Monterey Bay:

Sonny Arcoleo of Chris’s Landing in Monterey reported continued outstanding crabbing and sand dab action on their combination trips. They boated 9 limits of Dungeness on Thursday 2-2 to go with ‘unbelievable’ sand dab fishing. They have some room on both Saturday and Sunday, and they only charge $75.00/angler on these combination trips. He said, “We haven’t found any mackerel in the past week, and there are a number of fishermen wanting mackerel,” adding, “The bay is already loaded with anchovies, and I expect salmon to be around for the start of the season in April.” In the meantime, they will be running the crab/dab combination trips.

Santa Cruz Area Report by Allen Bushnell of the Santa Cruz Sentinel

The usual big winter swells are keeping many anglers at the dock. When conditions permit, sand dabs are available by the bucket load and the Dungeness crab are still plentiful. Best bet for sand dabs locally is to fish 120-200 feet of water, any sandy area can provide sand dab action. Dungeness have been trapped in as shallow as 100 feet of water, but the best hunting remains in the deeper areas-at least 140 feet, on out to 220 or 230 feet of water.

Don’t have a boat and want to go fishing? No problem. Head down to the Capitola Wharf, where the perch bite is coming on. Ed Burrell reports some good perch fishing off the wharf, with big black perch, walleyes and barred surfperch being caught daily by the diligent anglers. Most find success by using shrimp bits on sabiki rigs, or other multiple small hook leaders. The center portion of the what has been producing best lately, though most barred perch are caught just behind the surfline.

Ron Martin from Aptos found the bigger barred perch while surfcasting the beaches south of Rio Del Mar on Wednesday. “It was slow this morning, I only fished a couple of hours. I caught one fish about a pound on a grub. It was a pretty low tide with a swell and a lot of push.” Martin has been frequenting those beaches and finding fewer, but ‘bigger variety’ fish. Now that the Pajaro River has been opened to the sea, don’t be surprised if roving striped bass hit your bait or lure in that area as well.

The recent rains raised expectations for steelheaders who fish the San Lorenzo and other local streams. We have received very little information on the number of fish, locally, but conditions look fairly good. Flows are still very low, however.

The larger northern rivers are doing very well for anglers fishing from driftboats and even from the banks. Tim Obert from Santa Cruz submitted his report this week from the Smith River. Obert and a couple Santa Cruz friends fished from the banks of the Smith on Wednesday, using roe floated with Mad River fish pills. He reported multiple hookups for everyone, including a few that exceeded the limits of his 12-pound test. (See more on this fish, including a beautiful picture of Smith River chrome in the Smith river Section)

Monterey/Santa Cruz:

Chris Arcoleo of Chris’s Sport Fishing reported ‘outrageous’ sand dab action on their trips from Friday to Sunday 1-29, and anglers are picking up 5 to 6 of the tasty flatties per drop. The fish are schooled up thickly, and they are particularly large for this species. Crabbing was excellent on Saturday and Sunday with 14 and 16 limits, respectively, but things were slower on Friday with only 2 to 3 crab per angler. They are running Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday in the coming week.