FishingRomantis

Wind off the ocean and deep into the valleys and hills, and down at the harbors the boats were swaying against their dock lines, expecting no one.

Days like Wednesday happen in September, too, just not often, and there's that feeling again, resolute and unwilling, as you go about your nonfishing life, diminished but thinking ahead. We live that way by the big water, summer to winter, then in a bad year, it's winter all over again.

Someone will always try, though. Give 'em 30 knots straight between the towers of the Gate, look out from Fort Baker, and you'll still see one, a boat, tiny and familiar, bow to the wind, plunging toward something. No point in wondering because you'll never know.

Assume they're after a final catch of rockfish in the relative shelter of Diablo Cove. Watch the boat pass under the old bridge, watch it until you no longer can see it. Drink your coffee and don't think about it. Drive home, trying to remember how to pray.

Still, what is it, third full week of the month after August, not quite fall. There's life left in our mostly gentle seasons. When the wind settles, and it will, we'll squeeze a little more from the sunshine and calm.

Ease back a week, past what used to be the salmon water, come offshore, from the Gate or from Pillar Point, following the chart plotter or the other boats. Ah, there are a lot of other boats. This is the result of a slim salmon season and a real chance to put hard-fighting fish in the boat. Find your way to the albacore water.

Phil Havlicek and his friend Dan Thompson went out on Thompson's boat, the Blue Water, on Friday. They went Friday because the Saturdays and Sundays are so crowded the albacore sometimes go deep and refuse to come back up.

That's Havlicek's opinion, and he has been fishing tuna for years. Anyway, they went Friday, past most of the rest of the boats, out toward the Pioneer, and they trolled, and the fishing was slow. As the Blue Water - a 32-foot Cabo, quite nice, mucho shekels - moved in toward the other boats, Havlicek and Thompson ran out broom-tail zucchini jigs (plastic hoochie skirt added, just above the leader snap) and it was on.

They started putting in fish, singles and doubles, these 15 to 17 pounds, it was a fine time. They made two bait stops (live anchovy over the side, free spool, count to five, hang on ) and the bigger fish came up, longfins to 25 pounds, tearing off with baits at a speed that leaves you stunned, no matter how many times you've experienced it.

The two on the Blue Water stopped at 25 albacore landed, more than enough, both in terms of fish and number of hours needed to clean those fish. Nearby, one of the party boats had 40 of the cool-water tuna. It was Friday. The others could have the weekend.

We'll leave it there, because of the wind and the violent emptiness of Wednesday's ocean. Think about the weekend and the week ahead. Think about a day beyond sight of land, sun on your back and fish in the hold, a little glory in the warmth, before the long, dark cold.

The captain of a ferry boat on the Alameda-S.F. line looked out over the bay Wednesday, saw the wind on the water and the short chop standing up. Let's say he sucked a quick breath between his teeth, shook his knowing head, grabbed up the phone and said, "Not worth it."

However it went down, the ferry service stopped for the day, and that multi-ton detail, more than anything, explains the dearth of fishing activity. ... To find a mad man mad enough, we go far up bay, past the Brothers and Sisters islands, past Carquinez and Martinez, past most of the salty influence of the ocean.

Bob Sparre, for reasons only his clients of the day know, looked for bass Wednesday, trolling in the wind between Collinsville and Broad Slough and Sherman Island. He sucked at his teeth, too, with 20 to 30 knots of wind all around and the Delta water full of what he calls "witch's hair," which amounts to fine green strands of free-floating, gear-grabbing aquatic vegetation. He did what he could, as it was given.

They called it a day with eight troll-hooked striped bass landed, three of them legal size. Somehow that'll eventually segue nicely into salmon and rivers. ... Joel Sinkay, co-owner of Leonard's Bait and Tackle at Port Sonoma, offers up some shoreline fishing. His sum-up: "They're smacking the bejesus out of the bass at Port Sonoma and along Sonoma Creek, both sides of (Highway 37), with bullheads and mudsuckers."

It's still warm through the water at our Bay Area lakes, and that means good things for those soaking any manner of nastiness for catfish and not-so-good things for the trout fishers, who wait on the cooler days and nights. Wednesday and today and the past week, though, and in point of fact, have done much to help the trout cause and so, too, have the first of the fall-winter season's plantings by the DFG and East Bay Regional Park District. El Sobrante's San Pablo Reservoir was first visited by hatchery trucks three weeks ago. To date, not much in the way of trout catching has happened, but the guy answering the phone at the bait/burger shack at San Pablo says that's because so few anglers have been trying. Most of the emphasis still is on catfish, which can readily be caught back in Scow Canyon (you need a boat) and from the boat launch itself, with chicken liver, night crawlers and doughy home concoctions the most common baits. Also worth knowing: Because of low water, boat rentals are done for the season, which officially closes end of next month. The boat launch remains open, but it will close before season's end. ... Other plantings: Lake Chabot (Castro Valley), 2,750 pounds of trout; Horseshoe Lake at Quarry Lakes Regional Park (Union City-Fremont), 750 pounds; Shadow Cliffs (Pleasanton), 750 pounds; Del Valle (Livermore), 2,000 pounds. Contra Costa's Los Vaqueros Reservoir, Solano's Putah Creek and our own Lake Merced (North) also were on the schedule for a dumping of trout this week.

Salmon streams: Before finding his way back into the Delta, Sparre was on the Lower Sacramento River just above Chico on Monday, doing what he could to catch salmon. Given the way the fall-run has flopped, he did fine at it, all things not being equal. For the day, his group landed two salmon, a jack and a 17-pounder, along with a steelhead of 4 pounds. Last week, on three straight trips, three straight back-trolling days through the Grimes stretch, he boated one salmon each go at it, these in the 20-pound class. ... The American dropped to 1,500 cfs last week and, according to Sparre, is even lower this row on the calendar. Even if there were salmon in it (and there hardly are), you'd have trouble fishing it from a drift boat. More typical year the river would be moving along at 2,500 cfs, with salmon rolling and splashing evening through morning below the Business 80 Bridge. ... Up high and coast side, Harvey Young says a fine week and weekend of salmon fishing on the Klamath above the Glen went toward slow Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday, the estuary came to life with another push, and Young expects good things through the coming weekend.