
Herring in McCovey Cove Jan 2013
Ummm... kind of embarrassed by this one. But I'm stepping forward to excuse my erratum on the basis of math anxiety. Or maybe just math ineptitude.
The following is the kind of question that led me to play hooky from school when I should've been learning math:
If the commercial herring fleet is allowed to fish 5 percent of the estimated spawning biomass in SF Bay, or 2,000 tons, what is the estimated spawning biomass?
Duh.
Somehow in figuring this out I came up with the ridiculous figure of 400,000 tons. And have been posting that everywhere and telling everyone that. Genius.
Added an extra zero, i guess. In truth the spawning biomass is estimated at somewhere around 50,000-60,000 tons. The highest estimated biomass in recorded time was 99,000 some odd tons.
So I'm really sorry to have to say, I botched this. Not sure where I posted it, but at least at this point if someone writes to tell me how far off the mark I was, I can claim that I caught the mistake first.
Begging forgiveness.
SAND DABS IN THE BAY!

C. Sordidus, The easiest fish to clean! One chop does it all.
Not the most appealing picture I know... but then again there's something rather sordid about sordidus. Maybe it's the slime, maybe it's the nasty isopods crawling around in their gills...
I mean like yuck. I forgot how disgusting these guys can be. The parasite looks like Cymothoa exigua, (or something durned close to it) and it's harmless, I know... but eee gaads. Eating away the host's tongue and then replacing it with its own body. That's not a very nice thing to do. (Not actually sure what the species is on this isopod, open to help here from the invertebrate crew).
Red Hot Perch Action

The Champion (de la Banana) of perch fishing!
Up and down the coast. Name a beach or a rocky promontory. Yikes. I haven't experienced perching like this in years. But then again, I haven't gone perching like this in years... the main thing has been my reawakening to the wonders of ghost shrimp. The picture below is Champion de la Banana's catch from the day before yesterday (1/16). I was out the day before that (1/17) and nailed some huge calicoes in addition to the biggest pogies I've seen in years. All the fish bit on the outgo. At one point I was all jazzed to have caught what I thought was surely the state record E jacksonii--a 2 lb. 4 oz. slug, only to find that the state record for black perch now stands at an impressive 2 lb. 9 oz. That's one big pogie! Who the hell is this Zachary Mitchell anyway?

Two stripeds, 10 pogies, two calicoes, and a pile perch--and this was the worst day of the week.
Okay. Nothing else to report. Fishing a lot as Kirk junior approaches, since I figure it'll be 11 years before I'm back on the water again. Strange as it may seem, I'm starting to get the night smelt itch again. Last year they ran in late January... you never know.
Back at it tomorrow.
Fish on!