Santa Cruz rockfish 6/3

Buddy and I hit Santa Cruz this morning and the conditions were excellent.  Gentle to no wind, swells were small, and very slow drift if any at times.  We reached our spot and started with squid at about 7:15am.  Started catching a few sizeable rockfish (gopher/blacks) and the bite never let up.

I caught most of my rockfish on swimbaits and hooked a couple of small lings on whole squid.  We later noticed some bait fish being chased to the surface and were able to jig some up on the sabiki.  We then started trolling our spot with king fish sunk to the bottom.  The lings were hitting the king fish (bigger than we both preferred to fish with) every 20 minutes or so.  In fact, the one keeper ling my buddy caught grabbed onto the side of his large king fish bait and never let go until he was in his kayak.  No unhooking necessary... go figure...

Ended the day with about 5 lings and a bunch of gopher rockfish.  I wish I had the energy to get back out there tomorrow... but I'm beat.  May try to sneak out to HMB for a few more dungeness before the season closes.

Thanks for the report Aaron. How did it go last Thursday in SC? I thought about joining you but got lazy trying to fish two days in a row.

Nice catch!  I went out on Saturday to the mile buoy then towards the lighthouse and caught some nice rockcod and one decent cabezon.  Weather was great all day.

Fishbushing:

Man I tell you last Thursday was pretty bad (hence no post)...  Windy, ugly, cold, swells, we went 2 miles out and should have stayed closer in.  I stayed fishing w/ a friend and my other buddy called it and took his rented skiff back to the harbor w/ his wife.

We decided to give the yellow buoy area a try before calling it.  Then for reasons unknown, the wind died down (was supposed to increase) and the swells subsided.  I'll never understand the ocean and/or weather reports.  Things calmed down and we both decided to stay for awhile.  We caught 4 rockfish between us.  Nothing worth writing home about. 

Right on Aaron. Thanks for the info. I'm hoping to give SC a try sometime.