Fish rap: Dungeness crab fishing is picking up

Fish rap: Dungeness crab fishing is picking up


Choices remain somewhat limited in our area due to weather, seasons and other factors. Nevertheless, dedicated anglers had a good chance last week for success both in freshwater and salt.
Stagnaro's Sportfishing musters a trip every weekend. Sometimes the loads are very light, with only 10-16 anglers aboard. This makes for lots of elbowroom on the 60-foot Velocity. Usually working the edges of Soquel Hole lately, skipper Ken Stagnaro has found sand dabs and mackerel by the bucketful for his clients. Last weekend Stagnaro's counted 240 sandabs and 135 mackerel for the boat. This weekend, the sand dab count was lower, due to the profusion of big Spanish mackerel biting on the surface.
According to Stagnaro, his anglers had trouble getting their rigs through the mackerel to fish for sanddabs.

"These Spanish mackerel were big, in the two-pound range, he said. "They fight harder than the Pacific mackerel, so we had a lot of tangled lines. The Spanish macks also taste better than the Pacific Mackerel, they are less oily and have more white meat."
Final count for the trip last Saturday was 130 dabs and 175 macks.

After a very slow season so far, it looks like the Dungeness crab fishing is picking up. Captain Jimmy's Sportfishing launched a crab and dab trip a couple weeks ago. Skipper Jim Rubin found 10 sandabs for each client aboard, as well as 20 big Dungeness crab. It may be well worth it to drop those crab pots again. Rubin was fishing in 200 feet of water off Davenport, his favorite location for Dungeness crab.

After the Sand Crab classic last weekend, the perch fishing was fantastic from the Capitola Wharf, according to Ed Burrell. "We saw a lot of fish caught between Saturday afternoon and Wednesday, when things slowed down again," he said.

Burrell saw a good number of black and calico perch come over the rail, as well as big barred surfperch up to two pounds.
Most exciting was the angler who hooked a 10-ound striped bass near the surfline on a surf rig using shrimp. The fisherman had a rickety old rod and reel with six-pound test. It was quite a battle before Burrell scooped the tired fish with a crab net.

Though there will be no fish plants at Loch Lomond this year, a few trout have been caught since the opener last weekend.
Ranger Judie Cole reports the fish are "holdovers' in the 14- to 16-inch range, and most were caught by trollers using KastMasters or Needlefish. An angler also caught eight largemouth bass in the space of an hour and a half. One weighed in at over 10 pounds, a gravid female. All the bass were successfully released.
We are all waiting the Santa Cruz City Council's decision on March 10th as to whether outside boats will be allowed on Loch Lomond this year. Fearful of invasive species, staff at the lake may be allowed to continue a stringent inspection routine rather than having to resort to an outright ban.

Allen Bushnell


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