Local marine weather continues to be fickle, making it difficult for boats to travel very far and putting some fish off the bite. Local anglers enjoyed a few days of decent fishing conditions last week, and the morning were fairly calm which allowed fishing close to home.

Stagnaro's Sportfishing ran a few trips over the holiday weekend, a twilight trip on Saturday, a half day outing Sunday and a full day Monday. They fished the local reefs off West Cliff and up the coast as far as Davenport for limits or near-limits of rockfish on each trip. Staff members at Stagnaro's reported full bags of quality mixed rockfish, mostly browns, reds and yellowtails. On the other end of the Bay, Chris Arcaleo at Chris' Fishing Trips found full limits of Big Sur rockfish for his customers last weekend. They caught mostly reds and olive rockfish. As usual for the Big Sur coastline, all the fish were big and they got quick limits for the boat.

Mike Schell at Bayside Marine agrees the rockfish bite is steady, both from the local reefs and especially in the Franklin Point area, "winds permitting." This week, Schell also noted an improvement on the lingcod fishing. "Locally and up the coast we are seeing a more consistent catch of legal lings." Anglers working the pocket beaches off the North Coast are returning to Bayside with a few big halibut as well, in the 20-25-pound class.

A few smaller halibut continue to be caught near Capitola, mostly along the edges of the kelp beds, and half-limits of rockfish are the norm for skiff anglers working the local Capitola reefs. Pier anglers enjoyed continued success in Capitola with plentiful sardines and mackerel on the sabikis, a good number of 8-10-pound stripers hitting the deck and some big rays and leopard sharks caught from the end of the wharf.

Keep your calendar open for albacore fishing. Offshore winds are finally dying down. Thursday's mid-day report indicated a few boats fishing 45-55 miles offshore and reporting scores as high as 15 fish at noon. A number of charter companies will be heading out for the tasty tuna soon, including Stagnaro's Sportfishing, Reel Sportfishing, Captain Jimmy Charters and Chris' Sportfishing in Monterey. Offshore winds this weekend are forecast in the five-15 knot range, which is very fishable.

Big fish honors this week go to Fisher Baxter who brought his father Mike fishing near the Mile Buoy on Sunday. Fisher used a live sardine to fool a big 10-pound lingcod, and wound up brining home dinner for the whole family.

Bushnell can also be heard on The Let's Go Fishing Radio Show, Thursdays at 7 p.m. on KSCO radio on 1080 AM. Send your photos, comments or questions to scruzfishing@yahoo.com