Quality halibut, rockfish and salmon are being boated daily in the nearshore waters, while white sea bass are back on the bite as well.

Warm water currents hosting big tuna schools moved much farther offshore last week. That factor, combined with windy conditions kept tuna counts low since our last report. Stagnaro's Sportfishing headed northwest towards the Pioneer Canyon last Thursday, following tuna reports from the Half Moon Bay boats. Despite putting nearly 200 miles on the Velocity during the 15-hour trip, the hookup rate was low. "We were chasing these tuna by the tail!" grumbled Captain Ken Stagnaro. While the albacore schools that were here two weeks ago may have moved on, the warm water is still out there, starting around 35 miles from the Harbor. The best tuna fishing is much farther out, according to Todd Fraser at Bayside Marine-"For now it sounds like if you want double digits you will have to go 50-65 miles out."

Fraser softens this news with reports of good halibut fishing near the Mile Buoy and from the North Coast beaches. Ed Burrell from Capitola Boat and Bait has similar reports from the Pleasure Point and Capitola regions. While the best depths for flatties seems to be 45-65 feet of water lately, we've seen a few reports of halibut caught much shallower, in 20-25 feet, by anglers working the kelp beds.

In their unpredictable way, spawning squid have moved back to our locale, and the white sea bass came in with them. While previous local sea bass bites concentrated on small areas near Capitola and off Black's Point, the current bite is more spread out. Recent reports indicate sea bass caught from the North Coast near Four-Mile Beach, on down to the Pajaro area, with the best concentration from the Mile Buoy to the Cement Ship. Anglers are hooking up sea bass from 20-50 pounds using squid for bait. Fishing near the bottom and flylining squid seem to be working equally well. Remember that white sea bass are among the "spookiest" of fish. Etiquette demands that boaters swing very wide of the fleet then drift into the feeding zone.

A good number of king salmon are still being caught in that same band of local waters from 60-80 feet deep. Anglers trolling with anchovies or lures, or mooching with anchovies or herring have consistently caught salmon for the past few weeks. Many of these fish are hatchery-bred kings that were released from the Santa Cruz harbor in previous years. They have imprinted our Harbor water as their spawning destination. Many fish are traveling in and out of the Harbor, and this is a rare local opportunity to catch a king salmon without using a boat.

Except for a few very specific exceptions, anglers are not allowed to fish for these salmon inside the harbor itself. Harbor officials inform us that casting lures, or drifting bait under bobbers is allowed from the Harbor entrance jetties, but not allowed from any docks or other inner harbor locations. Pay attention to the posted signage or contact the Harbor Office directly for more details. Salmon season in our area ends on October 7, so get them while the getting is good.