San Francisco Area Reports 12/8/05

[Wahoo!]

PACIFIC OCEAN
Golden Gate: Still the perfectly good and supremely well-orchestrated
"run, slow, pull and fish," as the boats start into the short days of
the season, hoisting crab pots and working over clouds of rockfish
between the surface and craggy places. All said, cut and boiled, there
are worse ways to go into the coldest months. We have our Dungeness and
we still have our rockfish, although the season for the finned ones
comes to a close with the year.
Out of Emeryville, the New Seeker (510-654-6040) has been the busiest
boat in the party fleet, which, this time of year, hardly is saying
much. But the boat has willing customers, and that plus boat payments
and domestic obligations tends to keep at least part of the fleet
working. Wednesday, the New Seeker ventured out with a group of 16,
across the gray bay, under an orange bridge and into the quicksilver
ocean, where, a mile or 8 off Double Point, the boat throttled back to
gaff buoys and work the winch. Then it was 16 limits of market-grade
bugs. Then, after a move to the Farallon Islands, it was 16 limits of
rockfish, coming up in nearly all the colors of the local piscine
palette. Then it was home. Come January, these days on the water will
seem like pleasant fiction.
Other places: About the usual from ports semi-far off and sort-of near,
with crab combos out of Bodega Bay (707-875-2323), Pillar Point
(650-619-0469, 650-726-7133) and Monterey (831-375-5951). From Bodega
Bay, the top crab stretch, for sportfishers, is between Carmet and the
Russian River. Out of Pillar Point, it's off Montara and Moss Beach. And
from Monterey, they pretty much drop them wherever the open ocean is
shallow enough to keep the buoys above water. If you're rockfishing,
purple-black, chrome, white and blue remain the hot colors for
diamondbars, with a shrimp-fly teaser added about a foot or two above to
double-load your rod.