The Santa Catarina State has a large and diversified fishing fleet and is placed among brasilian’s main sea-food producers. Catches of the different fleets have oscilated substantially from year to year, which greatl affected local and state economy. The trends of such variations and their related causes were studied by analysing historical catch data available for the different fleets from 1989 to 1993. Three fishing methods are responsable for most of Santa Catarina’s landings: purse-seine, pair trawling and pole-and-line. Most fisheries have shown a similar inverse pattern between fishing effort and CPUE with the exception of the purse-seiners during 1991, probably due to the implementation in the year before, of a harvesting tactic of season lenght limitation. Another exception was noted among pair trawlers partially explained by multi-specific nature of their catch. Oscillations and the overall increasing trend of total annual catches between 1989 and 1991 reflected variations of purse-seiners activities. A general increase in 1993 resulted from an increase on the effort of all fishing methods, and specially the development of drift-net and long-line fisheries. Another important contribution to that production increase was the more extensive use of by-catch species, maily caught by trawlers, that had been historically rejected.