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Savvy anglers like Nick and Eric Brautovich headed to San Luis Reservoir last weekend for the decent striper bite.

Once again, rockfish season is over for the year and local anglers turn towards various alternatives to wet their lines and stock their fridges.

There's always a chance at catching a halibut. The big flatfish tend towards deeper water in the winter and become more difficult to locate. But, halibut season stays open year-round and we always see a few caught this time of year. Productive locations in the past have included the Mile-Buoy area, Natural Bridges, North Coast pocket beaches and outside of Soquel Point. Fish deeper water (80-160 feet) with flat sandy bottoms and cross your fingers. If the halibut don't bite, send down a number 6 sabiki rig tipped with shrimp or squid in those same areas and fill your bucket with sand dabs.

Local charter boat operations will be targeting the sand dabs all winter. It is a very productive fishery and the dabs are a delicacy for the table. Stagnaro's Sportfishing had great success last year with sand dab trips, and both Reel Sportfishing and Captain Jimmy Charters continually run Dungeness crab and sand-dab combo trips during the winter season. Captain Jimmy and Reel Sportfishing will also be targeting giant Humboldt squid this year. These behemoths commonly weigh in around 30-40 pounds and provide quite a tug of war when pulling them in. Right now the preferred area for squid fishing is the deep water of the Soquel hole, but later in the season we expect to see good scores from the finger canyons off Davenport. One or two of these squid means calamari for the whole neighborhood.

Traveling a while for fish can be very productive this time of year as well. Eric and Nick Brautovich proved the point last weekend with a quick visit to San Luis Reservoir. About 45 minutes driving time from Santa Cruz, O'Neill Forebay provided the father/son duo with plenty of striped bass action. "We did a lot of catch and release," said Eric Brautovich, "most of the fish were schoolie-sized." The pair found stripers in 20-30 feet of water, and used live minnows deployed below a sliding sinker for success. Striped bass must be at least 18 inches to keep, and the Brautoviches managed to bring home a few fish up to 25 inches. Stripers in the Forebay are feeding mostly on threadfin shad right now, so topwater lures can work very well. Working the boils of feeding bass is the always the preferred technique for stripers, but trolling Rattletraps or HairRaisers can also be very productive.