The past week provided a welcome break between storms allowing Monterey Bay surfcasters a chance at perch and striped bass from the beach. The big waves that accompanied our most recent storms have radically sculpted beaches from Santa Cruz to Monterey. It may take a bit of exploring to find your favorite spot, but most of the historical surfcasting beaches should be in very good shape.

Along East Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, many of the beaches are scoured down to bedrock. This makes wonderful deep spots for perch to feed, but can also be very snaggy. Expect to lose some gear if fishing over a rocky bottom. Further south, Rio Del Mar, Manresa and Sunset beaches have developed very nice structure with multiple sandbars and rip current areas in which to fish. Even with good structure, big waves can make things difficult with so much water moving. A few anglers have reported better luck on the lower tides, where the holes and troughs are easier to locate.

Alex Sigala from Salinas fished one of the northern Monterey County beaches on Valentine’s Day. He found great beach structure and some limited success with barred surfperch. Sigala reported, “Caught and released four dinks and one medium (perch) that I gifted to one of my bruddas on the beach.” Sigala was using a sliding sinker rig with a grub, and noted the bait fishermen were getting the bigger fish that day, though “even then they didn’t have limits.”

In Monterey, Chris’ Fishing Trips is getting their boats out as often as they can, considering the weather. Last week they fished four days out of seven with “combo” sand dab and Dungeness crab forays. Their numbers are still very good, with a high count of 660 sand dabs and limits (90) of crab on their weekend trips.

Santa Cruz Harbor is still suffering from shoaling at the harbor mouth. Any sort of swell over the shallow sandbar makes the harbor entrance not only difficult, but dangerous. Mechanical problems have delayed dredging progress. The effective harbor closure is causing increasing frustration amongst local boaters, especially commercial anglers who call Santa Cruz home. Harbor authorities share this frustration.

Port Director Lisa Ekers provided an update on Wednesday explaining, “The dredging operation has been shut down due to engine failure on the workboat Dauntless. The dredge cannot work if it can't be moved into position and have its anchors rearranged throughout the day, jobs that can only be performed by a workboat. This is extremely disappointing to the crews who were making tremendous progress against the shoaling last week. The Port District completed major overhauls on Dauntless' engines in 2013 and 2015 with expected lifespans of seven years and funds and performs routine maintenance on them yearly, so this catastrophic failure was not foreseen.”

We are currently working simultaneously on finding a workboat to hire and on purchasing and installing two new engines for Dauntless.“