Conditions improved along the Monterey Bay coastline this week and enabled anglers to fish longer and farther from the beach. The gentler seas and wind also resulted in a better inshore bite for rockfish, lingcod and halibut.


Brian Cutting from Randy's Sportfishing reported full rockfish limits on the Chubasco Monday. The eight anglers aboard came home with 80 rockfish and eight lings. Chris' Sportfishing in Monterey had cookie-cutter reports from Saturday through Tuesday of this week, on all three of their boats. Limits, limits, limits of rockfish. Tuesday and Wednesday featured limits of lingcod as well for the Check Mate and the Caroline. Fishing out of Moss Landing, the Kahuna also reported 26 limits of rockfish 50 lingcod caught, just two shy of the boat limit.


The story in Santa Cruz was much the same, with limits being the rule. Jim Rubin on the six-pack charter Becky Ann took advantage of improved conditions this weekend, fishing off the wild coast north of Santa Cruz. They got off to a quick start, according to Rubin. "We dropped in this morning and instantly had fish coming over the rails until 9:30 AM when we had limits for our anglers (60 fish) and the crew (20 fish) and a few lingcod mixed in the chaos. We had beautiful weather in the morning and were able to fish one of our favorite spots and found some huge bolinas, some of the biggest we have seen in years and lots of them! Our cooler was also filled with nice blacks, yellowtail, olives, gophers, whitebellies and blues. After rockcod fishing we targeted lingcod and landed a total of nine nice lings from six-14 pounds."


An additional benefit to the calmer conditions is halibut returning to the shallow spawning grounds. The bite picked up noticeably this week with reports from Natural Bridges, the Harbor area and Capitola coming in. We are seeing tons of bait in all these areas, including big sardines and some mackerel mixed in with anchovies and larger smelt. Jigging up live bait for halibut is the way to go, but dead squid on a rattrap rig is effective as well as throwing swimbaits to cover a bit more territory. Preferred depth for flatties this week was 40-60 feet of water. The Pajaro area kicked out some halibut this week, as did the "Hotel" are in Monterey, including a nice kayak halibut caught by Pat Kuhl over the weekend near Tioga Street in Monterey.


We are hearing increasing rumors of more exotic fish in the area. It may be an incipient El Nino effect, but offshore albacore hunters are watching the sea surface temperature charts closely, and most are optimistic about 2014 tuna possibilities. In addition, there have been a few unsubstantiated reports of tanker white sea bass caught in the past few weeks, but details are scarce.


One impressive and confirmed exotic is the trophy Sheephead speared by kayak free diver Jim Russell from Aptos Sunday. We are at the extreme northern range for Sheephead and they are very reclusive. Russell found his prize deep in an underwater crack and took three dives to secure the fish. It taped out at 29 inches, and weighed just shy of 18 pounds.


Bushnell can also be heard on The Let's Go Fishing Radio Show Thursdays at 8 p.m. on KSCO radio 1080 AM. Send your photos, comments or questions to scruzfishing@yahoo.com