rumors about surf smelt in Half Moon Bay. But they sure as hell aren't anywhere nearby when I'm on the beach... and I should add that when I'm on the beach I'm always looking for them. Strangely I've seen very few of the usual spotter planes, aka: Caspian terns. In fact, I've seen one tern all season. I was plugging for stripers last week and he materialized in front of me, buzzed the waves a few times and suddenly dropped in and speared a surf smelt. That smelt, by the way, was the only one I've seen in 2015. Once again, rumor has it, there've been a few surf smelt up north... hey this is sort of a continuing theme here... hopefully it doesn't indicate irreversible trends or global warming. But I'm suddenly noticing that three of the fish I've described here are virtually absent this year, and are all being caught where the water is colder. 

 

 

 

Mackerel 

The exception to this of course, is mackerel. Lots of mackerel offshore in Monterey Bay of late. Not sure if they've moved inshore at Capitola where last year where the sporties were getting them by the bucket load. But I'm really looking forward to another good mackerel year especially with surf smelt so slow and sardine numbers down. Hopefully we'll see more of S. japonicus this coming summer—and remember, if there is afringe benefit to global warming, it's that mackerels and tunas tend to like warmer water!

Sea Weeds

    Our friend Kacie Loparto of She Sells Seaweed

 

Well... it's seaweed season folks! Not really sure what to say beyond, go out and snip some (snipping with scissors is the sustainable way to harvest sea weeds)I'm seeing copious quantities of nori in the upper/middle intertidal all along the coast and with all the big swells lots of bull whip kelp washed up on the beaches. For those who don't know what to look for when looking for seaweeds, or researching them, here's a list of the most popularly foraged seaweeds in California, along with their scientific names so you can google them and get the right species:

1. Turkish washcloth: Mastocarpus papillatus

   This red algae is the stuff you want to boil down to make ice cream and pudding.

2. Sugar kelp: Laminaria saccharina

   This kelp is best eaten fresh and raw but can also be steamed or dried and rehydrated. Most abundant in northern Cali, esp Mendocino coast.

3. False Wakame: Alaria marginata

   Best used in soups benefitting from oceanic flavoring

4. True wakame: Undaria sp

   This invasive species grows under docks in coastal harbors and in SF Bay. Undaria is the traditional seaweed used in miso soup.

5. Rockweed: Fucus gardneri

   Good for your thyroid but kind of slimy when eaten raw or steamed. Best dried and rehydrated.

6. Bullwhip kelp: Nereocystis luetkeana.

   Chop the long whiplike stalk into one inch circles and pickle.

7. Dulse: Palmaria hecatensis

   Closely related to Palmaria palmata the most commonly eaten seaweed of the Atlantic ocean.

8. Iridescent seaweed: Mazzaela splendens… Another red algae, this one is also great for making your puddings and icecream.

If you'd like to chat in person I have some fun events coming up in June: the Fishwife and I will be a the CalAcademy's Nightlife on Thursday, June 4th with my nets and fish tales (and hopefully a beer in hand), talking and singing about the sea for their Sustainable Catch evening. Which reminds me, if you're still wondering where to find sustainable seafood when you can't catch it yourself, be sure to check out Sea Forager Seafood, my CSF (Community Supported Fishery).

And for more  foraging fun, come out to the Bay Area Book Festival where I'll be in some fine company speaking on a foraging panel on June 7th. Event details HERE.

Well, that's going to do it for this spring. Stay tuned for my summer update which will be sent out at some point in June or July. Until then, see ya at, in, or near the H2O!

Kirk-out

Late Winter Coastal Update

Party For The Release of: "Me, Myself And The Monkeyface Eel"

First things first: I've got two books due to be published this year. The main one that takes up most of my waking hours is for my favorite local publisher: Heyday in Berkeley. The second is a small artisinal project for some like-minded intertidal enthusiasts who also happen to double as professional printers. These guys contacted me after taking one of my tours and told me they were deep into the lost arts of making books. They wondered if I'd be interested in writing a book for them. At first I was skeptical, but then I went out to their warehouse space at American Steel (after delivering fish there) and could not believe what I saw. These guys have a friggin' type smelter! (and I thought a smelter was person who catches smelt). Get this: they cast their own type out of molten led. They also own an old 19th century printing press. There are only like 3 people on earth who know how to operate it! In any case I wrote them a short piece called: "Me Myself And The Monkeyface Eel" which is a sort of humorous, absurdist study of my life in eeldom (a la Flann O'brien and V. Nabokov). Then I got my dear friend Leighton Kelly (seriously, click the link and watch all the episodes, Leighton is Brick Rockson) to do the woodblock prints. And voila! It's done!

 The author and his record-shattering prickleback 

We will be celebrating this cult classic of fishing lore with free beer (voluntary donations accepted) and witty repartee, a short flick about how the book was made, a few sea shanties by The Fishwives, a brief lecture (or diatribe) by yours truly and good times for all on 02/21/15 at the beautiful offices of Stamen on 16th and Mission. 6:00pm-8:00pm. Please email RSVP at [email protected] and put "prickleback" in the subject heading so we can get a sense of how many folks are gonna be there! Come on out and support your local artisnial book makers and lunatic eel hunters!

Herring 2014-15

 

Before I get started here. The phone just rang and the herring are still going at Elephant Rock in Tiburon. So drop everything and head there now.

From a net-flinging perspective the herring season has been deeply epic. For the commercial herring guys (and the fish monger who would like to sell their fish) not so much. 

In other words coastal fishers and foragers are right now experiencing the most epic season in recent memory! Everyone else... tough luck. 

How did we arrive at this curious state of affairs? Well it has to do with Alaska. And the incompetence of last year's herring buyer. Evidently the fishermen in Alaska are willing to sell their herring to the Japanese buyers for pennies on the ton. This has degraded the price even as far away as SF. Why would a buyer pay 300 a ton when the fishermen in Alaska will take 50 bucks? Then last year the new buyer at the wharf basically blew the load (through bad handling and equally bad timing) and the local guys got stuck with 200 per ton, which to quote one of them, "didn't hardly pay my gas and crew."

As bad as this has been for the fishmongers and commercial fishermen it's been a boon to local sporty flingers. The spawns since late December have been incredible. Seriously. I saw some 60 pound tosses this year. That's two buckets in one throw of a 6 foot net. Here's how the spawns developed:

1. October--Nov: multiple spawns in the eel grass beds in Richardson's Bay

2. Dec: Towards the end of December there was some spawning down south near the San Mateo Bridge.

3. January: It's all kind of a blur. There's been a spawn every couple of days. First the South Bay went off. Jan 1st to 3rd. There must have been a hundred guys throwing nets. Everybody was complaining about combat fishing, I just drove down the Burlingame shore, parked my truck near the hotel and fished off the pier. All alone I might add. Took about 10 throws to fill a bucket. Which is just how I like it. 

4. Paradise/Tiburon went off a few days later… i mean, I think. It's all a big silvery blurrr.

5. Then at the end of that first week of Jan the Mission Rock shoreline went off, but there were fish spawning all over the city. How cool was that? Kudos to all the intrepid folks that made it out that late Thursday night in the crazy fog. Holy hell that was insane.  

6. I was peddling blackcod during the heart of the Sausalito spawn but I caught a few fish at the very last gasp of it off the Fort Baker Pier. During the Herring Festival, the shoreline was covered with birds, but they were just pecking eggs, the spawning had finished up three days before.

7. This last few days it's been all about Pt. Richmond and now Tiburon again. The Richmond spawn was also really crazy. 

Only two boats have fished this year. This ain't one of 'em

 

I'm really only putting this here for those folks who aren't on my herring list. Herring spawn in pretty much every corner of the bay from San Mateo to San Quentin. So there's no excuse! Get out there and catch a few. 

Typically they will continue to spawn through February. I know Tiburon is happening as I write this. The thing is, with no commercial fleet operating there are 3,000 additional tons out there! But they've already spawned once in most of their favorite locations so… this may be it! Go to Gus's Discount Tackle, pick up a casting net, and go to work! If you need a reminder on how to cast your net, study these photos of me netting herring, formerly known as Kenny Belov of TwoXSea, at the recent Sausalito Herring Festival:

Singing "Shoals of Herring" with The Fishwives sea shanty trio

Sturgeon

    Champion and last year's sturgeon 

 

Right before the herring spawned in the South Bay, there was nice sturgeon bite there. The shore casters at Fisherman's Park between Embassy Suites and Coyote Pt, bagged at least 6 keeper sturgeon in 3 days, and the skiff guys did even better. Predictably, as soon as the herring spawned the bite died off. I guess those ghost shrimp start to look pretty underwhelming to a sturgeon when there's 30 zillion tons of kazunoko in the water.

Dungeness Crab

    Sea Forager snares! Best ones on the coast!

Well… everyone's complaining (including me). Lots of small crabs and lots of females right now. But I dunno…. when one considers the number of commercial crab pots dropped into the Pacific Ocean in November, it seems to me rather remarkable that shore fishers, surf boarders and kayakers can catch any at all.

I'm not going to lie. I'm bitter about dungeness crab. I'm glad it provides such a great financial opportunity to so many fishermen who are able to raise 200,000 dollars for the boat, license and gear (one might ask if someone capable of raising that much money actually needs more… ha!). But from my end it's a soul crushing ball breaking fishery that I have come to deeply despise. In fact. Life is too short. I'm done promoting it. 

Just kidding (heh heh). I've still got two big bags of crab snares to sell and from what I hear there's been a nice bump in inshore numbers on the Marin Beaches… my friend Jorge tells me he bagged 6 fat males in three hours, last week near Bolinas. Pacifica Pier and HMB have been dead for about a month.

Rawk Crab

Two rawwwk crabs… red (right) and yellow (left)

Live large people. Try something different. Forge ahead into the unknown and under-utilized. Of course rock crabs are not really "unknown and under-utilized" nevertheless, when compared to the human feeding frenzy on dungeness crabs, it sometimes feels like the noble rawk crab has been forgotten entirely. Your ever vigilant health department maintains that rock crab is one of the safest choicest for those inclined to dine on the locally caught seafood. One positive development with all the warm water we've been having of late, we've been getting quite a few yellow rock crabs mixed in with our reds. These have been showing up in rocky areas offshore of HMB and Baker Beach. A recent rock crab catch that I purchased for my Sea Forager Seafood customers, was comprised of 20 percent yellows! These were big beautiful beastly crabs with nice quantities of meat in the claws (see pic above).

Night Smelt

It's on people! I can't believe it. 4 years in a row night smelt spawned at the end of January. Go figure? I guess it's one of the fringe benefits of global warming. In any case, my lucky CSF customers will be getting super fresh cucumber scented night smelt very soon, and to every body else… I am definitely running my smelt classes this season. In addition I have A-frame dip nets for sale. These are real beauties. Hand carved with secret-coded glyphs which will remind you when to fish for smelt.  Got some brand-new knotted white anchovy netting (easier to see the fish on a dark night with a white net), with new galvanized strap hinges with the brass pin in the slot. These are so awesome I may decide not to sell  them… so contact me now if you want one. (Enoch, you get first dibs).

"Hand carved with secret-coded glyphs which will remind you when to fish for smelt."

FAQs

            Invasive Undaria (Wakame)

 

I've been fielding quite a few questions about seaweeds of late. So just to make it clear: this ain't seaweed season. Seaweeds are best foraged in the summer when they are in full "bloom." Last April I found a bit of nori growing in the city in April. So there may be a few harvestable tufts in the late spring, but this is really a summer foraging thing. By the way, it is absolutely necessary to have a fishing license when harvesting seaweeds in California! Even for the highly destructive and invasive wakame (Undaria) growing under the piers around the city.

Also: as to shore fishing for rockfish, cabezon and greenling in the winter months. It's still open! It only closes for boat based anglers. 

Surf Perch

Lots of perch on the beaches right now, but man I sure wish they were something other than walleye perch. Still haven't chanced into the red tails and calicoes I prefer. But, living in Moss Beach now, I'm looking… every day! February tends to be a big month in the bay for rubber lips, but unfortunately none of my surfperch operatives have checked in with me, so I'm not sure how the rubberlip situation is going. For those who don't know, the rubberlip is the heavy weight champ of the perch family. Big ones get up to the size of a small striper. Nothing more fun than hooking into a big rubber lip on light tackle. Hopefully I'll have something to report on rubberlips in the next few months.

Striper

Yes there was a brief striper bite around mussel rock and Linda Mar in early January. But before I could get my hair raiser off the visor in my truck (where they live), it was gone.  Striper bites in the middle of January tend to be like that. Poof! Here today gone tomorrow. 

OK that's going to do it for my late winter update. Stay tuned in mid March for the early spring update. Though… I doubt I will have much time to write once baby #2 arrives. Projected birth date: 03/14/15!!!

And don't forget the big party for my little artisanal eel book on 2/21/15, and a few other fun events in February  too.

Kirk-out

WINTER 2014 Coastal Update

 

Ok... before we get started there's a few things happening in Sea Forger Land:

 

Well it's that time of year again. If you're not on it already and you want to get on my herring list, e-mail me your cell #, and write “Herring List 2014” in the subject heading of the e-mail ([email protected]). Last year I did a whopping total of like 4 tours or something so you want to get on the list or at least let me know how badly you want me to call you when a spawn happens. In otherwords, I will call the people who are most excited about witnessing and learning about this awesome natural event.

 

Herring

There's a nip in the air, a little extra fog, a light drizzle and a few blinking lights in a few neighborhood windows. All of which spell one thing: Tis The Season For Herring! Or the very beginning of it anyway. Several of my operatives, working in extreme conditions in Sausalito report light spawns and “cormorants with big fat herring in their mouths.” Already! 20 throws of my ol' casting net failed to land a single fish though. No that's not true, I got a jacksmelt and a few pinner 'chovies. Nothing to write home about. Really herring doesn't get going in ernest till December. Hopefully I will have more to report then.

Crab pots at Fisherman's Wharf. Next to Sea Forager Truck

 

Dungeness Crab

Crab season started with a bang last Saturday. The bang being the sound of the bone crushing waves pounding the shoreline. In any case the first day was ugly, for the kayak crew on the city beaches but every day after that has been awesome. Unfortunately for coastal foragers (but happily for everyone else) commercial crab season has opened, and the inshore abundance will start to fade by late December. So get your snare and get out to the beach now!

White Sturgeon

 

Sea Forager fishing buddy, "Champion de la Banana"                                                                       and the lunker sturgeon he caught two years ago,                                                              in Nov 2012. The herring ran a week later.

A few lunker sturgeon have been showing up in the area between SFO and Coyote Point of late. A lot of these caught by shore casters using ghost shrimp and herring popsicles from last year. Can anyone guess why they're there?

Perch

When the swell and wind die dow for a few days the perch bite has been quite good. Lots of calicos and barreds down in the HMB area and some of the more rocky Pacifica beaches have produced epic perch numbers for some of the sand crab soakers.

Big Minus Tides: 11/20-24

The problem of course is that these tides are late in the day and this time of year the sun sets so durned early. So make sure to get to the shore by 4pm and be off the beach 30 min after sunset (if you're getting clams).

And that's going to do it for my coastal update this month. Check my tours page for upcoming coastal foraging tours and a mega low tide tour, and get on the herring list... Now!

Kirk-out