Chris Arcoleo at Chris' Fishing trips is posting full limits of rockfish for every trip aboard the Check Mate and Caroline, as usual. Depending on the customer load that means up to 230 rockfish plus as many as nine lingcod for every foray this week. "We're fishing shallow water but it's been excellent. There's some bait around but we're not even using bait. We've been throwing bars and lures at 'em.  Swimbaits are working well." Asked about halibut action in his area, Chris replied, "haven't heard anything about them but there's a few stripers around." Anglers on the nearby beaches and from Fishing Pier #2 are seeing lots of striped bass in the 10-pound range. "They're catching some , too," Arcoleo added.

The long beaches at the center of the Bay might be the best place to go to find stripers. We've received reports from both the Monterey and Santa Cruz sides of the bay from surfcasters successful in hooking up on the stripers this week. A roving bass could swim through just about any beach on the bay right now, so be prepared with some striper gear in your tackle bag. The best scenario is, you get lucky enough to walk the right beach at the right time while schools of bass are working bait close to shore. Besides the solo catches reported here and there over the past couple months, we've heard from a few trustworthy anglers about enjoying feeding frenzy type fishing. They have reported catching and releasing up to 20 fish while throwing directly to the boils with a variety of gear including irons, stickbaits and surface poppers. Most these boilers were school fish ranging from 15-22 inches. No specific beaches were mentioned in these reports, and it's most likely the bass schools are moving quickly. So it's really a matter of making a good guess and then getting lucky. Perseverance pays.

In Santa Cruz we're seeing an increase of halibut on the inside of 60 feet. Anglers near the Mile Buoy and especially the sandy flats off Capitola are hooking up the halibut while drifting with live bait, mostly smelt or mackerel. Remember, with these large baits, you need to give the halibut time to get it in the mouth.  Freespool and test your patience. Lift the rod tip occasionally and judge whether there's "weight" on it before starting to retrieve. Bounce ball trolling has been working as well. Moving slowly at 1.5 to 2.5 miles per hour, halibut hunters use a three way swivel set up employing a dropper for the heavy weight that bumps along the sandy bottom. Using live or dead bait such as anchovy, sardine, squid, smelt or mackerel on a trap hook rig can be deadly for the halibut. Another advantage to this technique is the fish hook themselves, because the bait is moving and they are chasing. When the rod goes bendo, the fish is ON!