After the size of the fish in Alaska it was a bit disappointing to go back to the smaller sized fish in the San Francisco Bay area. The fishing in the bay has declined on an annual basis for whatever reasons. I started out fishing for perch and flounder from piers. They almost completely disappeared over the course of five years or so. Then after too many skunks going for perch, I changed my focus to stripers and halibut. The striper and halibut fishing would be good one year and bad the next for some reason. I also went offshore fishing for rockfish and salmon. The limits for fish started to drop as the fishing got worse and worse so the twenty rockfish limit became a fifteen fish limit and a few years later was dropped down to only ten fish with some species totally protected from take. The ling cod limit went from five to three then to two fish. Halibut went down from five fish to three fish and stayed there. Salmon size limits went up and the seasons started to get shorter. Despite all the attempts at managing the fishery by limiting anglers takes and things the fishing has continued to go down in the bay area. I think that might be because it isn't the sport anglers that are causing the declines. The overall habitat destruction and pollution along with the reduced fresh water due to pumping the Sacramento river south to Los Angeles has more to do with the declines in my humble opinion. There are numerous long involved studies going on to try to find a scientific reason for the decline of fish but by the time the studies are done the fishery is going to be too far gone to recover. This has happened in the cod fishery on the east coast and in many other places as well.
I did do a long range trip of ten days down to Mexico. The long range trip was not much fun for me. I guess I got spoiled by fishing on small charter boats with two to three other people at the most. This trip on a cattle call long range boat was overcrowded and just a good example of the worst coming out in humanity. There was constant pushing and shoving at the over packed rail for elbow room while fishing, constant tangles and lost tackle due to tangles and some near fights as well as two groups of gangbangers that were threatening each other. The captain called the non gangbanger passengers into the wheelhouse and we talked about what to do in case the two groups broke out into a serious fight. I was appalled by it all and just gave up on even trying to fish. I just sat on the upperdeck in a nice comfortable chair and watched all the idiots fighting and scrambling for a few fish. The captain came up and tried to talk me into fishing some more but I just refused. It wasn't the captain's fault that the other passengers were all acting like assholes, although he could have booked less passengers and taken better control of the pushing and shoving at the rails. The fishing was not very good either. No tuna and two days of no fish at all got everybody even more stirred up. The food was good but not as good as I usually found on the long range boats. I was happy when the trip ended and I just walked off and drove home. I gave a big twenty dollar tip and the deckhands gave me attitude for it but I really thought they all did a poor job and I wasn't going to tip them for their lackluster job. Just because I was on the trip does not mean a big tip has to be paid. The tip is a reward and I normally tip well because almost every other boat I have been on the deckhands are hardworking friendly and helpful but in this case they were none of that.
We did have some awesome albacore trips. We would leave the dock around two A.M. and arrive at the fishing grounds around five hours later depending on where the fish were. For albacore the boats around the bay area troll around four to six or more heavy tackle lures and when there is a strike on the lures the idea is to reel them in hard and fast to try to get the school of fish to come up near the boat. The deckhands chum live anchovies around the boat as soon as there is a lure strike. The anglers on the boat that are not reeling in the lures drop live bait over and mooch it for tuna. To be in the middle of a school of tuna boiling around you is definitely an angler's delight. Hooking a thirty pound albacore on light tackle with no weight is a blast. Sometimes we would troll all day for nothing. That is always disappointing but on other trips we hit the jackpot of fish boiling around the boat and we can load up on albacore. Fresh albacore is great to eat. I always shared it with my friends when I was able to catch a bunch of it.
I also went sturgeon fishing sometimes. I tried to catch a monster but for years all I caught were normal sized ones to about a hundred pounds or so. Then one day I was fishing from a pier in the Napa River when I got a nice hard bite and I hooked onto a monster sized fish. It immediately took all six hundred yards of line I had on my reel and took me down to the knot. I figured it would break but miraculously the fish stopped running there and for the next two hours I was able to slowly crank him back to the pier. When it was about fifty feet away he surfaced and rolled. A huge crowd of people started to show up and watch the battle. It would run off a few hundred yards and I would work it back, he would roll and then swim off again. Every time he rooled the crowd cheered. After about four hours of this the fish just went and sat on the bottom. I could not budge it. I tried every trick I know from twanging the line to giving it slack but nothing would get the big fish moving again. finally an eighty pound swivel broke on me and the fish was free, It came up and rolled once more for the crowd and then slowly sauntered off again. I guess that is why it was so big. He knew the game. I wasn't the first disappointed angler he encountered. The State seems to think the sturgeon are endangered now but there seems to be the same amount to me. I don't understand the state's thinking process.
Now the government of California and the Federal government are starting to curtail fishing completely in large areas. The plan is causing the areas still left open for fishing to become overcrowded and hence over fished. I don't know what the solution is but the fishing is getting worse all the time. I do hope that something finally works and the fishery is saved from total collapse as fishing is a great way to enjoy the outdoors.
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