This week featured some fine calm mornings for fishing. Even the afternoons didn’t get too windy but mornings were best. As in the past month or so, most of the action and bags of filet came from the deep water fishery beyond 300 feet of water. Chris’ fishing Trips in Monterey boasted full limit on every trip plus up to 10 Petrale sole and 27 lingcod on their rockcod trips. 

Six pack charters out of Santa Cruz posted similar results. Rodney Armstrong on the Knot Alone from Santa Cruz Coastal Fishing Charters remains stoked, saying, “Deep water rock fish still as good as it gets. We had limits of rock fish and two nice lingcod today in about 30 minutes.” JT Thomas from Go Fish Santa Cruz detailed his trip on Tuesday reporting, “We fished the deep waters today.  The clients caught limits of quality rock fish including big vermillion, green spots, yellow tail and chili peppers. The whales were out putting on a show for everyone." 

Todd Fraser at Bayside Marine had some promising tuna news. Fraser related, “The tuna anglers jigged up mackerel today and are planning on looking in the morning. There was one boat out near the Weather Buoy who found bluefin. The anglers saw a nice school of jumpers but they could not get them to bite. The water temperature was around 58 degrees. The weather conditions look good for a few days." Fraser added that halibut are still showing up and biting baits near the West side of Santa Cruz.

With last week’s full moon we enjoyed big tides, good for surfcasting as well as for halibut action. The local striper bite is dying down while the surfperch action is heating up.  Stripers start heading towards their fresh water spawning areas this time of year. For the stripers in Monterey bay that could mean the Salinas or Pajaro Rivers, or all the way back to San Francisco bay and the Sacramento river system. Beaches north of Santa cruz and near Half Moon Bay might be a good choice for striper hunting these next few weeks. Another bass option if one doesn't mind driving a bit, is the O'Neil Forebay and San Luis reservoir near Pacheco pass. There is a great bite for stripers of the larger variety going on there right now. Shore anglers are doing well wit a variety of swimming or topwater lures as well as frozen anchovy or herring bait. Live shiners get gobbled by these fish, but are better deployed from a boat rather than casting from shore.

Most beaches around the bay are holding schools of barred, walleye and some calico surfperch. And, they are getting bigger as the year progresses. We need another couple northwest swells to come through and sculpt some structure onto the sandy beaches. The scouring and redepositing of sand by heavy north currents that come along with northwest swells is essential for creating the big troughs, holes and rips that make for good surfcasting conditions. Even when the winter waves are big, deep spots holding hungry fish can be located within casting distance of the sand.