Anglers around Monterey Bay enjoyed a few very nice fishing days as the 2025 rockfish season eased to a close. Conditions allowed boats to travel down the coast to Point Sur and beyond for big bags of canaries, vermilion and chilipeppers from the deep reefs. Nearshore rocks provided some great lingcod action, especially for those using sand dabs for live bait. The small sole are numerous on the 200-300-foot flats, along with their larger cousins, sand and rock sole. Though the rock fishing season is closed for now, the sanddabs and sand sole remain legal to catch, delicious to eat and readily available on the flats from 180-300 feet of water. A few halibut were reportedly caught from the 70-100 foot depths near Santa Cruz. 

Dungeness crab numbers are going up with the resumption of long-soak crab pots. Recreational Dungeness crab anglers spread out their pots on the flat edges of our deep submarine canyons. Crab are numerous from 140 to 220 feet of water. The crab pots allow a longer soak, and the Dungies can’t crawl out of them as they can with hoop nets. Everyone is happy. Crabbing has been very productive with most Dungeness reportedly caught near the Soquel and Pajaro Holes.

It is likely bonito will remain available from 300 feet of water straight out of Moss Landing, with the best bite being around 100 feet down. The tuna-like fish caught last week were of a high grade, and were fooled by anglers using flat fall jigs with slow-pitch rods.

Anglers from Monterey up to San Francisco enjoyed a few days of perfect surfcasting conditions. Winds were light and waves almost nonexistent. that brought the perch in close, especially on the high king tides. Anglers report mostly barred surf perch towards Monterey while fishermen closer to SF counted limits of redtails. A few scattered striped bass reports were submitted for the last two weeks of 2025. We should see those counts come up as local rivers and streams are all breaching, allowing spawners to hit the salt. January and February are famous for multiple catches of schoolie-sized stripers along the coast from Monterey to Half Moon Bay. 

Crabbers are doing well casting snares for Dungeness from the beaches of southern San Mateo county and further north. Barred surf perch are close in to the sand and aggressive right now, sporting their wintertime spawning colors. Grubs on a slow retrieve, GULP! sand worms, live sandcrabs, or meaty bait such as mussels or shrimp all seem to be working quite well these days for the hungry perch. Vince Chiofalo from Battlestar Baits reported in saying, “The perch bite is hot in South County SLO, Oceano, Guadalupe, and Vandenberg Base. Stripers are MIA as of very recent, but I think they are around somewhere.”