San Francisco Area Reports 12/1/05

[Wahoo!]

PACIFIC OCEAN
Golden Gate: Somehow, it's a comfort to see the commercial crabbers back at it. To
see the boats, some old, most slow, crawling across the bay, sterns stacked with
pots. Or to walk the docks, watching the crab haul hoisted up. Or even to join the
celebrated and well-chronicled yammering and cracking at the seafood stands along
Jefferson Street, aware how they manage to remain authentic in what increasingly is
a downright inauthentic environment. And that's exactly what these commercial boats
bring, beyond the haul and your holiday treats. They bring authenticity. They fish
and they crab. The barnacles are real, the peeling paint, the blood on the knuckles,
the swearing and the smiles, too. Men and women making a living from the sea.
Without them, it's just the Wharf, and no better than a concept based on a history
long since gone.
Then again, they are the competition, right? For the sportfisher who's had the ocean
to himself the past few weeks, the start of the commercial season signals the
flagging of his own. Rocky Point to the islands to Pedro Point to past Deep Reef is
an obstacle course of clown-colored buoys by now, each loosely suspended above a
crab pot, each filling with Dungeness not your own. What can you do, except find a
tiny piece of ocean to call your own. On the crab-rockfish combo trips, more popular
by the season, the catch is still fine, both for the former and the latter. The New
Salmon Queen (510-654-6040), as a means of example, was out Wednesday/yesterday, and
had 25 limits of crab and to go with 25 limits of rockfish, plus six lingcod to 12
pounds. Decent weather, excellent fishing, why not? But some of that changes today.
To start, the season for lingcod and cabezon is now closed (with all rockfish to
follow at year's end, to reopen again in July). Then there's the weather. Wednesday
wasn't bad out there early, but the ocean and wind were teaming up ugly by
afternoon, ushering in today's storm. The weekend, though, looks somewhat promising.

Other places: The weather was sloppy, if not powerfully dangerous, outside of Bodega
Harbor by afternoon Wednesday. In the morning, though, boats made it out. The
Payback, a six-pack charter, had six limits of Dungeness on a to-the-crab-pots-only
trip. No trips scheduled today ... The Huli Cat out of Half Moon Bay's Pillar Point
has been dividing its time between running pots for commercial crabbers and running
sport crab-rockfish trips. Last of the latter was Tuesday, when the Huli Cat
(650-726-2926) had three limits of crab and three limits of rockfish, all either
hauled up or caught off Moss Beach ... Out of Monterey, Chris' Sportfishing
(831-375-5951) is still offering its own combo trips. Wednesday, the Checkmate had
eight limits of Dungeness and eight limits of rockfish.