Bodega Bay Fishing?

I've crabbed in Bodega Bay a few times and it's always fun, but is there anything I can fish for while the crab pots soak? I'm taking my boat instead of kayaks, so I'll have a bit more range, but it's not big enough to take outside the bay. I'd like to just soak a line while we wait for the pots. Any suggestions? Not looking for anything to take home necessarily, but just something to have fun with and pass the time. In the past, I've tried fishing with squid hoping for rays or sharks, but no luck. That being said, I think we only fished for 30 minutes or so.

Perch... halibut depends when n where .. jack smelt with a fly setup....you could try throwing weedless bass setups at the jetties something may bite.

If you go over to Tomales, there's plenty of big rays, sharks, and angel sharks.  Maybe a stray striper.  Halibut and Ghosts are out of season but you never know.

Not sure about bodega. Moss landing offers sand dabs this time a year in about 30 ft of water and deeper. A simple sabiki rig will do the trick. May try and chase a few while I soak the pots as well.

There is perch fishing from shore as well.

Does anyone know if there is fishing for sand dabs out of Doran? Does anyone ever try and have any luck?

The sandabs sound interesting. Love eating them, but I've never fished for them. My pots will be in the 40-50' range, so that may be the same neighborhood. I'll give them a try. I'm assuming you bounce the bottom with a sabiki while drifting?

The sandabs sound interesting. Love eating them, but I've never fished for them. My pots will be in the 40-50' range, so that may be the same neighborhood. I'll give them a try. I'm assuming you bounce the bottom with a sabiki while drifting?

If you can get out to 60' deep, that seems to be the magic depth for greater concentrations of dabs. They're in as shallow as 30' deep, just not a plentiful. A sabiki drug along the bottom is all that you need. This isnt really a bouncing presentation as you would for rockfish. Just get your weight on the bottom and let the current drag your rig across the bottom. I'm sure that they're out in the bay at Doran but the bigger numbers seem to be between Salmon Creek and the Russian River around 200' deep.

The sandabs sound interesting. Love eating them, but I've never fished for them. My pots will be in the 40-50' range, so that may be the same neighborhood. I'll give them a try. I'm assuming you bounce the bottom with a sabiki while drifting?

Add some very small pieces of squid on the sabiki hooks to entice them even more

This has made my crabbing trip potential much more interesting. I'll refresh myself on sandab regs. Thanks for the tips!!! I'll throw in a report when I'm finished.

I’ve never fished for flatfish, but the sand dab comments made think I may give it a shot. Today I was at Doran getting bait in the flats when I saw some gulls fighting over a dead fish. I went to investigate and found them eating a starry flounder!

Report time....

Perfect day to be out there. Partly cloudy, a bit of fog, and winds were light.

Got the pots soaking and started to fish. We were in about 50' of water. We had a sabiki with a lead head with a 5" soft plastic instead of a weight at the bottom. My buddy hooked up within 15 minutes. It was at LEAST 3". Seriously. Smallest flatfish I've seen. We fished for an hour or so, got a few other small bites, but nothing else landed. I suspect we should've tried deeper water, but it was fun knowing they were there.

The crabbing was good. We caught our limits in just a few hours of soaking. Used duck carcasses, squid, and some fish heads (not salmon) that we bought at an Asian market. Crabs didn't seem to have a preference to what was in the bait bag. Best pot had 5 keepers in just an hour soak. Most were the size where you need to measure, but we had a half dozen that were nice crabs. Our biggest one had no claws, so that was a mercy killing.