The Pacific Ocean is overfished...

...and I have proof! Not one of the four salmon my friends and I caught yesterday WNW of Half Moon Bay met the minimum 20-inch size limit. All of the private charter boats (ours was named "Gravy" - get it?) had a hard time trolling for salmon today. The 4th and final "shaker" was close, maybe an inch short, but as the saying goes, "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades". So much for bringing Victor some salmon fillets. Oh well, it was still better than being in front of a computer all day on a Monday.

I was told that on the last trip, the largest salmon caught was mauled by a sea lion as it was being reeled in, leaving Jeff with only the fish head (hmm, sake kama sounds pretty tasty). I suggested that it would be neat if that happened again, only this time a great white shark or killer whale could rise from the depths and poach the poacher. After all, we weren't that far SE of the Farallon Islands, which happens to be a great white shark "sanctuary".

It could have been more exciting had we been shanghaied by the crewmen of this Yang Ming cargo ship.


Jeff (R) & Carl do very convincing impressions of disgruntled salmon fishermen...


Craig managed to billy club (he couldn't find a Canadian hakapic) an endangered northern Californian Pantone 200 point seal (Chris), laying unconscious in the background...


Hmmm - maybe we should have stolen some Dungeness crabs from the crab pots we spotted on the way home. Once caught by the authorities, our excuse could be that we had succumbed to the hypnotic quality of the Alaskan king crab fishermen documentary series, "Deadliest Catch", currently airing on The Discovery Channel (Tuesday nights at 9). "Yes officer, I admit it. I was Jonesing for some Dungeness..."