Fishing News

Thursday, August 27, 2009 (SF Chronicle)
The Fishing Report
Brian Hoffman

All the days on the pier at Pacifica, sitting out there, standing out
there, fishing and just often enough catching, and that one day when the
guy taking up space at the rail notch next to me said I was a bum. And
sure, I've been proud at times, but never that proud.
Those summers and the green ocean, all the July salmon and bass and the
fishermen and families, whole families, catching fish and cooking them
right there on portable grills, leaving the law to find its own dinner.
The kids out there on the good pier Rev. Herschell Harkins, working their
bait-catching rigs and selling dime-bright anchovies for a dollar each
until their hands were stuffed with bills. Or the white-haired midget who
sometimes walked out on the pier, looking into every fisherman's bucket
and making some kind of observation about the perch or crab or bullheads
or whatever else might have been in there, looking it over, grinning
plenty, and saying, "I'm a nice guy, right?"
Or the morning after a day and the long cold night, loading the cart and
my own odd young life and pulling for the parking lot, getting to the
pathway and stopping when an old guy came walking by. He had a thick rope
in his hands and coiled over one arm, and at the end of that rope was a
kid - grandson, maybe - and the rope was knotted around the boy's waist.
And out he'd run, this kid, right to the end of the rope, straining
against it, while the old man gathered in line until he caught up.
And they went on like that while I made my own way. Right on down the path
along the beach and into a less interesting time.

Ocean and bay: New Huck Finn skipper Jay Yokomizo with the report, having
run to the Farallones on Wednesday, loaded the burlap sacks with 14 limits
of rockfish, then motored east again, to the North Bar, where the willing
wallets landed 15 halibut to 14 pounds and a striped bass. The Yokomizo
weather report had it as good and bad, in that there wasn't much wind but
plenty of groundswell. The big boat Wacky Jacky also made the run to the
islands, out to the Pimple - so named for the tiny peak of rock covered in
white waves, which kind of makes you wish for a better story behind the
name - and the take was 17 limits of rockfish. ... Tuesday, one of the
six-pack boats out of Emeryville was fishing the South Bar and landed a
white sea bass. Capt. Jay saw the fish, said it weighed better than 40
pounds. ... Far from shore, to the islands, then beyond, the six-pack
charter Codzilla went looking for albacore on Wednesday. Just the captain
and another fisherman, and they found the tuna at the Gumdrop. Landed and
kept 21. North of there, out toward Bodega Canyon, the party boat Flying
Fish boated seven albies. ... Tides are small, which tends to favor the
halibut side of fishing. Boats staying strictly to the bay are working the
usual spots, Angel and Alcatraz islands, Southampton Shoal, the Berkeley
Flats and Treasure Island. Wednesday, the Salty Lady had seven of the
flatfish to 14 pounds for its seven anglers.
Everywhere else, except most: You can get behind the wheel and drive it
like a mule, three hours, five, away from here, to beaten hills and broken
mountains, high plains and a resting volcano, past Cohasset and a place
called Lomo until you ease into Chester, town of, where Tom Maumoynier
sells flies and lines from the shop he calls the Lake Almanor Flyfishing
Company, most likely without regard to irony at all. Chester is near the
shore of Lake Almanor, which puts you in that high-valley space between
Red Bluff and Susanville, and the lake has warmed with the summer, which
makes the fishing that much more interesting. The trout want cooler water
and the fishermen want trout, and where the streams dump into the lake and
the springs rise cold, you find both. There's Big Springs and the spring
by what they call the A-Frame, and Bailey Spring, too. To fish any of
these spots requires an actual boat or at least something of the blown-up,
belly-hugging variety, which then requires that severe lack of dignity
needed to waddle down to the water in swim flippers. Or rise again, son,
and just walk and cast at the Hamilton Branch, where the same-named creek
cascades into the lake and the trout are stacked below, nosing against the
oxygen- and bug-rich churn and flow. At the shop, Maumoynier is selling
Bird's Nest nymphs in olive, tan and black, Woolly Buggers in black and
olive, mayfly imitations, and flies tied up to look like pond smelt and
grasshoppers, for the hot afternoons. Of course, salmon eggs and hardware
work fine, too. A good day for a fly fisherman at Hamilton Branch is 10 to
12 trout landed and released, with the fish anywhere from a pound to more
than 4. ... At the coast, where the Klamath finds the ocean, the guides
are getting a start on a fall season not yet here. They worked the estuary
last week and into this week, trolling Kastmasters in silver and gold or
an anchovy behind spinner blades, and they landed king salmon to 20
pounds. Tuesday, the powers opened the dam gates, the river came up a
vertical foot, and the salmon in the estuary, taking the somewhat
unnatural hint, shot upstream. Wednesday morning, with the river cresting,
guide Dave Jacobs saw just a single salmon landed from the wide water just
inland of the ocean. So he trailered the boat, drove himself and his
clients upstream toward Blue Creek, launched, and in not much time at all
oversaw the landing of three adult kings. All on roe, sent out on a
quarter-cast and danced along the river bottom. Worth noting, too, that
there are steelhead in the runs and riffles, half-pounders and the
full-grown version. ... And the rest are the rest, unless they're
forgotten and nothing. Guy we know, now taken to cursing the teeth he has
left, used to load a 12-pack and himself into the beater and drive for the
Delta riddle, by roads, then levees, then whatever else. And he'd park and
he'd drink. Just sitting there staring out the dirty windshield, with no
regard for reason or much at all beyond the vast sky and stretched-out
land and a vague sense of being. Which might be the greater point of it
all.