High winds kept anglers tied to the dock a couple days last week, but mostly nice weather with light seas made for comfortable fishing condition. Winds are forecast to be finicky over the coming weekend, and a northwest swell will build and then drop again over the weekend.

This is good news for surfcasters. Structure is slowly forming along our Monterey Bay beaches, and increased surf activity gets these fish to feeding. A few good rainstorms would really come in handy right about now, for a variety of reasons.

December 31st marks the end of rockfish season in our area, as well as the expiration of fishing licenses. Savvy anglers will purchase their 2018 license now to avoid that frantic rush on their first fishing trip of January, when they realize they don’t have the license yet. Fishing licenses will cost a couple dollars more next year. Stay tuned for news and details on pending “12-month license” legislation currently in process.

Santa Cruz and Monterey anglers continue to enjoy decent fishing for rockcod on the deeper reefs and lingcod are moving in closer as their spawning time approaches. For catching rockfish, 80-240 feet are the best depths, while lings are on the bite in a little as 40 feet of water. Capitola angler Bob Dice pulled in a limit of brown and gopher rockfish last weekend, fishing 70 feet of water off Pleasure Point. Dice also lost a nice halibut right at the boat.

Monterey Boats are reporting half to full-limits of rockfish and averaging two lingcod per angler on the Check Mate and Caroline from Chris’ Fishing Trips. Moss Landing’s Kahuna Sportfishing continues to make the long trip towards point Lopez and Point Sur for full bags of big quality vermilion and copper rockfish as well as averaging over one ling per angler.

Despite the increase in crab pots laid out by the big commercial bats, Monterey Bay sport crabbers are counting limits of Dungeness while working the 180-220-foot depths. Flat mud areas close to the marine canyon edges are the best for placing crab pots. Monterey Bay angler Matisse Selman took a Friday trip on the Hulicat out of Half Moon Bay for a rock fish crab combo. Matisse reported good fishing though the crabbing was only "so-so." "I caught two big ling cod. One 11 pounds the other 10 pounds. The crab split wasn’t great at three per person," Matisse happily reported.