Mary Hermansky, board member at the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project sends us a special message this week. In partnership with the Castroville Rotary Club, MBSTP will be hosting their 41st Annual Albacore Feed Dinner and Raffle on Saturday November 9th. The event draws hundreds each year for the delicious albacore as well as fabulous prizes to be raffled and auctioned. Fresh local flowers, produce and all sorts of quality fishing equipment plus generous gift certificates from area businesses are snatched up each year by lucky attendees. If you’d like to attend this year, tickets are available at the door. The dinner will be at the Castroville Recreation Center, 11261 Crane Street in Castroville. Cocktails at 6pm, and dinner is at 7.

Todd Fraser at Bayside Marine reports good fishing for most of our local species. Midweek he reported, “The weather is still calm and anglers are taking advantage of it. There has been good scores of halibut from Four-Mile to Davenport and near the Cement Ship. The halibut are still being caught in 50-80 feet of water. There are big schools of bait all over the bay right now making fishing good. The deep water was wide open for big rockfish. Striped bass are still being caught near the river mouth due to all the anchovies that are close to the beach.“

Charter boats concentrated on rockfish this week. Beth Norton reported for Go Fish Santa Cruz Charters saying, “We fished the deep near Davenport. The clients caught a variety of rockfish including coppers, browns and green spots. They landed a nice vermillion and a petrale sole.” Kenny Stagnaro runs full-day as well as half-day trips on his boats Legacy and the Velocity. Stagnaro is changing things up a bit as fall season fishing progresses. He reports, ““Last two North Coast trips for the season Saturday 10/12 and Saturday 10/19, then we'll run full-day trips through the end of the year, running up towards Davenport and 4-mile. Local reefs have been a little slow for rock fish on the half-days, but still some nice days out.” Chris’ Fishing Trips from Monterey posted their usual ho-hum fishing reports. Limits, limits limits. Anglers aboard the Check Mate and Caroline caught up to 270 rockfish as well as 15 lingcod on their trips over the past few days.

Mega Bite Skipper Tom Dolan reminds us, “Remember, crab season starts up November 2nd.” Most of the Charter operations around the Bay will be running crab/rockfish combo trips. Crabbing is always best at the beginning of the season, before the commercial boats start putting out their hundreds of crab pots. If you like big, firm and meaty Dungeness crab, you might think about booking ahead before all the boats get fille