We still have a couple of months to go before saltwater fishing in the Monterey Bay area is in full swing in terms of weather, sea conditions, fish movement and seasonal regulations. For many anglers time seems to crawl during this pre-season period. Others, such as myself, trend towards the optimistic. And, with fingers crossed we really may have some things to be happy about as we slide into the 2026 fishing seasons.

First of all, crabbing is still going very well on Monterey Bay for both commercial and recreational anglers. Using long-soak crab pots really helps with the productivity aspect of trapping delicious Dungeness crab. The crab remain plentiful out in the bay, and haven’t moved around that much this winter. Perhaps this is due to the lack of big northwest swells this season? At any rate, the crab are still here, you can soak your pots for a couple days without the crustaceans crawling out and the classic locations are still producing, namely 170-220 feet of water on the flats near the deepwater canyon edges.

As reported recently, halibut fishing is likely to start early this year. Usually April and May are the months for flatties to move into the shallow 30-60 foot areas. Because we’ve seen a consistent catch of halibut over this winter in about 90 feet of water, the probability of an early move to the shallows is a reasonable expectation. We’ve been assured by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife that April 1 will be the opening date for the RCG Complex fishing season (Rockfish, cabezon and greenling). Rockfishing should be scheduled open until December 31, 2026. And as a bonus, it looks like the DFW is doing away with the checkerboard depth restrictions for this season. Rockfishing is scheduled to open “for all depths,” including those beautiful deepwater reefs beyond 300 feet.

And finally, maybe the biggest news is in regards to king salmon. Dust off your flashers and oil up the downriggers, there’s a really good possibility we’ll be fishing for salmon again this year. We don’t want to get too far out over our skis here, being used to consistent disappointments from the DFW and other government regulatory agencies that control the salmon seasons. But, the numbers of salmon stock look very good this year after a few years of tragically low return rates to the spawning rivers and creeks. 2024 and 2025 were good “water years.” The numbers reported from last Fall’s run are sufficiently more than the minimum requirements for a recreational and even commercial take of kings in the salt this year. Final decisions will be made in March and April meetings of the governing agencies.