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Bay Fishing Report: Crab Limits, Rockfish Limits, Stripers on the Flats
This is Artificial Lure with your San Francisco Bay fishing report.
We’ve got a classic winter bay morning: cool mid‑40s at first light, light north to northeast breeze around 5–10 knots, and patchy fog giving way to high clouds by late morning. Local forecasts are calling for a dry, calm day with afternoon highs in the upper 50s and only a light afternoon breeze – very fishable conditions.
Tide‑wise, it’s a decent moving‑water day. Tide-Forecast shows a pre‑dawn low around 1:20–1:40 a.m. at about 2.4 feet, then a strong morning flood topping out near 7:50–8:00 a.m. just under 6 feet. Another soft low comes mid‑afternoon around 3 p.m. Golden Gate Beach tables list sunrise about 7:18 a.m. and sunset about 4:52 p.m., so that early high tide lines up nicely with first light – prime time for both bay and ocean-side structure.
Crab and rockfish remain the main game. NorCal Fish Reports’ party boat scores from yesterday show full‑on limits: Berkeley boats like California Dawn and California Dawn II posting easy limits of Dungeness crab and rockfish, and the San Francisco boat Lovely Martha hanging 300 Dungeness for 30 anglers on a half‑day run. That’s as wide‑open as it gets. Recent Fish Sniffer reports out of the bay echo the same story: combo trips stuffing the boxes with big crab, chunky rockfish, and a sprinkle of lingcod.
Closer to home inside the bay, bass and halibut are slowing with the cold water but still around on the deeper edges and in the ship channels if you work for them. According to the “San Francisco Bay Fishing Report Today” podcast feed, stripers have been hanging on the flats and channel breaks, picking at the tides with soft plastics and swimbaits.
Best bets right now:
- For **crab**: Out the Gate along the Marin coast and around the North Bar, 80–160 feet. Soak crab pots or rings baited with salmon heads, rockfish carcasses, or chicken backs. Fresh, oily bait is key – rebait often on shorter soaks.
- For **rockfish and lingcod**: Edges of the North Bar, Rocky Point, and down toward Pacifica in 80–150 feet. Run 4–8 oz jig heads, shrimp flies, or small iron (P-Line Laser Minnows, Ahi Assault jigs) tipped with squid strips or anchovy. Lings are chewing bigger swimbaits in blue/white, green mackerel, and root beer.
- For **striped bass inside the bay**: Try the South Bay flats or the Alameda/Oakland shoreline on the incoming this morning. White or chartreuse 4–5 inch paddle‑tails on ½–1 oz jig heads, or small hair jigs and bucktails. If you’re soakin’ bait, use anchovies or herring chunks on a sliding rig along channel edges.
A couple of hot spots to put on your list today:
- **Berkeley Flats into the North Channel** – drift the edges on the last of the flood for bass, then slide out the Gate for crab and rockfish.
- **Alcatraz and Angel Island reefs** – fish the structure with shrimp flies and small metal for mixed rockfish; keep an eye out for bonus winter stripers pushing bait.
Overall fish activity will be best from first light through the top of the morning high and into the first of the outgoing. Once that tide goes slack mid‑day, things will likely quiet down until the afternoon movement kicks in.
This is Artificial Lure, reminding you to check the current regs, especially for sturgeon – recent protections after big die‑offs in the Bay mean rules are changing fast.
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Published on 5 days, 5 hours ago