Monterey Bay anglers enjoyed calm and pleasant conditions this week. Some were able to fish from sunrise to sunset on a few days without being bothered by the gusty winds and persistent swells that were a hindrance last week.

For a perfect day of fishing, here is a suggestion: Leave the harbor before dawn and drop your baited crab pots in 180-220 feet of water. The flat areas alongside our deep marine canyons are good spots to hit right now. Once your pots are settled, break out the #6 Sabiki rigs. Tip each hook with squid, and drop to the bottom in 150-200 feet of water for sand dabs. Another trick for sand dab fishing is to add a small sliding sinker above the swivel holding your rig. This causes the five or six-hook Sabiki to lie flat on the ocean floor. Coincidentally, that is exactly where the ‘dabs are.

If you can keep the sand dabs alive in bucket or a live well, motor over to the nearest reef and use them as live bait for lingcod. Lings love to eat sand dabs. They are like lingcod candy. Spend some quality time catching your limit of lingcod, and any volunteers from the big bottom-dwelling rockfish that frequent those same reefs. Lings will move inshore during November and December, prior to spawning in January and February. You may find them as shallow as 30 feet right now, but 60-180 is still the best bet. Now that you have your fish for filets, go back out and pull your crab pots (hopefully) filled with gourmet Dungeness and round out your post-Thanksgiving table fare.

Rockfishing has been quite good off the North Coast of Santa Cruz, and Todd Fraser at Bayside Marine has reported a good number of halibut caught in that area this week. The halibut were specifically caught near Wilder’s, Four-Mile Beach and Davenport. Fraser recommends fishing 70-80 feet of water for the big flatfish.

In Monterey, Chris’ Fishing trips continue to catch limits of rockfish and limits of lingcod nearly every trip near Point Joe and Carmel. The Kahuna from Moss Landing continues to steam down to Point Sur and Lopez Point for high-grade canary, copper and vermilion rockfish as well as catching slightly better than one ling per rod on the boat this week.

Inside the bay near Monterey is still producing good bags of rockfish. Mel Camu from Fremont, kayak fishing the jumbled rocky reefs off Pacific Grove, found a honey hole that he proceeded to exploit shamelessly. Using MegaBait irons mostly, he bagged up full limits of blue, black and vermilion rockfish as well as two lingcod in the 30-inch range on Sunday.