Trying to fish this year in and around the San Francisco Bay has been one long, frustrating battle with seemingly incessant wind.  With diabolical regularity it churns the generally shallow water of the bay into a light chocolate mess, making the water rough enough to keep any kayaker without a death wish on shore, cursing.  It’s been so bad I avert my eyes from the gloomy conditions when I’m near the bay.  And the “experts” have shared a depressing prognostication, saying “get used to it” because stronger winds in these parts may be a feature of our climate change.

So far, only a handful of good fishing days on the bay this year stand out.  The year showed promise when, fishing with my brother in early March, I caught my first striper out of an inlet north of Coyote Point in Burlingame leading into a recovering marsh right next to Highway 101.  It hit a large Rapala X-Rap medium diving lure just as I was about to pull it out of the water.  A few casts later, a big striper turned on my lure in exactly the same spot, but didn’t take the lure.

May was a successful month.  Most notable was the day before my birthday, on a party boat out of Berkeley at the invitation of my friends Joel and Val, owners of the former – and deeply missed – bait shop at Port Sonoma.  Despite strong winds, I caught a big ling cod (two weeks before it became legal to keep them) bouncing small live anchovies off the bottom, on the eastern side of Angel Island, a seven pound halibut – my first ever – drifting with the incoming tide just east of Alcatraz, and three eight to ten pound stripers in repeated short drifts in raging currents in Raccoon Straights, between Tiburon and Angel Island.  This was certainly the stand out day so far this year.

When the wind miraculously showed mercy on another day in May, I ventured out with my kayak into San Pablo Bay from McNear’s Beach Park, in San Rafael on the way out to China Camp.  Armed with 18 live ghost shrimp, I anchored and bottom fished in the strong incoming tide about a quarter mile off of tiny Rat Rock island.  In about five hours I landed 200 to 300 pounds of eagle bat rays (several in the 50+ pound range), leopard sharks and assorted varieties of dogfish and smooth hound sharks, and a keeper-sized striper.  The rays are incredibly fun to catch from my kayak, making fast, long, powerful runs, and turning the kayak on the anchor as they get close.  One I never saw was so large it made an incredibly fast run and snapped my heavy tackle.  They can reach 100 pounds or more.  And getting up close and personal enough to get them off the hook – wings slapping water in your face, long tail with barbed stinger switching in your direction, sinister eyes staring you down – is not for the faint of heart.  But I let them all off with a warning – except the striper, which provided a delicious fish taco dinner for three.  It was a very good day and well worth the sore arms the next morning.

But the wind drove me away from the bay.  Escaping, I made a May weekend run up to beautiful Iron Canyon Reservoir, in the mountain woods of Shasta County, miles up a terrible road above the hamlet of Big Bend on the Pit River.  The water levels at Iron Canyon can change dramatically in the course of a single day depending on hydroelectric needs.  There’s an input from higher lakes (“the pipe”) that, when it’s on, creates an upwelling making incredibly productive rainbow and brown trout fishing in a cyclonic current.  Unfortunately, the water level that day was as high as I’d ever seen and the pipe was turned off.  From my kayak, in the morning I did manage to catch two respectable rainbows on night crawlers under a bobber at the pipe.  Then, trolling a gold Castmaster lure off a point my brother and I have had good luck at in the past, I caught another.  While the fishing was slow by Iron Canyon standards, the scenery was stunning, with bald eagles fishing from the sky and trout jumping all around me.

I saw no more than six other fisherman all day and no one else – except two flak jacketed, heavily armed sheriff’s deputies who woke me from an afternoon nap I was taking next to my kayak.  Ostensibly polite, they asked me countless questions, demanded to see my ID and fishing license, and searched my ice chest.  They even ran the good cop/bad cop routine while questioning me.  What they found the slightest bit suspicious about a 55-year-old fisherman napping on a spring afternoon on the banks of a remote mountain lake, I will never know.  But I had the distinct impression they were trying their best to find any reason to bust me.  I miss the days when police seemed more interested in keeping the peace and being a helpful presence, rather than treating everyone they encounter like a criminal and adversary.

One mid-July day the wind on the coast was lighter than the wind on San Francisco Bay.  I headed my kayak into the Pacific out of Half Moon Bay in search of ling cod and rockfish in the kelp forest just south of The Mavericks.  Just a few months earlier there had been 50-foot waves for the annual big wave surfing competition, but the sea was glassy calm now.  About a half mile off the outer Pillar Point harbor jetty, my plan to first catch some live bait worked out, but the lings and rockfish were not interested.  A dolphin swam by at one point and I later found myself in the middle of a school of anchovies jumping wildly all around me.  In hopes they were trying to escape predators from below, I feverishly cast my Yo-Zuri minnow lure into the churning school of bait fish, but got no takers.  Later, I heard that a guy fishing slightly farther out the same day in a larger boat caught a salmon and two white sea bass – of 46 and 53 pounds.  The serenity of my own Pacific outing was not disturbed by such goings on.

A few days later, I did a little expedition into the Ventana Wilderness, in the steep, rugged mountains east of Big Sur and southwest of Salinas.  I was searching for rainbow trout in Tassajara Creek, which flows into the Arroyo Seco River.  While spending time with my family at the Tassajara Zen retreat and monastery, I’d seen large rainbow trout – or steelhead that had come up from the Pacific by way of the Salinas River and Arroyo Seco – in the upper reaches of Tassajara Creek, so I figured fishing downstream, in bigger water, might be a good idea.  Since the area is so remote I also thought fishing pressure would be very light.  In my experience, if it takes a one-mile hike to reach a spot on foot, that eliminates 99% of the fisherman.

I drove south and, after some delicious chicken enchiladas in downtown Salinas, spent the night at a motel in the small town of Greenfield, just south of Soledad.  Waking at 4 the next morning, I drove east about 40 minutes to the end of the road parking lot at Arroyo Seco Gorge.  After a three mile hike into the Ventana Wilderness, the streams became legally open to fishing.  The scenery was beautiful and I encountered no one else on the winding, ascending trail.  My mind lingered on what would be the right course of action in case of mountain lion attack, since this seemed such perfect habitat.  My plan was to look big and menacing, then put up a fierce fight until the lion finished me off and dragged me into the brush.  There were abundant deer tracks and scat from raccoons and predators, most likely coyotes.  In places I could see where wild boar had been rooting.

After crossing an old WPA suspension bridge over the upper Arroyo Seco, I started fishing my way about a mile and a half up lovely Tassajara Creek, heading west.  The water was very low and I thought I might go absolutely fishless.  While the creek ran through trees that gave much appreciated shade, the temperature was quickly heading into the 90s.  Hiking up the creek – with my spinning and fly rods, fishing vest, and day pack – was fairly difficult, jumping from rock to rock, or wading through the water itself, to avoid the poison oak that was thick in places up from the water’s edge.  The maps showed a trail crisscrossing along the creek, but it was rarely visible.

Minnows were abundant everywhere, but I needed deeper pools if I hoped to find fish of any size.  While the low water made deep holes rare, whenever I had enough water to fish, I immediately caught very small rainbows (or juvenile steelhead) on Panther Martins, Roostertails, and other small lures.  They jumped and fought hard but – since they were 2 to 4 inches long – I managed to land them without too much struggle.  They all returned to the creek unharmed.  Perhaps one day they will go downstream to live in the Pacific Ocean and grow big and powerful for a few years, before returning to this remote mountain stream to breed.

On my first cast at the largest pool of the day, I had a big strike and saw a very large fish turn, then swim quickly upstream.  I quietly moved up the hole and cast again.  Another big hit and this time it stayed hooked.  About 20 inches long and fat, this one got my attention.  But as I gently pulled him up the bank, I saw he was a five pound squawfish (or “Sacramento pikeminnow”), a native considered “trash” by many fisherman.  But it was a beautiful, big, predatory fish and I was happy to have landed him.  As I tried to rinse him off in the creek so he’d be ready for his close up, he bolted.

The mini-rainbows kept biting but I caught nothing more of note.  The stream was remarkably healthy, full of crawfish and turtles.  One good-sized turtle took interest in me – a rare, large visitor.  He swam up to within four feet of me, putting his front legs up on a rock so he could pause and give me a good, long stare before darting off.

The hike back – in the heat of the afternoon after scrambling up the creek and back – seemed three times longer than the hike in during the coolness of dawn.  Finishing my last sip of water as I reached my truck, I headed back to Salinas for more fluids and another fine Mexican meal.  It was an exhausting trip, but well worth the effort to visit such a wild, little-known place.

Completing my week’s fishing trifecta, a few days later I met up with one of my oldest fishing buddies and a friend of his who fishes regularly at Riverfront Regional Park in Sonoma County.  Set among vineyards in lovely rolling hills northwest of Santa Rosa, the park has three small lakes that were once part of a rock quarry along the Russian River.  We fished the middle lake – Lake Wilson – for largemouth bass, the first time I’ve fished for them in decades.  Our friendly host gave us tips on what to use (soft green plastic brushmaster baits with large hooks set to be weedless, with a small sinker that would slide down to the bait) and where to fish (right on the edge of the plants extending into the water all around the lake).  He fished from a float tube while my buddy and I used our kayaks.

It was a warm late-afternoon, with a slight breeze (for a change).  After honing in my casting, I was finally able to start dropping the froggy-looking bait right on the edge of the weeds.  Once I was casting into the zone, I had a strike right away and landed a small bass.  Things went quiet for a while after that, as I worked my way along the edge of the lake.  Then I decided to try out a topwater popper lure, still casting as close as possible to the edge of the weeds.  Instantly, there was a huge swirl at my lure as it gurgled out from the weeds, but I missed it.  Our host catches three to five pounders here, so my heart was pounding.  In the next hour I landed four more largemouth on the popper.  Nothing too big, but catching this fish of my Midwestern youth – on topwater lures in a beautiful setting – was a blast.  My buddy and I vowed to put freshwater bass back into our fishing repertoire.

Despite this year’s windy conditions, I’ve managed to have some success and to explore some new places, new techniques, and new species.  The wind’s howling as I write this, but it’s not going to keep me from getting out there and enjoying the outdoors.  Fishing is such a fine excuse for getting out and soaking in the pleasures of the natural world.

Copyright © 2014, Daniel W. Hager. All Rights Reserved.