Judging by what we’ve seen so far this year we may be looking at an interesting winter, weather wise. Already a series of low-pressure areas and steep pressure gradients in the north Pacific have generated wet windy storms for our area. This week was no different, though most days allowed anglers to get out and fish. Thursday’s ocean conditions were nasty enough to generate a small craft advisory from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. It looks like conditions will settle down through the weekend, though a chance of rain persists into next week.

A little bit of rain won’t stop our Dungeness crab anglers from heading out to pull their pots, re-bait and redeploy the crab traps. Commercial Dungeness season is open now, so there are a lot more crab traps, lines and buoys out there. Careful navigation is a necessity, especially if launching before dawn.

Following a typical yearly pattern, the crab are spread out across the Bay, with higher concentrations to the north, and fewer crabs crawling to the south. David Hurley from the Hurley Chronicles.com spoke with Captain Rick Powers in Bodega Bay this week. Powers operates the new Sea Angler and has gathered limits of Dungies on each of his crab/rockfish combo trips. And, the quality is very good, with big meaty crabs being the norm. Powers reports, “These are just ‘monster’ crab, and we have taken rockfish and crab limits on every trip for around 4500 jumbo Dungeness. It is time to get out here right now as it is about as good as it gets.”

Closer to home, most crabbers are doing best working the 170-220 feet depths off the coast north of Santa Cruz. Todd Fraser from Bayside Marine advises, “The crab fishing is still going good for the anglers near Four-Mile and Davenport. Anglers using mackerel, sardines, and squid are doing best.”

Speaking of mackerel, Ed Burrell at Capitola Boat and Bait reports a good bite of the big horse mackerel in his area near the SC3 buoy. Skiff angler Man Vu from San Jose used a bait jig to catch a good number of the giant macks earlier this week. Besides being terrific fighters on light gear, the mackerel make great table fare when prepared correctly, and can be frozen for future crab bait as well.

Other locations in the bay are producing good crab numbers as well. Anglers are pulling full pots straight out of Santa Cruz to the 200-foot area, and along the canyon edges of Soquel and Pajaro Holes. The crab have a tendency to move south as the season progresses. At this point there are crab being caught out of Monterey, but the numbers are lower. Chris Arcoleo from Chris’ Fishing Trips is running crab combo trips. While he continues to post full limits of rockfish and an average of one lingcod per rod, the crab counts are hovering at ½ to ¾ limits for clients aboard the Check Mate and the Caroline.