Rockfish
San Diego
10-fish limits on $75–$80 half-day trips
Apr 7-17, 2026
The Count
Rockfish
Past 4 weeks · Top 5 boats
4-Week Total
10,468
High
4074 · 04/02
Low
1167 · 03/26
- Daily Double
- Dolphin
- New Seaforth
- Premier
- San Diego
- Total
Rockfish season in Southern California is closed for Q1 every year — no retention January 1 through March 31. It reopened April 1 with all depths legal, and the half-day fleet went straight to work.
The numbers are stupid. Three boats across three different landings have all hit limit trips inside of 10 days:
- Daily Double (Point Loma Sportfishing), April 10: 230 rockfish for 23 anglers — 10-fish limits for every single angler on the boat.
- Premier (H&M Landing), April 10 AM: 210 rockfish for 29 anglers.
- Dolphin (Fisherman's Landing), April 11 AM: 238 rockfish for 39 anglers.
Those aren't one-off days. Across Apr 7–17 the Premier averaged ~120 rockfish per trip, the Dolphin ~130, and the Daily Double's per-angler yield has been as high as 10.0 fish per angler. That's the legal limit, reproducibly, on $75–$80 half-day trips.
The species mix skews to Vermilion Rockfish — the deep-red "reds" — which is the premium species in SoCal. Vermilion carries its own 2-fish-per-person sub-bag inside the 10-fish RCG combined bag. Translation: two vermilions plus eight chuckleheads, bocaccio, chili-pepper, gopher, olive, starry, and whatever else comes up the rail fills the sack.
Ride-along species on the same trips:
- Ocean Whitefish — separate 10-fish bag, often 20–150 per trip
- Lingcod (2 fish, 22" minimum) — 1–2 per trip on most half-days, more on 3/4-days
- California Sheephead (5 fish/day) — decent bycatch, 2–13 per trip
- California Scorpionfish / sculpin — counts inside the 10-fish RCG bag
No boat data available for this period.
Conditions When the Bite Was Hot
Conditions — Apr 13-17, 2026
Powered by Fish City68.5°F
San Clemente Basin
3.9ft WNW @ 6.5s
San Clemente Basin
—
San Clemente Basin
Last Quarter (49%)
Calculated
Moderate (1.2 mg/m³)
CoastWatch ERDDAP
Major 07:03–09:03
Minor 01:33–02:33
Source: NOAA Buoys 46086 | Data from nearest reliable stations — not exact spot conditions.
Water temp at the San Clemente Basin buoy is running 68.5°F — warm for April, which has pushed some of the deeper vermilion action a bit shallower. Swell is a manageable 3.9 ft WNW at 6.5 seconds — fishable from a half-day boat without knocking bait off your rig. Wind has been dead calm with light afternoon breezes. Glassy mornings off Point Loma.
Rockfish doesn't key off tides the way inshore species do — you're vertical fishing over hard structure in 100–240 ft of water — so the tide swing matters less than the wind. What matters is whether you can hold the boat on a rock. This week, you can.
7-Day Forecast
7-Day Fishability Forecast
Thursday–Friday is the cleanest departure window: 3 ft swell, sub-10 kt wind, water in the high 60s. The weekend is soggy — Saturday comes in at 45% chance of rain with wind building to 15 kt, and Sunday is nearly the same at 49%. Neither is a hard no, but you'll be fishing in grey drizzle with choppier conditions. If you can flex, target Thursday or Friday morning and skip the weekend entirely. Monday clears back out.
The Calendar: Why You Book This Month, Not June
Conditions Match
1/4conditions match — Poor match. Might want to wait.
This is the part most anglers don't plan for. The all-depth window ends July 1. From July 1 to September 30, take is prohibited seaward of the 50-fathom line — roughly 300 feet of water. That cuts off the deepest, richest vermilion spots: the offshore high spots past 9-Mile Bank, the 267, the 302, the Butterfly Bank. For 90 days.
If you want the premium vermilion fishing at maximum water clarity and before the summer crowds hit the inshore grounds, you've got 68 days left from this publish date — through June 30.
What Anglers Are Saying
Daily Double, April 10, 2026
"The Daily Double crushed it on their half-day with limits of rockfish — 230 fish total for 23 passengers. That's the kind of action you want to see heading into mid-April."
— Point Loma Sportfishing dock report
Dolphin, April 16, 2026
"Dolphin returned from their AM half day trip with LIMITS of Rockfish, 1 Lingcod, and 2 Sculpin for their 13 anglers."
— Fisherman's Landing dock report
Tackle Loadout
Tackle Loadout
Rod
7–8 ft medium-heavy conventional (40–60 lb class)
Line
50–65 lb braid, 40 lb mono topshot
Leader
30–40 lb mono, 6–8 ft
Bait
Squid strips, shrimp flies, frozen anchovy (cut). Live dines if available.
Jigs
Standard SoCal rockfish rig is a 2–3 hook gangion (dropper-loop rig): bottom hook 18 inches above the sinker, middle hook 18 inches above that, top hook another 18 inches up. Heaviest torpedo sinker you need to stay vertical — lighter is always better for bite detection. Shrimp flies tipped with squid strips is the bread-and-butter; frozen anchovy cut into 2-inch strips also produces. Watch your species at the rail: **Canary Rockfish** (bright orange, white lateral line band, smooth chin) has a 2-fish sub-bag, same as **Vermilion** (deep red, no white band, rough scaled chin). **Cowcod, Yelloweye, Quillback, and Bronzespotted are prohibited year-round** — if you hook one, use a descending device to release at depth so it survives barotrauma. When in doubt at the rail, check the chin: vermilion rough, canary smooth.
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