The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill got nothing on these birds

Okay, maybe they do. But you must admit: the gulls of San Francisco Bay look more dignified--majestic even--when they're not battling over a raw chicken neck.

Gull fight!

I caught a mess of crabs yesterday. I even took pictures. But if you visit this blog, you are probably weary of the crab pictures. I know I have. Crabs are simply not photogenic in the manner of, say, a channel catfish or a northern pike.

So in lieu of crustacean porn, I submit to you this rowdy scene I witnessed on the San Francisco Municipal Pier the other day: a gull fight!

The cause of the conflict? Fervent disagreement over which gull was entitled to eat the raw chicken neck a crabber casually tossed their way.

Click on the picture for a better view.

Down at the Municipal Pier, harassing crustaceans again

I hit the pier for the first time in a long spell this afternoon. My weapon: frozen chicken livers, which I set in the bait-cage of my hoop net, and hurled into the briny depths.

By my standards, the action was fast. Exhibit A, to the left, shows an 11-crab haul, one of several big catches. Obviously, the ocean floor was crawling. Unfortunately, as you can also see in Exhibit A, it was crawling with dinky crabs. So in the end, I chose to be a magnanimous god and spared 'em all.

When I tossed the leftover chicken entrails into the water, the gulls went wild, squawking and brawling with each other like stock brokers swept up in a trading frenzy.

It was cloudy and cool, so there weren't many people on the waterfront. A young, spaced-out dude who called himself "Aspen" imposed his company upon me for about 20 minutes. He claimed that he'd been abducted by angels and shown the earth from some sort of glass spacecraft/mansion. A great triumph of architecture, he insisted. He also talked about some famous lover he'd had in Europe. I couldn't quite follow that story. Eventually, to rid myself of these monologues, I took out my cell phone and called Bob Mosedale. I jabbered for a while, and Aspen drifted down the pier. Soon, he was engaging a baffled, young Australian couple and I was left to contemplate the undeniable usefulness of the mobile phone.

Pathetica

I arrived at the Pacifica Pier yesterday in an optimistic mood. In my last crabbing foray--at the SF Municipal Pier--I had good luck with chicken livers, so I picked up a tub at Safeway before driving to Pacifica.

The pier was unusually dead. The few crabbers who were working the waters looked vaguely demoralized. I baited both the hoop-net and the snare, and, feeling cocky about my super bait, set them in the deep about two thirds up the pier.

As it turned out, my optimism was utterly misplaced. The only catch: the sand dollar you see to the left, which came up in the otherwise empty hoop net. I thought it was fossil, until I brought it home and J set me straight.

Feeling crabby, in the good sense of that term

The sorry truth of the matter: the Man of Constant Leisure hasn't gotten much fishing done lately.

There was a half hearted effort in frigid Minneapolis last week. I punched a hole in the Mississippi River ice and offered up a few fatheads. The disinterest from the local fish community was appalling.

When I got back to San Francisco, I heard that the Municipal Pier, which was closed because of the Cosco Busan fuel spill a month ago, had re-opened. Today I decided to check out the scene.

An old Chinese guy was working the ocean side with a fishing pole and didn't appear to be having any success. At the end of the pier, however, three Filipino dudes seemed to be having luck with the crabs. Other than that, the pier was oddly depopulated. I enjoyed the extra elbow room as I commenced crabbing.

For bait, I used the entrails from a tasty organic chicken I cooked for J last night. I will say, immodestly, the dinner was quite delicious. As you can see, the crabs of San Francisco Bay enjoy organic chicken, too.

I didn't catch anything of consequence but there was some fast action. A few times I pulled up my hoop net to find six or seven crabs crawling inside, looking as baffled as a crustacean can. I also managed to land some red rock crabs (like the sad fellow posing in front of Russian Hill) with the snare, which I was casting with the old catfish pole Charles gave me.

I thought about keeping a few of the bigger specimens for dinner. Then I talked to a Parks Service game warden who was trolling for violators. He told me he'd watched some women crabbing at Fort Mason and could see that the crabs still had fuel on them--this, he noted, in spite of Officialdom's position that Bay crabs are entirely safe to eat.

After that, I concluded this was a strictly catch and release operation. Still, it was fun, as you can see from my smiling mug (and, yeah, that's Alcatraz in the background).

From the Gone Fishing Archives: On thick ice

As much as it pains me to admit it, most of my ice fishing forays have been abject failures. Usually, I hit the hard water in the brutal stretches of winter--the cold, gray, numb foot days where you venture outside only because you're sick of stale air and bad television. Usually, I stick it out for a few futile hours and stagger home exhausted, with nothing to show for my efforts.

One day last March, I got a taste of the good side of ice fishing. J and I were spending a late winter weekend at Cass Lake. The conditions were freaky-glorious. Mild temps, fresh snow, and cobalt skies that went well with my handsome bright blue Minnesota Department of Corrections jacket.

We trundled a hundred yards or so off the West Shore of Star Island, carrying lawn chairs, sandwiches and some basic ice fishing gear, and I punched a few holes in the ice. Actually, "punched" isn't the right word because, as usual, my auger was dull. It was a minor miracle I didn't bust a vein while boring through ice two and half feet thick.

Anyway, J listened to Johnny Paycheck and soaked up the sun, while I fooled a bunch of curious yellow perch with a simple fathead/jig presentation.

Oh, for my fishing homies: the perch were located in six to eight foot water.

Greetings from Pacifica

The winds kept that nasty San Francisco Bay oil spill from spreading to the south, so the Pacifica Pier--unlike the SF Municipal Pier and a bunch of other piers and beaches in the bay and points north--remained open on Friday.

Crabbing was slow. This red crab was keeper sized, but he was missing his right pincer. Since most of the meat is in the pincer, I tossed him back. Sometimes, I am a beneficent despot.

I didn't make any notable catches. A couple red crabs. A couple starfish. Like I said, it was slow. But as you can see from the image below, it was so freaking beautiful, the catch didn't matter.

Also, I bought my first snare trap--five or six bucks at the Rusty Hook. I think I got the hang of it.