Opening Day for our Shallow Water Light Tackle Rockfishing season: The best part of the day was the smile I could hear in Bob's voice when I called him at the end of the day to get the day's score. It's been a rough couple of months of chasing salmon, so a fun day of rockfishing sure did a whole bunch to change his attitude real fast. Sure makes me feel better, too...we're in this business because we like taking folks out to catch fish, but this has to be one of the toughest seasons I can recall in the 17 years we've owned the Queen of Hearts. Thankfully it didn't take long for our group to start bringing rockfish over the rail: blacks, browns and gophers, with a few reds and olives thrown in, and by day's end we had limits for all 27 anglers, 278 fish total including 6 cabezon to 6 pounds and 8 lings to 9 pounds. Depths fished ranged from as little as 30 feet to about 80 feet for the deepest. The whale shows continued, too: We were visited by a juvenile gray whale, pretty late in the season to see one in our area, and there were also a couple of humpbacks that graced us with their presence. Bob was in such a good mood I bet he even waived the $5 whale watching surcharge...okay, we don't really charge a surcharge for seeing whales, but we like to joke around about it. Just about time to start scheduling afternoon fishing trips on the weekends...watch for more info soon.