Central California Archives - Pier Fishing in California

Seacliff State Beach Pier — Aptos

Due to damage from the winter storms in 2023, the pier is currently closed. It is unknown when or if it will reopen. Public Pier — No Fishing License Required Only a few piers have truly unique features and this pier is/was one of them.…

Capitola Wharf

Due to damage from the winter storms in 2023, the wharf is currently closed. No date has been set for reopening. Public Pier — No Fishing License Required While some piers along the coast (such as Seacliff) have characteristics that help define and give identity…

Johnson Pier — Pillar Point Harbor — Half Moon Bay

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required There are two public piers in the Half Moon Bay/Princeton area and both are located in Pillar Point Harbor. For many years the larger pier, the Johnson Pier, was open to fisherman and heavily used. Then, with the…

Morro Bay Finger Piers

Public Accesss piers — some of which require a license Streets that end at the bay along Morro Bay’s Embarcadero, those between Beach and Anchor Streets, provide public access, several in the form of small viewing/fishing platforms. None are very big, facilities are limited, and…

Moss Landing Pier aka Sandholdt Pier — Gone But Not Forgotten

Most of the earth’s continents are girded by shallow shelves that slope gently away from the land for many miles, their depths seldom greater than a few hundred feet. On the East Coast of the United States, the shelf stretches for more than one hundred…

Monterey Coast Guard Pier aka Coast Guard Jetty

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required John Steinbeck called it “the hour of the pearl.” It’s “the gray time,” he wrote in Cannery Row, “after the light has come and before the sun has risen—the interval between day and night when time stops and…

Monterey Municipal Wharf #2

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required The floating docks of Monterey Harbor and the pilings beneath Municipal Wharf II provide a rich and diverse community created largely by human activity. Such communities have imaginatively been called “accidental zoos.”… At low tide the pilings, shaded…

Pacifica Pier

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required The question of what is the best pier in the state is one that I have been asked fairly frequently over the years. Given that the answer depends on a number of factors (including the personal affection which…

Santa Cruz Wharf

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required When I first sat down to write about this pier, I almost didn’t know where to start. Should I talk about the pier itself, the municipal wharf built in 1913, the wharf which is the longest of the…

Morro Bay North T-Pier

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required Named for their shape, two mid-sized piers sit at the north end of the Embarcadero in Morro Bay. They are only a short distance apart and the environments and fishing are nearly identical. Regardless of size, they are…