It's getting hard to wait for the salmon season opener, especially while beautiful kings are being caught and released every day.

Bayside Marine owner Todd Fraser is fielding daily reports from anglers who are fishing from the Soquel Hole area down to Moss Landing. They are finding big schools of bait with mackerel feeding. Once they find the mackerel, it's a situation of catching as many as you may want. The bonus prize in this scenario is king salmon feeding on the same bait balls. The salmon are hitting small mackerel jigs and must be released prior to the season opener of April 7, 2007. If only it were this easy during open season. The bait balls are mostly anchovies, with some good sardines showing in the area closer to Moss Landing.

Before the opener, one can always fish for sand dabs as well as the mackerel. Chris' Fishing Trips in Monterey took a boat out last week with eight anglers aboard and returned with 320 sand dabs and 320 mackerel for the boat.

Dungeness crabs are still in season. The take is getting more slim, but the area from Natural Bridges to Davenport is producing some limits for anglers who run multiple pots in 180-220 feet of water. Ed Burrell at Capitola Boat and Bait reports a few small halibut caught from the wharf this week, though the swell may have pushed the bulk of these juveniles out to deeper water. Halibut anglers are looking forward to a better season this year since the closure of commercial boats using drag nets in Monterey Bay. The drag boats sometimes took hundreds of halibut daily in preceding years, working the deeper water near submarine canyons.

If an angler doesn't mind a little traveling, sturgeon fishing is heating up in San Pablo Bay, Suisun and the South Bay near the San Mateo and Dumbarton Bridges. Halibut fishing is starting up in Oyster Point and by the Alameda Rockwall. Striped bass, including some big ones are being caught in the North Bay, and salmon fishing is open in the Fort Bragg and Shelter Cove areas.