San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Sports fishing provides unique, challenging maritime outing
One hundred years ago, in 1922, it wasn’t parades or ceremonies, but fish that stole the show in Santa Cruz over Memorial Day.
“Plenty of sport yesterday fishing for king fish — hundreds of them were caught, and most of them were of a surprisingly large size,” the Santa Cruz Evening News reported.
Same as it ever was: Whether you’re angling to channel your inner Hemingway while struggling with a salmon or want to kick back with friends and family for a more relaxed maritime outing, Santa Cruz’s charter fleet is always been ready to accommodate every kind of angler.
For some captains, this seems a literal birthright. Ken Stagnaro, of Stagnaro Charters, is the latest in a 138-year family line of Santa Cruz fisherman.
“My great-grandfather, Cottardo Stagnaro, came here in 1879, and started as a deckhand on a commercial fishing boat,” he said. “From that, he built his own fishing fleet. He started taking people out on charters in the early 1930s, so we’re almost 100 years old in that department. All our elders are gone, but my cousin Ron and I and still here, with two good, modern boats.”
Like many Santa Cruz charter operators, Stagnaro offers a variety of tour options dedicated to different kinds of fish (rockfish, salmon, tuna; shark and whale watching, too) at different durations, depths and distances. Close to home or a bit farther up the coast, rockfish, he said, are a perennial favorite for charter clients.
“The mellow way is the rock fishing way — that’s, like, our local version of going to Disneyland,” Stagnaro said. “The average person doesn’t have to have a lot of experience to catch rockfish. We have longer range ones that go 25-30 miles up the coast for nine or ten hours for those who have a little more skill and are a little more invested — because there we’re targeting lingcod, and you get a pretty good fight with those. But if what you’re looking for is fish to bring home for the grill or for fish tacos, it’s a pretty high success rate to take a bag home.”
If he’s partial to anything he fishes — both for the effort and how it is on the plate — he said it’s salmon, particularly the king (or Chinook) salmon. That it’s a shorter salmon season off Santa Cruz than farther north only enhances appreciation.
“Sometimes in San Francisco, they can get a solid six, eight months of really decent fishing, especially later in the year — they kind of stay out front of the heart of the Golden Gate,” he said. “The season may be long but because of that we don’t see them like up there. We can’t make a living without the salmon, but we don’t rely on the salmon, either.”
That said, Stagnaro cannot help but evangelize as to the virtues of fresh-caught Pacific salmon on the palate.
“There are few people who don’t desire the taste of salmon, yet there are many who have never actually tasted one caught fresh from the ocean,” he said. “I personally will not touch a farm-raised salmon — I cannot stand the taste of it,” he continues. “Even when you buy this salmon and it’s from Alaska out of the rivers, I can’t eat it, either — I just don’t enjoy the flavor. There’s nothing like wild king salmon out of the Pacific Ocean. I mean, yeah, the fight is great — the fight’s not quite an albacore fight, but its way better than a rock cod fight, somewhere in the middle, fight-wise. But the eating pleasure is second to none.”
Stagnaro said he’s partial to salmon caught not by dragnetlike trolling, but by mooching — essentially, an ocean-depth variation on fly fishing, cutting and rigging natural spin-bait for a specialized rod and reel that can handle a fish easily capable of overwhelming less worthy tackle. The bait has to keep moving to hold the interest of the salmon, and salmon bites can either be many and tentative or few and unsubtle, which is exactly what many find fun.
“It certainly can be less productive than trolling, but fisherman who want to actually catch the fish themselves like mooching, regardless of if they actually catch fish or not,” he said.
Stagnaro notes halibut continue to be on a robust local run, but if you have any aspirations for albacore, you might want to keep your powder dry.
“There were some bluefin through here last year, but albacore-wise, we just haven’t had the water here in years where it’s anything substantial,” he said.
Stagnaro also offers whalewatching only charters, and notes that U.S. Fish & Wildlife cut the commercial crab season short this spring after several humpbacks got entangled in crabbing lines.
“A lot of people don’t realize that this is where humpback whales feed — they’re not just passing through when the come through here — and the heard is probably three times as large as it was 20 years ago, which has been wonderful to watch,” he said.
Advertising Feature • Santa Cruz • Sunday, September 4, 2022