Capitola and Santa Cruz Boat Rentals

There was a mystery fish hooked up down close to the beach on a live shiner. It got wrapped up in some kelp and got away. But it was something with some girth. It wasn’t a sea lion, cuz it never breached. We’re thinking it might have been a leopard shark or a halibut. Let your imagination run wild cuz we’ll never know for sure. It was the only big fish we’ve heard of so far today.

For most folks, there have been a lot of jacksmelt and perch biting on mostly shrimp on bait jigs and small hooks on surf leaders. That’s all we have now, but the day is still kinda young for wharf fishing - there may well be some late bite.

Kurtis went out late today - after noon - and landed this one on the fifth drift using a live sardine. He tried fishing Capitola, but the drift was so fast with the current that it was pretty much a lost cause.

We did however see four legal halibut come in off some Capitola boats - one off a rental, three off of privates. One came in from Soquel point off O’Neil’s, one came in off the mile reef, and two came in off Capitola reef. They were using various lures - swim baits, halibut rigs with anchovies and live sardines.

For most people this was a slow day - we had a few boats do ok with rock cod which they caught off the point, Adam’s reef, and the mile reef. But on whole boats were lucky to get a few king fish. The huge tide is the culprit in all this - it’ll pass in a few days and things should pick up again.

We did just get a bunch of one day fishing licenses, so the panic post from earlier today isn’t such a big deal. If you get one somewhere else, fine, but we have them - don’t worry.

Also - we have some unreserved boats here - come early if you want to get in on one of those.

Otherwise - here’s to a good tomorrow - hopefully we’ll be posting lots of pics.

Here he is with his 5 foot long stringer of fish. Most people did not do this well today. But of course Glenn is not most people. So let’s examine Darn Glenn’s day, maybe we can learn from him.

He fished all day. Most of the day he tried for halibut off Soquel point. This was not a fruitful exercise except for one just legal one which you see here - it bit a live sardine. As the day came near to a close, Glenn pushed the fail safe button (well, for him anyway) and went for the rock cod. All of these came from Soquel point and they all bit on swim baits.

Once again Glenn, we are in awe.