A lot of folks have a hard time believing how fast the weather can turn on the ocean, from bad to good and good to bad. Today was a fine day on the ocean with the rains of the last two days a thing of the past. We had a darn good day, with 310 rockfish and 8 cabezon to 8 pounds for our 34 anglers, just a few handfuls of fish shy of limits, but the quality of fish more than made up for missing one fish in the sack, with several bomber vermillions and good size coppers and gophers filling out the catch. We had a good day on the lingcod, too, with 14 lings boated to 17 pounds. Some folks recently have been asking if we use live bait. The answer is: No, we don't use live bait for rockfishing on the Queen of Hearts, and, as our scores show, we do just fine without it. Why don't we use it? First and foremost, it's not necessary. We have great rockfishing using the various flys, bars and plastics that our at our avail. Second, rockfish tend to suck down live bait. That gives very little chance of releasing fish without seriously injuring them. Some fish can't be released due to decompression, but thankfully a majority of the fish we catch in the shallows do survive their ride to the surface. The last thing we need to do is unnecessarily injure fish that could otherwise be released given the current status of rockfishing along our coastline. We need to do everything we can to save our fishery, not wipe it out unnecessarily. Unfortunately a lot of folks have lost sight of that, and it's a real shame.