Current visibility at Clear Lake is 1-3 feet and water level remains at 2 feet above the Rumsey gauge. The last bass tournament took place last week, so the lake will be fairly quiet for the next few months. Fishing is fair for numbers of largemouth bass, ranging from 8 to 12 fish per trip. As the water cools, anglers are starting to try live minnows. During the winter months, live minnows are far more effective than artificial lures.
At Lake Berryessa, speed trolling optimizers or speedy shiners in various colors are the key to success for limits of Eagle Lake-strain trout as the bait schools continue to rise toward the surface. I would expect the lake to turn over in the next few weeks. A few small king salmon are starting to show up. Bass fishing is best with a reaction bite in the mornings with jigs, senkos, tubes, or plastics. The lake is currently at 77% capacity.
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Rob Russell Fly Fishing reported Putah Creek flows down to 55 cubic feet per second, which is extremely low. He reported a fair bite last week, but you will need to find some quiet water and use some stealth tactics in your approach.
The San Francisco Bay striper and halibut bite remains good, but I expect it to diminish as the rains arrive and the halibut move back into the ocean.
If you are looking for anchovies, J & P Bait at Pier 47 in San Francisco is still open, but only on weekends until the middle of November.
St. Helena’s Jeff Conwell shows his limit of South Dakota ringneck pheasants.
The Dungeness crab season is set to open Nov. 4 in Zone 3, which includes the Bay Area. Commercial season will be delayed again this season due to the entanglement risk. For recreational fishermen, traps will be banned but hoop nets will be allowed. There will be no change in the limit, which is 10 per person per day with a minimum size of 5¾ inches.
Mola tecta found at Point Reyes
On Saturday morning, a surfer happened upon an alien-looking sea creature washed up on Kehoe Beach at Point Reyes National Seashore. It had a nearly 6-foot-long, oblong body with a fin popping out on each side, no tail, and one of its enormous googly eyes faced upward, seemingly saying hello.
Christian Anthony snapped a photo of the specimen and called it a mola mola in a post on the West Marin Feed, a social media account where he posts news and sightings in West Marin.
Turns out the specimen is not a mola mola, but rather a close relative known as a mola tecta, or hoodwinker sunfish. It is an easy mistake to make. Mola tecta are extremely rare in California — so rare that there have been only a handful of living sightings here and about the same number of strandings, according to Marianne Nyegaard, Ph.D., the researcher who first named and documented the species in 2017 while working on research in Bali, Indonesia.
The species more commonly inhabits the oceans off Chile, Australia and New Zealand. But in recent years, the fish have been found both alive and stranded as far north as Alaska, according an email from Nyegaard, a research associate at Auckland Museum.
The first observation of mola tecta in the northern hemisphere occurred in California in 2019, when one washed up at the Coal Oil Point Reserve in Santa Barbara.
“It really was exciting to collect the photos and samples knowing that it could potentially be such an extraordinary sighting,” Jessica Nielsen, a conservation specialist at Coal Oil Point, told UC Santa Barbara’s news magazine the Current at the time. “Mola tecta was just recently discovered, so there is still so much to learn about this species.”
Today in sports history: Nov. 2
1958: Chicago, Los Angeles establish NFL attendance record when 90,833 fill L.A. Coliseum
1958 — Chicago and Los Angeles establish an NFL attendance record when 90,833 fill the L.A. Coliseum to see the Rams beat the Bears 41-35.
2006: Minnesota’s Niklas Backstrom becomes first goalie in modern era to win twice without starting
2006 — Minnesota’s Niklas Backstrom becomes the first goalie in the modern era, which began in 1943, to win twice without starting. Backstom replaces an ill Manny Fernandez and stops all 19 shots he faces over the final two periods as the Wild rally for a 5-2 victory over Vancouver. Backstrom relieved Fernandez after a three-goal first period against Nashville on Oct. 7 before Minnesota came back for a 6-5 victory.
2013: Quinn Epperly sets NCAA record by opening with 29 straight completions
2013 — Quinn Epperly of Princeton sets an NCAA record by opening with 29 straight completions, and accounts for 401 total yards and six TDs in a 53-20 win over Cornell.
2014: Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger throws for six touchdowns for second consecutive week
2014 — Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger throws for six touchdowns for the second consecutive week, setting an NFL mark in a 43-23 win over Baltimore. Roethlisberger’s 12 touchdown passes over the last two games breaks the mark of 11 set by Tom Flores for Oakland in 1963 and matched by New England’s Tom Brady in 2007.
2016: Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908
2016 — The Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908 when Ben Zobrist hits a go-ahead double in the 10th inning, beating the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in a thrilling Game 7 delayed by rain early. Chicago is the first club to overcome a 3-1 Series deficit since the 1985 Kansas City Royals.
Brent Randol can be reached at brentrandol@comcast.net or (707) 481-3319.
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