High winds continued to vex anglers on Monterey Bay, particularly in the afternoon hours. Crabbers were best served by scheduling their pot-pulling and re-baiting for the very early morning hours.

Further offshore, the problem is even worse. Captain Mike Baxter pilots the occasional whale-watching trips on Stagnaro Sportfishing’s beautiful Velocity. Whale tours often need to travel miles offshore in order to find and view the majestic cetacean giants that visit Monterey Bay. But, the further out you go, the worse conditions can be.

Despite the 60-foot length of Stagnaro’s flagship, Baxter says things have been tough. “It was so choppy and rough, we could barely see the whale spouts. The spumes were literally zipping sideways in the wind. A cascade of spray drenched the boat, we had to keep everyone off the bow.” Baxter said.

Meanwhile, Chris’ fFshing Trips running out of Monterey Harbor keeps plugging along, running a few trips each week. The popular Combo trips include pulling pots for Dungeness crab, then fishing for sanddabs. This week’s score for Chris’ boat Caroline show crab counts around 45 for the boat and as usual, so many sanddabs they don’t bother to count. Chris’ is sending out regular trips this winter and angler loads are light. It’s a great opportunity to get out on the water and return with some gourmet seafood, with a little elbow room along the rails. In Santa Cruz, Stagnaro’s Sportfishing is running sanddab trips on the weekend and sometimes during the week.

Surfcasting for perch and striped bass was a little fickle this week. Some surfcasters were frustrated at many of their productive spots, getting only nibbles or hooking dinky perch. Other anglers hit the right place at the right time, like Santa Cruz fishermen Craig Pappas and Tom Wong. This pair scored some big ones from a beach in Santa Cruz. Pappas reported, “We’ve hammered the perch these past two weekend at all tides. Camo or red sandworms and of course, sandcrabs. Tommy Wong with his true measured 17-inch and 15-inch fish this past Saturday. We hit it both Saturday & Sunday morning two hours after high tide to low tide. No one else around other than us. Just kept moving to stay on them.”

The marine weather forecast indicates a big swell for the weekend that will be dropping by Sunday. Along with the rainstorm this week, that can be good for beach structure. And, hopefully will get the perch bite going again in time for the Sand Crab Classic Derby scheduled for next weekend.

If the calm weather persists into next week, it may be well worthwhile to go halibut hunting. This winter saw a steady catch of the big flatfish. This is unusual, but a promising indicator for springtime fishing. Rockfish season will open April 1 this year under California Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations.