Santa Cruz at the Yellow Can (pictures to follow)

It has been several years and I was about to give up on Santa Cruz but today was fabulous.  Hopefully this is the start of a new Santa Cruz experience.  I stuck pretty close to the Yellow Can and went from 40' to 60'.  I found most of the action at 42' just crossing back and forth in front of the yellow Can.  I had hooked up with Casey 62A and found out he was not having the same kind of action.  The problem we found out was he was using a Hootchie with a Squid trailer and I was using frozen Anchovies.  As soon as I gave him some Anchovies, he was also in the action.  I had several huge take downs with no stick.  I really do believe (or hope to believe) these were Halibuts but I can't prove anything.  I did see several Halibut taken in the immediate area.  It is great to see the Santa Cruz area start to come alive for we have been waiting for a long time.

One last part of the post for this was an exceptional experience.  I was talking with a guy on his boat (perhaps 20-30 yards away) when a Whale breached between us.   The exposed part of the Whale was at least twice the length of my Hobie.  I have got to tell you, this is quite an experience and it gives you a perspective on our human size in the grand scheme of things.

It looks like things are warming up and we can once again take pride in Santa Cruz.  By the way, one of my huge take downs was a sea lion that almost pulled my Rod off the kayak and then laughed at me as he ate my Squid and I reeled in knowing I had lost the largest fish of my life.

Thanx for the report. Seems like the SC is really lighting up this season

A whale of a report.

Go SC!!!

It's going to be a couple of weeks before I get a chance to get out there, but it does seem that SC is getting better.  Thanks for the report. I'll have to hook up with you again.
 I was off the Capitola Pleasure Pt kelp last week and a very aggressive sea lion raced around under my yak and then came up and bumped the yak at my left hip, right where I've seen some people keep a stringer of fish.  I didn't know what he was going to next, maybe climb in, so I slapped at the water with my paddle, but he acted like he was laughing at me, then took off.   I've never seen such aggressive behavior, normally, they surface a few feet away.  Have the sea lions seen enough yaks now that they've learned how to use us to get easy fish?  I was thinking maybe they are substituting for their old behavior of checking for flying nets on PB's scooping salmon.

Thanks for the report khmunger. That's awesome to see a whale on your Yak, I had a few Dolphins swim by I think they were chasing bait. I also had a few sea lions come up and check out my catch.   

    I was paddling back from the light house to the harbor last week when a sea lion altered course and headed straight for my bow from dead ahead  then veered off at about 20 feet and it was my impression that he was getting a bit of a chuckle out of it. Kinda proud of himself and ha ha on you too. Are seals developing a sense of humor this year.

    Thanks to khmunger for the bait. Saved my day. Those brown rockfish make a pretty good dinner.

Nice report, I was out there about a week and a half ago and caught a nice three pound cabezon along with a couple of small rockies but have yet to hook up a halibut. Plan to keep at it

Great report Keith!! Glad you got some fish out there.

-FF