Don’t give up yet! While very few of us got to fish over the past week a few local anglers leveraged small windows of opportunity to give it a try. And, some were even successful!

The weather we are experiencing might keep you indoors, but it is doing good things for our mountain watersheds and the near shore submarine topography. Once this series of storms die down, I predict productive fishing in our immediate future.

After years of low water flows, local creeks and streams are being scoured of sand and silt, exposing the cobble and gravel spawning grounds for our anadromous steelhead and those very few salmon in our system. While actual reports have been few and far between, a few adult steelhead have been caught from our local streams so far this season. Steelheaders are a secretive lot, mainly because of their desire to protect and enhance the precarious population of these native ocean-going trout. This week of course, the streams and rivers are blown out and flooding.

Ocean fishing is slow also due to weather and sea conditions brought on by storms. Big swells have plugged the Santa Cruz Harbor entrance with sand. The dredge is working at full capacity but barely keeping up with the repeated big swell events.

Even with clear harbor access, Monterey boats have stayed mostly at the dock. Chris’ fishing Trips from Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey managed to get a boat out on Saturday. Grateful clients aboard the Check mate retuned to port with 600 sand dabs and 87 Dungeness Crab, and the distinction of being highliners for the week.

And don’t forget fishing from the Santa Cruz or Capitola Wharf. Ed Burrell at Capitola boat and Bait reported some nice perch, mostly barred surf perch, caught this week, and a starry flounder came over the rail two weeks ago by Christian Thal from San Jose fishing during a break in the storms.

And again, a little bit of travel can get an angler on to big fish. Sometimes especially when the water is mixed and muddy. Brian Im from San Bruno paid attention to the Bay Area buzz and headed to McNear's Pier in San Rafael, in search of sturgeon. He was lucky enough to hook and land his first legal sturgeon of the year. Im reported, “With this rain storm it sure washed up the bay with tons of tree branches floating around. During the time I was there three or four sturgeon were landed on ghost shrimp. I opened up my sturgeon and it was LOADED with grass shrimp. Give it a shot by China Camp! I got my dino around 11 am on incoming tide/slack tide.”