Making Lemonade

When life gives you lemons...

As a 'Glass-Half-Full' guy it did me good to find another 'Glass-Half-Full' Guy who's actually celebrating the low intensity start to Winter 13/14.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Outdoor scribe Tom Stienstra writes: "Drought has it's outdoors recreation benefits"

Mmmm...camping near Monterey and taking a Dungeness Crab/Sanddab Combo partyboat trip would help take the edge off...

Pacific Sanddab

Opening Daze

I see I haven't pecked out a blog in six whole months. It would be disingenuous to claim 'Writer's Block' when I'm neither a writer or a blocked writer...

Sloth doesn't quite describe my failure to communicate either...indifference would be closer to the crux of the biscuit, actually.

Those who know me personally will find this hard to believe, but I haven't had a single bee in my bonnet in a half an Earth orbit around our star...unless you count Politics...

I'm not a pundit, and my folks were of the Old Fashioned variety...Politics and Religion are best kept to yourself in Polite Company they taught...

In the three years I blogged here, I strove to keep the partisan politics out of CorduroyPlanet, successfully I might add!

So why now you ask?

It's the middle of April...I'll be down at the Post Office today buying the Registered Mail/Return Receipt treatment for the Income Tax documents going to the Feds and Sacramento.

There's been a pair of Opening days in the past week or two, and I noticed a bunch of ski resorts closing for the season in Sunday's online newspaper editions.

"One in, one out..." Richard Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) 'Casablanca' 1942

Major League Baseball  returned for another season on the last day in March, while Spring Training, the Cactus League and the Florida version have rolled up their tents and faded into memory for another year.

Salmon Season off the Central California Coast opened April 6th to good success for most out trying for them.

That was before this regime of high northwesterly winds set upon us...the Reno NWS Office says there may be snow in the High Country in the next few days.

So ends my first whole season wherein I did not set foot on My Mountain, or climb into my BR350 Groomer and grind around the slopes having way too much fun to realistically refer to my time spent at the sticks of said groomer as Work.

Truth be told? I'd do it for nothing if I had the bank account to sustain me!  As much as I've missed the life, I'm sure glad I wasn't grooming this season...it looked exactly like work save for a few weeks of storm fighting in November and December!

Lots of weak, under-performing warm storms delivered rain at the base and glop on top. Days and nights of above freezing temperatures for weeks at a time doomed the slopes to thin sooner than the resorts would prefer...

So four months of dodgy conditions, and little Hero Snow...I'm broke, but my Soul wasn't exposed to the nightly heartbreak that would have broken it.

These windy conditions are trying my Soul...there's plenty of tasty Dungeness crab and Chinook salmon just offshore, but the weather is all Gale Warnings all the time so it seems.

Chin up! This too shall pass...I'm so ready for a crab/salmon combo...our own Captain's Plate, caught fresh...

Soon...

Maintain

All this fishing is taking a toll on my tackle.

I stopped by the SturgeUrge Compound Saturday afternoon on my way home from a morning of errands. I had to pick up the GPS Chartplotter antenna for modifications and my rod and reel so I could re-spool the topshot of monofiliment.

My little AVET SX reel has a couple hundred yards of 30lb Power Pro spectra line on it and I run 60 yards or so of Red Cast Cajun 17lb line on top of it.

I didn't chose the Red Cast by color, it was the only 17lb line in the sporting goods store the day I needed it. I've come to love the stuff. When you're trolling three lines off a street-legal boat (no wider than 8ft-6inches), tangles become a problem...especially if one guy is running a plug when everybody else is running spinners...make a turn and you're not fishing anymore, you're knitting!

With the Red Cajun line, it's much easier to un-plait the resultant macrame mess!

So I stripped off the old Cajun line and I'll tie up a new topshot in the morning. An Improved Albright knot and a couple applications of PlioBond glue to fair the knot and I'll be good to go by Wednesday when weather permitting, we'll splash the F/V SturgeUrge into The Sacramento River near Rio Vista again.

The economics are impossible to ignore...at current market rates for Wild King Salmon - $22.99/lb at the Walnut Creek Lunardi's Market, bringing home just 3lbs of salmon pays for the trip! That's gas for the boat and tow vehicle, bridge toll, lunch and launch fees...

Did I mention that these fish are mostly bright chrome ocean-fresh fish or males just starting to turn red...think pastel pinkish?

The fish are right there...though I'm beginning to see Dungeness Crab Season on the distant horizon...

Upon closer inspection, Ocean Salmon and Dungeness Crab seasons overlap for eight days...very interesting...if halibut are late hanging around...with any luck...it could be a Captain's Plate kinda day...or days...

Gone Fishing Again

Take Two!

SturgeUrge and I are heading back to Wednesday's "scene of the crime" to angle for more chinook salmon.

I grilled some of Urge's fish Thursday for dinner, and it was delicious.

We worked on the F/V SturgeUrge Thursday...we hoped to rewire the bow-mounted electric trolling motor...silent running and all...

Well the bow-mounted troller was too far gone...more than wiring...rust never sleeps as they say...

No worries, SturgeUrge had a spare in stock. This one is a portable Evinrude unit. Some squirts of BR50 penetrating oil, install on the kicker mount and we're good to go. We added another rod holder, this one center mounted so we can troll three rods comfortably on these Delta trips. It's going to come in handy on dungeness crab fishing adventures too...it's a perfect place to stow the gaff that we use to catch the crab trap floats, and the gaffman can stow the gaff right there without handing off to the skipper while hauling the trap line.

I finished the wiring for my GPS chartplotter Thursday after the SturgeUrge outfitting session. We're going to need the unit to calibrate our trolling speed when we run on electric power. It will come in handy come crab season too, it remembers exactly where we deploy every crab pot, and if the fog comes in, the chartplotter will lead us right to each pot, and back to the boat ramp too.

No Rest For the Wicked

Not really a topical title, but it's all I've got this morning with a "Tired" nod to it. After a long hot day on San Francisco Bay, I couldn't forestall sleep long enough to pen my daily screed before sleep took me in it's heavenly embrace.

Halibut fishing stunk Wednesday...we had one raked bait with the telltale halibut teethmarks...

Spending the day boating on San Francisco Bay was awesome! We launched the F/V SturgeUrge from Richmond into calm winds and warm temperatures. Surprisingly, the only fog to be seen was south along the Golden Gate Bridge/Bay Bridge/Berkeley Pier corridor.

The forecast was for increasing winds as the Big Valley was forecast to endure the "hottest day of the year" Aside from the record tout, this is the standard forecast from May to October for San Francisco Bay, and it's a good halibut forecast in that the afternoon winds facilitate the last drift of the day, back to Richmond from the central Bay.

This week features the "best halibut tides of the year" as long as we're speaking in superlatives...a long incoming tide in the morning, in line with the prevailing winds, and a barely there afternoon tide swing. Halibut are ambush hunters, so-called "sight feeders", so small tide swings favor halibut by not stirring up the silt and lowering underwater visibility.

All of the halibut "conventional wisdom" goes out the window when the wind don't blow, and that was our problem Wednesday...we even trolled in an attempt to put our baits in front of a willing flatty or two...no such luck...and SturgeUrge is just "against trolling" in his DNA.

This has been a tough halibut season to figure out. There's been precious little in the way of halibut catch reports posted to my online fishing club. The scarce reports did begin on time, mid-March but these were all "skunk reports", that is all the details, but zero halibut taken. This too is par for the course for the early season.

Halibut season usually "turns on" mid-May, but the halibut reports didn't come. I attributed this dearth to the hot salmon bite since the salmon opener in mid-April. Since then, the salmon fishing has been limit-style fishing daily, with the size of the fish going up weekly. Conclusion? Halibut fishing is enjoying "lowered effort" in Fish and Game parlance...translated into plain English, nobody's halibut fishing because salmon fishing is as good as it's been in a decade!

The F/V SturgeUrge is a high-sided, deep-vee aluminum skiff of 17ft...at the bottom rung of Golden Gate Seaworthiness, discretion being the better part of honor, we've been unable to get out after the king salmon bonanza. SturgeUrge's boat is Pacific Ocean ready, but not through the Golden Gate. Bodega Bay, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay or Monterey launches all suit the boat, but these are long tows and the weather has been an issue for Bodega Bay.

We've been trying to get a Bodega Bay/Tomales Bay salmon/halibut/dungeness crab trip in since early June. It's been frustrating, the place didn't get the nickname "Blowdega" for nothing. Stiff NW winds and big swell have defined Bodega's waters for six weeks plus. Compounding our frustration, the only two day period when the winds laid down was the NASCAR weekend at Sears Point Raceway, which put a world-class traffic jam exactly in the middle of the Bodega tow that would catch us coming and going, adding an hour each way to our travel time.

SturgeUrge and I had plenty of time to muse about the halibut situation while said halibut weren't lighting up the festivities...we rehashed all the data, the fishing effort redirected to offshore pursuits, and how for three years running the tables were turned so halibut were hunted mercilessly when salmon seasons were closed to all angling. We averaged one halibut a trip one of those seasons ourselves!

There's one data point that sticks out for me...there have been reports of halibut catches outside of the Bay, usually a post salmon limit catch, by anglers trying to extend their day a little after "early limits". I wondered if this year's weak winter and snowpack have sent too little sweet water out of the Golden Gate to call in the halibut. I may have something there...or it could be that so far we've yet to have a perfect drift...where winds and tides combine to make a perfectly lifelike presentation to the wary halibut.

As SturgeUrge and I sped east across the Bay to set up for the last long drift over Southampton Shoal, we caught a glimpse of a harbor porpoise, only the second or third time we've seen the resurging  little marine mammal. The harbor porpoise's return to the Bay is further proof that the Bay cleanup is paying dividends.

Geekgasm

What an amazing day I had mining the internet! From the tech minutia of Formula One aero-developement (with great spy photos!) tweeted LIVE from Mugello in Italy's Tuscan countryside, to enough snarky tweets to sprain my funny bone, via some web radio, and some baseball blog fun, it sadly unraveled as the Junior Seau news unwound. Godspeed Junior. I hope his death spurs on the concussion studies of NFL players.

There's been a bunch of tech stuff streaming this week. I think it's so cool that SpaceX streamed the rocket engine test LIVE from Cape Canaveral Monday. The test went perfectly after one quick delay, and SpaceX will send their first Dragon capsule to the International Space Station later this month. Private spaceflight...I've been waiting for this since I was a kid listening to NASA space shots on a cheap transistor radio!

It's been a bad couple of weeks for offshore sailboat racing in California. The Slow Speed Chase ran afoul of shoals at the Farallones on April 13th, leaving one dead and four missing. On the morning of April 28th, the Agean went missing during the 65th Annual Newport to Ensenada Race with four souls aboard. Early speculation had the Agean tangling with a large ocean going ship.

The SoCal yacht racing deaths have been explained. Tech holds the answer. After lunch today, Latitude38 posted to Facebook the rest of the Agean story. It looks like no other vessel was involved. Agean's SPOT Messenger GPS track shows the boat was on a constant course and speed for more than three hours before crashing into North Coronado Island.

This SPOT Messenger GPS is a pretty cool gadget. A hundred bucks for the SPOT and $100/yr for the service looks reasonable to me for people who spend their time out near the edge. I haven't seen any SPOT coms on my Facebook or Twitter feeds...yet...

Jeez, SturgeUrge and I have been planning another Tomales Bay Dungeness Crab Hunt for a week now...the wind, weather and tides just won't cooperate. we're looking at after Mother's Day now...

The winds have turned blustery, and the skies have been darkening since noon today. The Monterey/SFO AFD said there was an 80% chance of rain on Tomales Bay tomorrow, with just a chance of precip here in the Inland Valley. My eye says it could rain here before morning.

Regular readers will remember Bruce Lee, the AT&T Park Red Tail Hawk. Bruce is on Twitter now. Not to be out-maneuvered, the AT&T Park Seagull signed up this week too. I expect an epic, dare I say Iconic, SnarkFest should ensue when @HawkBruce and @ATTSeagull start to tangle!

Finally, the numbers on the 2011/2012 Ski Season are coming out, and they're not good. Truckee's Local Fishwrap has the numbers from Northstar and Heavenly Valley. The two Vail-owned resorts report a 24.2% hit to skier visits from the slow starting season. How'd I know about the Sierra Sun story? They're in my Twitter feed.

Knocked Out!

That's what this cold did this weekend. It knocked me out...Late Saturday night I played fast and loose with bedtime to watch the rain-delayed Malaysian Grand Prix (and was rewarded with a bang-up race). I went to sleep at 4AM...and slept right through IndyCar's opener from St Petersberg, FL, and the NASCAR race from SoCal.


Darn thing is, now I'm sleeping from 2AM to 2PM in round numbers...the weather isn't helping either...a new March Miracle is tryin' to get born. Sunday (or was it Monday?) it rained more than 8 inches up in Marin county. I think we got 2-3 inches in the Inland Valley from that wave, and another inch or two today. Rain Wednesday, and more for the weekend.


It's been tough being sick and trying not to infect the rest of the family. Sister K started a new job Monday, and I wanted to cook dinner so she wouldn't have to, but I didn't dare to until Tuesday. I did a baked chicken dish with rice. I announced that dinner was ready, but everyone has to serve themselves, 'cause I don't want to give you my cold...oh, and there's salad in the refrigerator...


SturgeUrge phoned and we caught up. Salmon season opens April 7th, and we haven't been crab fishing since before Thanksgiving. This week's rains should flush the crab out of the bays, and back into our evil clutches!

Looking south from Richmond berth. Click for larger view.

We're trying to get a trip to Richmond in to tour the USS Iowa, but dodging these rainstorms makes it tough to visit the battleship because it's only open Saturdays and Sundays. They're painting the Iowa now, and servicing the hull and decks before she moves south to Los Angeles Harbor.

Comfort Food

I finally touched bases with SturgeUrge tonight. We (I should say he) barbequed dinner tonight.

Recently SturgeUrge was the lucky recipient of an antique Komodo Kamado BBQ. This Japanese BBQ was the model for the more widely known "Big Green Egg" BBQ. Urge thinks this one is 50-60 years old.

It does a great job making juicy treats of everyday meat and poultry. (SturgeUrge hasn't cooked any seafood in it yet)

Urge cooked excellent pork loin chops, and some chicken breasts that I had in stock. They needed to be cooked because they've been hanging in the reefer since last Friday! I used half of the tray Monday in stir-fry, and the family has been chowing on leftovers all week!

While SturgeUrge handled the flesh cooking, I made the vegetable course. I made Garlic-ey Baby Bok Choi with Shitake  Mushrooms.

On my way across the Big Valley Monday, I stopped in Vacaville at my favorite Asian market, Country Square Market. It's the last of (I think) three stores. Last summer the store two towns away from the Ancestral Digs closed their doors when their landlord doubled the rent with 30 days notice...I stocked up at close-out prices, but their produce and seafood offerings are sorely missed. None of the remaining Asian markets in the Inland Valley have baby bok choi as "baby" as Country Square...try three timed taller! These little babies are just an inch and a half tall...two inches tops! I end up cutting barely half of a tray in half before cooking!

Dinner was a hit! The Kamodo pork chops were perfect, and my bok choi was awesome too!

The main course was planning our next dungeness crab trip. The tide calendar says not this week...next week SturgeUrge is spending his week at Tahoe. We're hoping to get a day of ice fishing in, but there better be a cold snap first.

I reconnoitered Boca Reservoir before I came off the hill, and the ice is too rotten and thin to fish through. The forecast isn't promising either.

I will be grabbing some more baby bok choi on my way back up the hill...ice fishing my have to wait...Ocean Salmon is still two months away...

Another crab trip is definitely in order!

Random Rambling

From the "No News Is Bad News" Department:
Controllers have had no luck communicating with Russia's Phobos/Grunt Mars Probe. The errant spacecraft is still trapped in it's Low Earth Orbit after it's rocket booster fail to fire sending the probe to the Red Planet. Roscosmos the Russian Space Agency has been playing it pretty close to the vest, so precious little news has been forthcoming.

Unofficially, the Ex-Commandant of the Russian Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radar System believes that the Alaska based, high powered research radar system, HAARP caused the probe to misfire. Mars Daily has the story.

Officially, Russian President Dmitry Medevedev sounded like he was channeling Joseph Stalin when he called for the punishment for those responsible for the recent spate of rocket crashes and space blunders. Medevedev is up for reelection in early December. SpaceflightNow has the full story.

The ESA is modifying their 15 meter Maspalomas dish antenna on the Canary Islands to have a better shot at talking to Phobos/Grunt. Missing in action are NASA's radio telescope arrays. It turns out that the Chinese satellite hitching a ride to Mars aboard Phobos/Grunt presents a roadblock to NASA helping out. US policy won't let NASA help China's space program.

Finally, UniverseToday weighs in on the Human Cost of Russia's Spaceflight Troubles

I was scanning Twitter this morning
when I saw @CorduroyPlanet mentioned in a tweet
by @LincolnHwyAssoc saying: @CorduroyPlanet blogs about the #LincolnHighway:lincolnhwy.org/news/?p=967 
How cool is that? Dare I say...it made my heart twitter a little...

Skunked?
Not exactly skunked...for it to count you must first go fishing and catch no keepers. SturgeUrge and I had planned to hit Tomales Bay one more time Thursday,  but the next under-performing cold front will usher in high winds, Small Craft Warnings and Gale Warnings from Wednesday afternoon through Friday. Officially we've Scratched the trip. Dang, I wanted to have another 3-4 day Dungeness Crabfest!

A Life Aquatic

I've spent much of the last two days on or about salt water.

After motoring by the Red Oak Victory in Richmond Harbor for the past five years, I finally found cause to visit from the hard side. What gave me the long awaited nudge? Tuesday we went to visit a battleship.

After a decade at anchor in The Mothball Fleet, the USS Iowa has been moved to Richmond's historic Kaiser Shipyard #3 to be prepared for a tow to Los Angeles where she will become a floating museum.

The siting of the Iowa couldn't be worse...she's tied up a quarter mile from the nearest public space. Long lenses are in order, and though my pocket camera has a modest zoom lens, the big battlewagon deserves a big fat expensive telephoto lens on an advanced DSLR.

Even a quarter mile distant, the Iowa is an awesome sight. There's no mistaking the beautiful lethality of an Iowa Class Battleship when viewed from the bow. We spent the better part of two hours driving around Richmond's working waterfront trying to fine a close-in vantage point. The temptation to trespass was hard to resist, but resist we did. Finally after covering most of the compass in our quest for the perfect "Kodak Picture Spot" we headed down to the quay where the Red Oak Victory is tied up.

What a difference a little dry dock time can make for a nearly forgotten  77 year old Liberty Ship. The Red Oak Victory was shining like new. New paint from stem to stern shone in the brilliant November sun. Even the big bronze propeller received some love...years of marine growth was cleaned off, and the prop was sharpened! About a 6-8 inch swath of the edge of the blades had been ground, exposing the noble alloy to the sun's rays.

We spied an osprey nest atop the old Shipyard #3 crane, and we snapped photos and jotted down names of some of the other historic vessels lurking around the waterfront awaiting restoration by the National Park Service. Finally we headed home with a stop at the Asian market for a box of frozen squid.

Wednesday, SturgeUrge and I put that squid to good use on Tamales Bay where we reprised last week's dungeness crab hunt.

Upgrades included departure from the SturgeUrge Compound an hour and fifteen minutes earlier. The tides were more favorable, and we decided to crab "string-style" where we drop all our pot in a line, relatively close to one another.

Our early start allowed us to miss most of the commute traffic. In fact we arrived at the Boat Ramp two hours earlier than last week. The weather was even better this week, so still that we ended bobbing about for a half hour after we launched, waiting for the fog bank to lift enough so we could see the fishing grounds.

Fishing the string allowed us to make a halibut drift after each set, but the only fish we hooked was an angel shark...a sort of combination of a shark and a sting ray. They're called Guitarfish on the East Coast. We pulled the traps four times vs 7-8 last week, and we caught two limits (2 X 10 crabs each) vs 13 total dungees last week. Two thirds of the crab were big enough that we didn't need to even measure them.

Aside from losing a half an hour at the boat ramp on the way home, we still returned to the SturgeUrge Compound well before sundown. We flushed the outboard, washed the pots, boat and trailer, tow rig, and rods and reels. Urge steamed the crab, built a salad, and we enjoyed a great crab supper.

Upside Down

The latest storm has passed without so much as a wimper...figuratively speaking. Most of the fury was spent south of NorCal. Los Angeles and Ensenada Baja got the rain, while the Inland Valley received some sprinkles, and the High Sierra was left bereft of precipitation.

What's happened in ski country is typical of November. Without storm systems moving in, Temperature Inversions have been holding sway, making snowmaking impossible.

Looking at the temperature record from the Snow Lab, it looks like no-go at Boreal for the past four nights.

Oh, it looks like it might have been cold enough overnight Wednesday, but when you factor in the Relative Humidity, there's no way the fans and guns could make anything but rain...

I looked around the Tahoe Basin's Remote Sensors, and it's just as warm at 8700ft to 9650ft. The Reno AFD says this pattern is likely to continue for a while.

I'll try to give it no mind when SturgeUrge and I return to Tomales Bay mid-week for another shot at the tasty Dungeness Crab. The Bay Area and Sacramento weatherfolks are already touting rain for the weekend. This season, that's way too far ahead to bank on.

Bounty From The Bay

Tonight we enjoyed another Classic San Francisco Treat. Steamed Dungeness Crab with sourdough bread and a California wine...made all the more special by the company...in this case family.

Dinner was served in the dining room because we all wouldn't fit at the kitchen table. Your humble crab pot puller was joined by the Siskiyou Wing of the family, Sister K and her Hubby, and our Mom. The Siskiyou Wing contributed a Thai Hot and Sour Soup with coconut milk and a nice Pinot Grigio to join the Blanc de Noir and Chardonney.

The conversation was warm, the crab sweet and nutty, and the weather dry...like the bubbly. We tried to decide when we'd celebrate Thanksgiving. With all the families in the family now, picking when to holiday gets a little complicated...logistically speaking. As the hold-out single guy (and Thanksgiving Chef) it's only the weather that informs my availability.

I've been keeping a close eye on the remote sensors and webcams that confirmed the warming trend the NWS forecasters touted as they walked back the latest cold front's precipitation content and arrival time.

I hate to sound like a stuck record, but each of these Fall Systems is thumbing it's nose at the Forecast Models...arriving later than the models predict, and coming in at less than advertized strength. It may be a little premature to call a trend...so let's say it's trending towards a trend.

I'm liking my 75%-85% of average precipitation call for the Winter more with each storm. It will definitely be colder than average...take that to the bank.

Dungeness Crabs In Tomales Bay

Owwww, my achin' everything!

What a beautiful day on the water! It was an impossibly nice day up in Marin County. SturgeUrge and I got up before dawn, drove two hours to Tomales Bay, Fished for crabs for five hours, drove home for two hours, then cooked our bounty of thirteen good sized dungees and a handful of red crabs.

We enjoyed the San Francisco Classic Crab Dinner: Fresh steamed dungeness crab, a loaf of San Francisco Sourdough french bread, washed down with a fine Sonoma County Blanc de Noir sparkling wine.

That's all I've got tonight...and Good Night!

RoachCats

Last spring I wrote about Alpine Meadows and their snowcat concert stage contraption, the BandWagon.

Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle Travel Section featured a story on Mammoth Mountain getting into the SnowCat Re-purposing sweepstakes...Behold the first "RoachCat"

Food trucks are all the rage these days...gastronomically speaking...Snarky TV Travel Chef Anthony Bourdain has devoted a fair amount of time to the Food Truck Phenomenon in the latest seasons of his Travel Channel Show "No Reservations"

Some of these rolling kitchens look pretty tasty...I'll patronize the SushiCat, and of course the Fresh Dungeness CrabCat, when and if they ever set sail...

Speaking of Sailing...
San Francisco's bid to host the 34th America's Cup Regatta on San Francisco Bay looks to be in big trouble...The City seems to be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I'm not a worry-wart, but I had considered the "shoot yourself in both feet" option for San Francisco's Progressive Pols...the final decision is Friday December 17th...pray for the Cup!

There's been more than enough drama surrounding the City's bid for the Cup this week...I was relieved to see the Board of Supervisors approved the Host City Agreement Resolution Tuesday. Clearly I haven't a clue if the vote will bring the regatta to the Bay...I don't get the whole negotiations deal at this level...still, my fingers are crossed for my dream.

Grumpy Me

Another wet night Thursday...just Jeweler and me squeegeeing the mountain...Where were those "eye problems" when I needed them? I wish I could have napped away a half an hour of last night's soggy Hell...

Warm drizzle for going on three days now...the pack is so saturated now that you can't run full stick unless your cat has the latest fenders to prevent slush from flying over your tiller onto the fresh-made corduroy.

You usually want to run as fast as you can when the snow is this wet, it's the only way to get decent results.

Mercifully, we got finished and off the hill early...I pulled up to the fuel dock and there were my boss and the Big Boss. I spent a couple of minutes gathering up my gear and packing my bag and lunchbox before I stepped out to greet them and fuel up.

The Big Boss spoke: "Truckee Dave, how are you?" "I'm kinda grumpy this morning" I replied..."I've had enough of this wet, warm weather!" "We all have" Big Boss replied...he wasn't in the mood for our usual banter either...Grumpy is contagious on soggy ski hills...

Jeweler and I were outta there before 0930...I went grocery shopping...dungeness crab on sale for $2.99/lb...breakfast of champions...when combined with some San Francisco Sourdough and some California bubbly!

When I woke up, half of the champagne was warmed to room temperature...I made cooking wine...d'oh!

I laid in bed for three hours knowing I wasn't going to get the two more hours of sleep I wanted...

I watched the weather report...another warm night ahead...silver lining? Shouldn't be any more rain...fingers crossed...

10PM Friday and the remote sensors show the temps still holding in the mid 30's...they've been hanging right in that warm neighborhood for three days now...

Unless the cloud cover miraculously vanishes overnight, I'll probably get to bank 30 minutes of those two hours I wanted after all...

Tomales Bay Crab Fest

What a great trip to Tomales Bay!

Like "real" fishermen, SturgeUrge and I awoke well before dawn, made a thermos of French Roast, and set out in search of the Bounty of the Sea. Set out in this case means an hour and forty-five minutes on California freeways and highways with the F/V SturgeUgre in tow.

We arrived at the Miller Park Boat Ramp on Tomales Bay about 7:45AM, and were motoring onto Tomales Bay right at 8AM. The morning was glorious...sunny, with the barest hint of a breeze from the NNW, the hills have all turned green with newly sprouted grass from the Fall rains.

Hog Island from the North

We crossed the Bay just to the South of Hog Island, and set our first pot by 8:15AM. We set our second pot 10 minutes later and set about trying to catch some bait to hunt halibut with.

After a half an hour fighting huge patches of eel grass, and not getting so much as a nibble from the baitfish, we returned to the first pot  for a look-see...

SturgeUrge slid the boat along side the pot's buoy, and I grabbed the buoy line with the gaff. Handing off the gaff, I started pulling the line and directing Urge on where to steer... neutral or in gear...I've got the line in the pulley...the pot's right under us...I've got the pot hanging...here's the pot bridal...Lots of crab!

The first pot had a dozen crab in it, after about a 45 minute soak. Six Dungeness Crabs and six Red Rock Crabs. Three of the dungees went back overboard to grow bigger, and the small reds went back too. Every crab Wednesday was a male...sport crabbers in California waters may retain crab of both sexes, but most sport crabbers release the females...they are the future of the resource after all!

We enjoyed a pretty relaxing morning. We drifted the edges of the eel grass patches between pulls, trying to jig up some live halibut bait, but the drift wasn't right.

We got into a routine of pulling and resetting every half an hour. When we pulled a pot of mostly reds, or not as full of crab as we'd like, we'd leapfrog our other pot and move closer to the ocean. Most of the day we were 3-4 miles from the Pacific Ocean proper. Tomales Bay empties into Outer Bodega Bay, and that opens to the Pacific.

Every time we pulled, we took a minute to estimate and record the time, wind speed and direction. I recorded the data so I could compare our observations to the two nearby PWS's I'd found online.

We gave up on the live bait quest, and drifted for halibut with frozen anchovies...without a bite. The wind began to freshen after 10AM, and really started to blow around noon.

We weren't the only folks out crabbing Wednesday. The Bay was covered with crab pot buoys. Four or five boats were pulling and setting in the same general area. Our pots continued to come up with keeper crabs every pull, but the first pulls of the day were the most bountiful.

Finally we moved both pots well towards Bodega Bay, and made lunch. The winds were now up to 10-15 MPH, making pulling the pots and tending the pot lines a little more interesting than we'd like. The F/V SturgeUrge has tall sides...a lot of windage, and it weather-vanes easily...we ended up pirouetting around the pot line once or twice. We moved the pots into the slight protection of some coves, and still boated crabs.

We decided to leapfrog all the way back South of Hog Island for the last set of the day. We were recording winds now 15-20MPH. I said: "Time to break out the "Victory At Sea" music".

We were glad we were doing our last sets...I had the "Popeye Arms" thing going...my hands were starting to lock in the claw position...and a crab got a good pinch in on us both...we were getting tired and a little careless (when handling the crab anyway)

During the last set, we counted and culled the crabs in the livewell...they were quite frisky...a big Red Crab grabbed Urge's hand in that fleshy spot between his thumb and forfinger, and he almost tore the crab in half ripping it loose. (his crush wound wouldn't start bleeding for more than two minutes) Then a commercial size dungee grabbed my thumb, and I instantly winged him off. He had me at the base of the thumbnail, and I got a small cut on the thumbprint side. This morning, I can see a black blood blister under the nail.

I finished the count and cull. We retained 14 Dungees and six of the biggest Reds. We retrieved the boat without drama, made it ship-shape for towing, and were on the road by 2:45PM Even at the ramp, the wind was merciless...and we were tired of it pushing us around. It was great to get our boots off, our street shoes on, and into the Tow Rig's comfortable cocoon.

Back at the SturgeUrge Compound, SturgeUgre steamed the crabs, and I ran downtown for some fresh salad greens, a loaf of sourdough, and a nice chardonnay. A classic crab feed...there's nothing like it. Personally, I like Dungeness Crab more than Maine Lobster. When cooked the crab count went up by two Reds...we were more tired and beat up out on Tomales Bay than we realized.

While the crab were cooling in the kitchen sink full of ice water, I surfed the net and compared the PWS data to our observations. The Bodega Bay PWS was pretty representative of the conditions we observed five of so miles down the Bay. The Victory At Sea winds were 18MPH

The nearby Point Reyes PWS wasn't recording it's data Wednesday so we'll have to try again next time out.

On the drive home, we decided to forgo the halibut fishing when the days are this short. We'll ad two pots to the arsenal, so we can just set the string of pots, and motor back to the beginning of the string and start pulling and resetting. We'd do the same number of pulls, but we wouldn't be killing time so we' get in, get our crab, and get out earlier.

If the weather holds, we'll test the concept next Wednesday.

New Challenges

The latest cold front has blown through, and my world is drying out a little. A busy week ahead with the promise of some Dungeness Crab fishing on tap.

Sunday morning I heard a traffic bulletin on a Sacramento radio station citing the messy conditions over Interstate 80's Donner Pass. As luck would have it, I was actually on the CHP's Traffic Incident Website wondering when chain controls would go up given the spate of spinouts and rollovers that littered the highway between 8:30AM and 9:30AM. The Kingvale webcam showed rain, but Boreal's images featured snow and lower visibility. Controls went up for a short time around 10AM.

Sunday Morning's 9:43 view

Sunday evening was lots of fun! I stayed in and  followed weather and road conditions like a ball game, leading up to the 11 O'Clock Newscasts. By 11PM the cold front was just a memory in the Valleys, but the TV WeatherFolks were overjoyed to have something wet and white to report. Up top over the High Sierra passes, the webcams showed the lingering snowfall. (I love that the Media is making heavy use of webcams...how long before they start sponsoring HD webcams?) Chain controls were up for the second time Sunday.

Monday Morning Roundup
I woke up well before sunrise Monday (I'm no fan of Daylight Savings Time, sorry 'bout that Ben Franklin) I listened to some radio weather and traffic before I toured my suite of High Sierra websites. I caught weathercasts from Oakland and Sacramento on TV...it's all over but the shouting...the WeatherDudes I watched all teased "a chance of rain Tuesday", but a look at the AFD's says it'll pass us to the North.

@borealmtn showed up in my Twitter feed to announce their Tuesday Reopening. I looked at their webcam and the Groomers are already out pushing the new snow around. Nice to see the snowmaking fan blowing snow.

The cold air behind the front should hang in all week making for favorable snowmaking conditions. When I saw the fan pumping the man-made I looked at the neighboring PWS's, and the temps should warm to shutdown territory before noon.

I see that the storm closed the first mountain pass for the Winter. Hwy89 through Lassen National Park is closed for the season with 27 inches on the road near Lake Helen.

SturgeUrge called this morning, it's still sloppy wet at the SturgeUrge Compound so our construction project will be on the back burner for a day or two...I reminded Urge that Dungeness Crabs don't care if it's wet out...we're gonna try to get out to Tomales Bay Wednesday...weather permitting.

OK, Crab Fishing is ON for Wednesday! We're gonna have to get up at the crack of night to get over to Tomales Bay in time to hit the optimal tidal currents for success. I picked up two pounds of squid bait and moved my crab pots over to the Compound...we'll do some more work Tuesday afternoon before we prep and load up the boat.

I spent some time prospecting online for some relevant PWS's for Tomales Bay...I ended up resigning myself to the fact that the sparse population up there is going to make for some big-time extrapolation for real-time weather data. No matter, I'll record my observations each time we set a pot, and compare my observations to the two nearest remote stations...nothing too fancy at this juncture. Estimated windspeed, direction and time are all I'll need.

Buoyed by my PWS Tomales research, I surfed back up to Boreal and Donner Summit. Things are looking up and they'll be looking good Tuesday when they reopen at noon.

Boreal's fans are pumping the man-made big time! A look at Sugar Bowl's webcam shows they have their fans blowing snow too.

Specious Weather Behind Me

Thankfully, the Weatherman was way off today! I was a little worried when I checked the NWS SFO/Monterey AFD and Marine Forecast. Yesterday's Tomales Bay forecast for WNW winds 10-15mph was upped to this morning's 10-16mph!?

SturgeUrge and I hit the road about 0730...there was some barely-there "drizzle" on the windshield...again, contrary to the latest forecast! We arrived at the Miller Park Boat Ramp at 0930 to view a glassy, flat Tomales Bay under cloudy but dry skies.

I rigged and baited the crab pots while SturgeUrge chatted up the other fishermen getting their rigs ready to launch. Word was, no legal dungeness crabs around, halibut fishing...slow. Some helpful anglers advised us to watch the course they ran from the ramp to the main bay, as the water was pretty thin.

We launched into the mirror-like water, followed the Good Samaritans' course until the depth sounder said five feet, and blasted across the Bay to the West shore to set the pots.

With the crab gear deployed, we started drift fishing for halibut. There was barely any wind at all...at least the flooding tide moved us some. We had some raked baits, but no bites that got our attention. We drifted for an hour and ran back to the crab gear.

After a one hour soak, the first pot had a bunch of Red Crabs and a half a dozen dungees! The reds were huge! Three of the dungees were keepers, too. The other pot was loaded with dungees...maybe 15! Most were just a little short, but a couple more were keepers, and went into the livewell.

The day went like this as the sun came out, and so did a small armada of fishing boats and kayak fishermen. We chatted with a couple of the kayakers...nobody it seems was hooking any halibut. One kayaker, whose "handle" I knew from the NorCalKayakAngler's website, was crabbing too. He had crabs in the boat, but wasn't doing any better than the rest of us when it came to the halibut.

We kept at it, drifting for halibut, and pulling the pots every hour. After the third pull, we moved the pots because of diminishing returns, and because I recognized an undersize dungee we'd pulled three times! Poor little fella had one normal claw and one tiny "baby" claw. The Tomales Bay crab had many barnacles on their shells and claws...many more than we see in the Pacific proper.

The day flew by, we were running on adrenaline and didn't ever get around to making sandwiches. As the crabs kept coming aboard, the livewell filled with nice crustaceans. The baitwell was working like a champ...KirkVallus' electronic wizardry was paying off in spades! Thanks KV!

We weren't catching halibut, but we were caring less and less the more the livewell filled with tasty crabs! Finally, SturgeUrge brought a halibut aboard! It was about 20 1/2 inches...too short!

California Halibut must be 22 inches to retain in California waters...Urge's halibut went about 1 1/2 inches. It was impaled on a hook's point, but it was only a "flesh wound"...nothing important felt the "sting of steel"...in fact, the little flatfish was so small that he was still transparent. It was cool, it had the signature halibut spots, both eyes were on top, and Urge said he could see right through the skin. I snapped a quick photo, and the little guy swam away when SturgeUrge put it back in the Bay. Alas, in the bright sun, I couldn't see the LCD screen, and the camera moved, or the boat moved, and the focus was way off.

As the haul of crab grew, we started thinking we'd better leave earlier than we'd planned, so we called: "One more drift"...we'd recount and remeasure the crab, and hightail it home because there was an hour or two of crab cookin' and cleaning to do...not to mention a fresh dungeness crab dinner to savor!

We went a little further northwest for our last drift, and before long, we drifted out of the wind shadow of Point Reyes and we really started to scoot! Just then, SturgeUrge's rod almost jumps overboard! Urge grabs it, sets the hook, and starts reeling. "Anybody home" I asked. "No, it's got weight, but no head shake"...then Urge says: "Get the net!" There's a big dungee hanging onto my bait!" Then, "I'm not making any headway...start it up and we'll back down on it" That's when Urge realizes he's snagged on a crab pot rope, entangled with a bunch of eel grass, and that big crab hitching a ride. I bumped the outboard into and out of reverse, handed the landing net to SturgeUrge, he expertly caught the crab as it cleared the surface and let go, dropping right into the net.

As this was going on, we realized what we had here...A crab pot that was lost when a boat ran over the pot's line...I grabbed the gaff, and caught the crab line. SturgeUrge picked up the other fishing line that was still out, and I started to pull the derelict pot's line.

There were no line weights on the hardware store black and orange nylon rope. You've got to weight the floating line, or it's bound to find a boat's propeller.

I hoisted the pot over the gunnel, and it was loaded with dungeness crabs, and a lone red crab. We whooped it up, high-fived each other, and generally enjoyed our great fortune. There were another three or four keepers in the lost pot, which was poorly rigged...under-weighted, no line weights, no hanging bait...just a giant bait cage. We guessed it was lost last weekend, because the line didn't have any growth started on it yet...So some poor schlub lost his new crab pot on Father's Day...sorry about that, DaddyO...

So, today turned out to a day for the archives...catching a lost pot with a rod and reel is rare enough...but grabbing that hitchhiker crab, and a potfull of dungeness...well, that was just icing on the cake!

We talked to some other anglers back at the ramp who did catch a 10lb halibut today...they said they've been catching halibut all week...with live jacksmelt for bait. They jigged up the smelt from the edges of the eelgrass patches in the shallows of the Bay. They were one of only two boats we saw using the local live bait today...Noted for next time...jacksmelt were the prey we saw the ospreys winging back to their nests too.

Two hours on the highway later, we were back at the SturgeUrge Compound by 6:30PM. SturgeUrge fired up my cooker and steamed the 20 crabs in two batches, while I flushed the outboard motor, washed the rods and reels, and hauled in all the stuff from the tow rig.

I set the table for the regal spread. Two flavors of crab, french bread, and a quick homemade coleslaw, enjoyed with a great California Sparkling Wine, Domaine Chandon Blac de Noir.

In a word...perfect.

Suspicious Weather Ahead

The weather took a change today. It's been so hot in the Inland Valley that yesterday I moved a market umbrella into the Diggins to give me a longer window to work in.

Today, the marine layer held on all day, and the temps didn't get out of the high 50's. On top of that, the winds were blustering most of the day...not good for Friday's Tomales Bay Crab and Halibut Hunt with SturgeUrge.

When I had a spare minute, I checked the Marine Forecast. Friday's weather is doable...better than today in fact. Just the same, I looked at Reno's AFD to see if this was their "Baggy Trough" Not a word, though the cooling will be short-lived. A strong ridge will build in by Tuesday, warming things back up to normal.

I get the feeling that we're gonna go back and forth...hot and mild all Summer.

I think I'll sneak in some fall/winter-type veggies in the Ancestral Diggins.

Damn right...I am tempting the Fates!

Fish Out Of Water

Let me tell you about our Monday. We'll call it the Magical Misery Tour...

As is our custom, SturgeUrge and I went fishing Monday. We've had more than a little trouble getting our time on the water this Spring...as I've chronicled in this space.

We started planning mid-week. Gathering the intelligence wasn't easy though...there's been big swells, or big winds, or both all week, limiting the effort and consequently limiting the fishing reports! Throw in the biggest tides of the year, and there wasn't much halibut encouragement to be found at my usual haunts.

The SF Bay/San Pablo Bay/Suisun Bay Marine Forecast didn't help either...all week the same ol' same ol'...SW winds 15 to 25 knots every afternoon. Monday held a big Minus Tide smack dab in the middle of our launch window.

I woke up really early Monday morning...before 0500. I did a lap around the internet looking for some straggling reports...no such luck. There was a hiccup in the Marine Forecast, however...SW winds 15 to 25 knots in the afternoon, except 15 to 35 knots around Angel Island...dimly noted...

Out of bed before 0700, I made a pot of French Roast and packed the cooler. Siced grilled pork chops and smoked provolone sandwich fixins, sliced cantaloupe, gardinera and kimchee, plus condiments and India Pale Ale.

I was at the SturgeUrge Compound by 0830, and we hit the road by 0845. Traffic was brutal on Hwy 24, so we took San Pablo Dam Road to Richmond. When I got out to feed the gate a 10 spot, the wind was already 25 knots! We noticed there wasn't a single boat trailer in the lot at the ramp, and decided to take a spin down to the waterfront to get a Big Picture look at conditions. There was a whole flock of whitecaps...even behind the breakwall! Plan B time.

We really wanted to go for halibut...but it wasn't going to happen today. We decided not to fight City Hall...big minus tide, plus big tide swing, equals Sturgeon Fishing!

We still had that near-gale to reckon with, so we decided our best option was Montezuma Slough north of Suisun Bay in Solono County. We crossed the river via the Carquinez Bridge, and took Hwy 780 East so we could eyeball the Carquinez Straights for whitecaps, and stop in Vallejo for some Sturgeon Bait.

The bait shop was gone! Turned into a restaurant! We drove another quarter mile to the Vallejo Boat Ramp and Bait Shop. We'd wondered out loud a couple of times over the past few days..."I wonder if they've dredged the Vallejo Ramp recently?" We pulled up to the ramp and burst into laughter...there was 40-50 feet of mud between the bottom of the ramp and the Mare Island Straights! It was still an hour and a half before the bottom of the -1.8ft Low! Throw in an abandoned tire stuck in the mud, and you've got the picture!

Our little fishing trip had morphed into a long Sunday Drive (with boat trailer)!

But wait! We weren't done with our Great Circle just yet...we still had another half hour to get to the Belden's Landing Boat Ramp on Montezuma Slough!

Rearmed with a quarter pound of frozen Grass Shrimp Bait, and a half dozen digital photos of the buried launch ramp, we headed east to what was left of our day. We arrived at Belden's Landing, and the winds kept following us all the way! Now we were about thirty miles east of the Bay...hella Hot Wind!

We elected to run upstream a mile or so, set anchor in 25 feet of Chocolate Milk colored water, and threw out our offerings...it was now 11:00AM! The extra miles east had reset the tide clock too...there was another hour or two of outgoing tide before we'd lose an hour or so at the slack.

At slack tide it's impossible to bait fish on the anchor. No tidal current at slack make you vulnerable to the whims of the wind...on anchor, the boat wags around the anchor like a dog's tail at dinnertime.

We picked up the baits and I made lunch. We took the opportunity to look around at our surroundings. The scene was wonderful...the wind dappled water, some glassy water reflecting acres of tules and cattails, the towering golden hills with Wind Turbines on all sides, lit up like Christmas by the blazing afternoon Sun...God's Country, but hot as blazes! There was one big sturgeon jumping clear out of the water to taunt us. We were getting bites...nibbles really...baby striped bass, stealing our bait. SturgeUrge caught and released one baby striper. If it was a trout, it would be called Pan-Sized. The little dude was maybe 10 inches long. We wondered why it was even eating the bait- it had a big belly like a black bass before spawning...weird.

That was it...our fishing trip to Purgatory...or next door...I got home and drank four or five pint glasses of ice water...I almost got re-hydrated before bedtime snuck up on me.

Undaunted, we've already planned to go next Monday. We're gonna hit Tomales Bay for Halibut and Dungeness Crab. KirkVallus is coming to town later this week, and mentioned that he wanted to go fishing while he was in town...this should really be fun!

For all the driving we did Monday, we would have been better off going up to Tomales Bay in the first place! Next Monday the tides are tailor-made for halibut hunting, and crab fishing!