Take a comp day off, or call in sick. Make it a mental health day, but go fishing this coming week! The weather and sea conditions look to be tolerable, especially after the weekend. Most importantly, there are salmon in Monterey Bay and they are biting.

It’s really been a decent start to this year’s salmon season. Just ask anyone who has tasted fresh king salmon broiled with teriyaki sauce over the past few weeks. As salmon stocks deplete from weather conditions and possible state water mismanagement, fresh sport-caught wild salmon become an increasingly precious commodity.

Commercial salmon season starts May 1. Having commercial boats in the fleet sometimes causes the salmon schools to scatter and can make it more difficult to find fish for the average angler. This year the fish already are spread out across the bay, mostly north of Moss Landing. They seem to be moving fast as well. Please respect the commercial trollers who have a very limited amount of time to pay their bills and keep this vital industry alive. Give those boats plenty of room. With multiple trolling wires out, they can’t maneuver as quickly as sport boats.

This week’s reports showed most salmon being caught in relatively shallow water. Depths of 100-160 feet seemed to be the ticket, with fish caught from 75 to 120 feet down. Captain Jim Rubin from Go Fish Santa Cruz pulled yeoman’s duty on Wednesday. Rubin took the six-pack Miss Beth down towards the tip of the Soquel Hole with a charter of four anglers. Owner Beth Thomas reported, “They caught beautiful salmon. Six nice ones. They used gold hammered spoons. Sad to report they lost eight fish right at the boat. Oh well – they are (still) out there to get bigger.”

Skiffs and private boats launching from Capitola are reporting limits of salmon as well as some bigger fish. Bob Dice weighed in a beautiful king salmon at 16 pounds on Wednesday. Glen Larsen brought in a king weighing 17 pounds caught with a blue hoochie fishing at 80 feet on the downrigger wire. Ed Burrell from Capitola Boat and Bait says the boys are fishing shallow, from 100 to 140 feet of water. Other reports came in of successful salmon fishing near Pajaro, just outside of Moss Landing and from the Soldier’s Club area near Marina.

The water remains fairly cool which is probably the reason why we’ve not received any halibut reports as yet this season. Rockfish and lingcod fishing is getting better though, especially near Monterey and points south. Brian Cutting, skipper for Kahuna Sportfishing out of Moss Landing has recorded consistent catches of rock cod and lings while fishing the Point Pinos area. Over the weekend they snuck around the Monterey corner, and fished reefs closer to Big Sur. It takes a while to get there, but rewards are huge. Cutting reported “limits of big rockfish, and full limits of lingcod for all anglers aboard the Kahuna.”

In Santa Cruz the rockfishing is best on the deeper reefs, such as South Rock, or the 120-foot reefs off West Cliff. Once this series of big swells die down, we will see those rockfish move in to the shallower reefs.