Slide Show: The Salmon are Running...Up a Dead End

Talk about shooting fish in a barrel--for the past week giant salmon have been running into the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor and the shoreline is packed with people snagging them, legally.

In the morning and evening, at the very end of the harbor, there were 50 people casting with pink worms and pulling up some big fish. Around noon the harbor end was less packed, but people were pulling fish.

Some fishermen and women weren't happy about new rules that limit fishing to one small section at the very end of the harbor between two signs. The reason is that in the past, people fishing from the sides of the harbor were causing erosion problems. People can also fish from the jetty by Aldo's, which according to Mike Baxter, the host of KSCO-AM radio show "Let's Go Fishing," is more sporting.

The salmon have been heading into this dead end for two years, since the farm-raised fish have been released into the bay from pens in the harbor. Some 240,000 juvenile fish were placed there at a cost of 10 cents per fish by the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project.

Salmon return to where they were raised and these ones come back to the harbor, which Baxter says, is a great way to get kids into fishing. On even numbered days the fishing spot is limited to kids 15 and under. On odd days, it's all ages.