Capitola and Santa Cruz Boat Rentals

Brandon here went out on his kayak and managed to hook this 29 inch white seabass on a white hair raiser off privates in the kelp bed. That’ll be some tasty eating!

Otherwise it started out unusually chilly, drizzly, and gray, with a small amount of swelll. It got warmer (but still gray) around 11am, then finally became a proper summer day after 1:00pm. Tomorrow is supposed to be similar but of course that’s the weather forecast. At the moment it’s hard to tell if the swell is still here - it’s high tide. But - the small swell we have is of course not in any forecast we’ve seen.

On the wharf today people still doing well jigging mackerel.

There’s still lots of bait just outside the marina. Ed clogged his throw net Sunday morning with a huge number of pinhead anchovies - really the biggest mess that the stenographer has ever seen.

Right now there are a bunch of shearwaters sitting off cap reef in about 40 feet - more evidence of bait and summer and good things.

Here’s a pretty justifiably proud Jay with his 14 pound flattie. He caught it in front of O’Neil’s with - well - guess. It won’t be hard. Hint: LSOAHR.

We have definitely picked the highlights that we saw yesterday for these posts here - most of the boats came in with a couple rock cod, and 5 of 20 boats got skunked. Bummer. We blame the swell. It was not a big swell, but any swell is blame worthy.

We did however see lots and lots of happy faces again, and again this always makes the day worth while. It was a long day so that’s kind of our excuse for the tardiness. It is a poor excuse.

Swell is still up a bit. There are still signs of sardines outside the marina. We did notice that the bait balls came closer to the wharf last night than they have been, so the late nigh wharf should pick up if this trend continues. THAT IS NOT A PREDICTION. THAT IS WHIMSY.

Back to reality, there are still decent numbers of perch and mackerel coming up off the wharf.

[and now it is again today]

Here’s Jeff with his 23 pound halibut and Chris with his two legal lings. They caught these just slightly on the Santa Cruz side of the rental border. Say it with me: live sardines on halibut rigs.

Here’s Sheriff Larry with a fish that he was not really super excited about having his picture taken with (not up to Larry’s “standard”). But - it’s a nice fish for a three hour tour. He caught it off the radio towers using live sardines on a halibut rig.