Ocean fishing conditions in the past week have ranged from pure flat glass to grumbling chop with heavy winds. Towards the end of this week, another large northwest swell rolled in as well. Despite the uncertain conditions, fishing has been consistent across a variety of local species.

Top on the list of course, are king salmon. Sport anglers are getting the bite dialed in now that we are two weeks into the season. It is still somewhat slow. The Soquel Hole area has been most productive across the week with anglers catching fish on both the east and west canyon edges. Most boats boats are averaging 0-4 salmon with the occasional report of up to six fish. The Pajaro and Moss Landing canyon anglers are also hooking up in about the same ratio. Mulligan’s Hill and Soldier’s Club on the Monterey side of Moss Landing provided reports of salmon success a couple days last week.

Todd Fraser at Bayside Marine advises, “The fish are being caught shallow in the morning and around 150-220 feet down in the mid-morning. The bite has been the best early in the morning and slowing down in the afternoon.” Straight bait, hoochies behind a flasher or salmon spoons all have been successful this week in fooling the big kings.

We received no reports of halibut caught this week, but rockfish and lingcod are definitely on the bite. This time of year, one need not travel very far to find good concentrations of bottomfish. In Santa Cruz, fishing the Mile Buoy area or South Rock reef almost guarantees a nice bag of fish for dinner. Stagnaro’s Sportfishing is spreading the joy while operating two big charter boats out of the Santa Cruz harbor. Owner Ken Stagnaro says, “Cod fishing has been very solid. The full day trips have been getting their limits with quite a few lingcod. A half-day cod trips have been getting half limits to three-quarter limits on most trips. This summer our new boat the Legacy will be featuring weekly trips to Franklin point.”

Chris Fishing Trips in Monterey posted limits of rockfish for all their trips this week with lingcod scores ranging from one to three per angler. Randy’s Sportfishing has similar reports from their boat The Chubasco- limits of rockfish and up to 15 lings per trip.

Perch fishing from the beaches remains strong. Incoming and high tides are the best to fish for the barred surfperch. We are seeing a heartening number of small striped bass in the mix as well, with a few keeper stripers that measure over 18 inches. Unconfirmed reports indicate a few stripers of the bruiser variety were hooked and landed this week, in the 11-18-pound range. Pencil poppers, HairRaisers or swimbaits can attract the near shore striped bass, and they have been right up on the beach.

In the “exotics” category, Ed Burrell from Capitola Boat and Bait reported a barred sand bass caught from a Capitola reef this week. Angler Brian Rodriguez used cut anchovy bait for this rare fish. A common game fish below Point Conception, the barred sand bass is rarely seen in Monterey Bay. Perhaps this is an indicator of more exotics on their way for summertime fishing? We can only hope so.