Bonefish on the Brain Bonefish and all that relates (maybe a bit about tarpon too).

I continue to be surprised by the SF Bay. Odds are if you live in the Bay Area, you don’t actually fish the Bay. You go other places to fish. You travel, often far, to throw at all manner of things.

Fish live here too.

It never occurred to me that anything lived in the Bay when I first moved here. I figured it was a dead-zone, polluted and killed off long ago. And… that would be partly right. The commercial herring and anchovy fisheries collapsed long ago. There were toxic salt ponds in the south and the steady stream of heavy metals from the gold mining days. It just never seemed like much was living here.

The Bay doesn’t really let you get to know it easily. Since I found out there were, indeed, fish swimming in the Bay I’ve been soaking bait for sharks with my daughter. You never see the sharks. The water is generally not clear enough to see much of anything. There aren’t schools of bait-fish blowing up. There aren’t rays flying out of the water.

Sure, there are the seals up around San Francisco, but I’m guessing they are there for the Blue Bottle coffee (although one did just get munched on by a Great White).

This weekend I walked out to walk the flat in Alameda with a spinning rod and a Kastmaster. The water was flat and glassy, which is a bit rare. The Bay is a windy place and the water is usually whipped up. With the glassy water I could actually see schools of bait-fish moving about in two feet of water. There were a couple of smaller swirls, but nothing major.

And then… there was a hit on the spinner and a small halibut was landed… and then a schoolie striper followed by another schoolie striper. These were on a spinner, but if I can find them with any consistency, a fly is going to be deployed in short order.

There are stripers swimming around just a couple hundred feet away.

I am starting to wonder what else I don’t know about the Bay.

I got to the little bait shop in San Leandro and I asked about the stripers.

“Not happening” he said.

Conditions hadn’t been kind, it turns out. Low tides with high winds had muddied up the bay and kept the fish from finding the little spots one can find them on foot.

We looked over Google Maps anyway and he pointed out where I needed to go. I figured I’d go, just so I had the right place when and if the conditions ever were right. I had also screwed up the tides. I should have been there on the outgoing tide, not the incoming. The baitfish get pushed down to the fish… these fish aren’t climbing up on a flat to feed. So, lessons learned in quick succession.

I went out regardless. I had the new Redington Vapen and I wanted to see how it felt (it felt kind of awesome, btw). I found the water and quickly could see potential in the place. There was structure, current and bait, there just weren’t any stripers. There were a LOT of fish around, but they were elasmobranchs of the flattened variety.

Mr. Ray

I didn’t see a striper and given the amount of baitfish I could see and the number of rays I saw, I think they weren’t there. It was a sweet, sweet little spot and I’ll go back. I didn’t mind it basically being a homeless encampment. No one bothered me and one guy even offered to bring me a chair while I was wading… although I’m still not sure why.

If there were fish around, they should have been right there.

This was urban fishing. There were freeways and sirens and homeless people and what looked like a pretty good environment. It would have been good to get a grab, but this isn’t like throwing a line out in the Keys. You are either going to catch stripers or you are going to catch nothing. I caught nothing, but it was worth it to get out and see some new water.