Rockfish Fishing: Am I Doing Something Wrong?

I use rocks for weights, grab a few round ones off the beach, about 3-4 oz and epoxy a wire loop onto them. Use a short leader weaker than the mainline to connect the weight, so when it gets wedged into a rock you can break it off, replace it and keep fishing.

Ingenious!

Toro (above): That chart you gave the address for looks "off" - it has the Mile Buoy south of Lighthouse Point, not to the east southeast about a mile, as it actually is.  I didn't check the numbers given for it, they might be accurate.
   There is what seems to be a good paper chart geared for fishing SC and a wide area of the coast for sale at Bayside Marine in SC and elsewhere.  For first times in an area, you could just copy the area your interested in and laminate it with some clear shelf paper (or take a pic and take your phone with you). 

If you can find bait like Jack smelt or Kingfish, send one down on a trap hook rig.  I have caught some big lings this way, and its honestly hella fun. Its basically like bottom bouncing for halibut (except stay off the bottom, dont want to snag) and usually 10-15 mins in something will have gone for it.  This was on a 12" jacksmelt with a 8/0 Circle hook in it.  I do this especially when the current gives me a nice drift and the swimbait bite is slow.

This. Find a good spot, and use livebait if nothing else works. The party boats use livebait for several reasons. First, it help keeps the bait guys in business, but 2nd, it's really hard to beat live bait. Shrimp flies need very little action, but they still need some movement and scent.

And if you are in a rut, sabiki'ing some jacksmelt/kingfish/anchovies at least will give you the confidence that you can catch fish.

If you do try this, try to weed out the bigger jacksmelt and target the ones less than 8". Keep them alive in a towable bait tube. You can make one out of 6" PVC.

I've had more skunks at Santa Cruz than anywhere else, but I've also had some really good days. days I couldn't keep the rockfish off my line, days I caught one in 6 hours. covering most of the same ground even.

high low rig with shrimp flies, or just 3/0 4/0 hooks works great.  with squid that's how most of my friends limit on rockfish by the time I'm looking for my fourth fish, but another rig they use a lot is what I use most of the time which I think is a good in-between the fancier setups and high low, I use a jighead with a swimbait as my weight, and a hook above it.

this lets me have some bait on a hook above, but also lets me fish for some bigger fish usually vermillions, coppers, and chinas as well as cabezons and lingcods that sure, they do go for a squid on a hook too, but usually they'll go for the bigger bait, and usually they'll be the bigger fish.

Over the past week the strange tide that had been affecting the fishing started to subside.  The fishing was nice this past Friday in Capitola.  I couldn't find the halibut that were supposed to be there, but we limited out on lings early.

This is my typical routine for finding fish in the Santa Cruz/Capitola area:

I typically spend some time examining the Navionics chart the night prior to identify some areas that I want to explore in addition to some of the areas that I've had success in the past.  If you have a FF, you can just mark them for use a waypoints when you fish.

We started the day at around 7am and spent about an hour loading up on fresh bait off the wharf using a sabiki rig tipped with some squid.   There was a good mix of kingfish, anchovies, and smelt to be had.  Usually, you can also find some mackerel.  The kingfish and smaller smelt were rigged on a 3-way with a trap rig and half drifted/half trolled around the structure.   This is usually a good setup for targeting hailbut and lings.   For rockfish, I'll use a hi-lo with either fresh bait, shrimp fly rig tipped with squid, or swimbait on the bottom/teaser fly on top combo.

For rockfish, you just need to find the reefs.  For halibut, you'll want to target the flats around the reefs and other structure.   The approach with lings is similar to halibut.  During this time of the year, the halibut start going deeper and the lings start coming in.

Toro (above): That chart you gave the address for looks "off" - it has the Mile Buoy south of Lighthouse Point, not to the east southeast about a mile, as it actually is.  I didn't check the numbers given for it, they might be accurate.
   There is what seems to be a good paper chart geared for fishing SC and a wide area of the coast for sale at Bayside Marine in SC and elsewhere.  For first times in an area, you could just copy the area your interested in and laminate it with some clear shelf paper (or take a pic and take your phone with you).

It's quite possible that this map is off.   It's also possible that the buoy has moved since the map was originally created (I seem to recall that one of the buoys was replaced a couple years ago).  It's not my map, but I did use it years ago when I first started exploring the area. 

Anyone have a photo of the Bayside map?   I didn't know about it, but I am curious how my marks align with the map.

Just as an update- went out on Saturday with a bunch of friends who just got kayaks. My one buddy has a fish finder that we used (he and I were the only ones fishing), we got 3 edible but small rockfish between us (2 me, 1 him) and one rockfish that was so small I tossed it back. Not great pickings, but now I know my setup at least works! Thanks everyone!

Just as an update- went out on Saturday with a bunch of friends who just got kayaks. My one buddy has a fish finder that we used (he and I were the only ones fishing), we got 3 edible but small rockfish between us (2 me, 1 him) and one rockfish that was so small I tossed it back. Not great pickings, but now I know my setup at least works! Thanks everyone!

gotta get that confidence going man, glad you landed a few.