Every fishing season is different, but 2016 has been a little more different than most. A common remark this year has been, “everything’s late this year.” The water stayed cool, rockfish and especially halibut made their springtime move to shallow water a month or even two months past the “normal” calendar of events. Now, it looks like nature has flipped the coin and winter is arriving early.

We have been blessed with a series of much-needed rainstorms in the month of October, including two storm fronts that moved in a classic wintertime manner from the northwest, bringing moisture, wind and big swells. The high-altitude jetstream dips far to the south of Monterey Bay opening the window for a succession of weather events from the northwest. The coming weekend has swell forecasts as big as 10-14 feet continuing through next Tuesday. This adds an additional challenge to sport crabbers who take advantage of the 2016 Dungeness crab opener on Saturday November 5th. Please remember safety first, make sure all your gear is operating correctly and keep that safety equipment handy.

Fishing this week stayed steady for rockfish and lings at the usual spots. Chris Arcoleo in Monterey reported three days of limits and near-limits of rockfish and lingcod on his boats the Check Mate and Star of Monterey. Capitola and Santa Cruz anglers found rockfish and lings willing to bite as well, more often on the deeper reefs of the area. In what could be big news, Todd Fraser alerted us Thursday that our hopes for bluefin tuna this year might not be in vain. Fraser reported, “My friend is flying his plane as I write this. Near Davenport. He has spotted two big schools of what look like bluefin. There are a few boats going out to check the area. The pictures he sent look like some good-sized fish boiling.”

Don’t forget next weekend’s festivities in Castroville, at the Recreation Center, 11261 Crane Street. Hosted by Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project and the Castroville Rotary, this is the 39th Annual Albacore Feed with a delicious tuna dinner, tons of raffle prizes and silent auction items. Tickets are available at the door at 6pm November 12.

Also next weekend, the Telluride Mountain Film on Tour has a few very interesting titles showing at the Rio theater in Santa Cruz. The film festival features Super Salmon and The Kamchatka Steelhead Project. The salmon film looks at the controversy of a proposed dam on Alaska’s Susitna River at mile 184, and tracks one salmon over 300 miles to the river’s headwaters. The Kamchatka film gives us a look at the hardy steelhead trout run on Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula.