Gopher Rockfish Archives - Pier Fishing in California

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…

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…

Pillar Point Harbor Pier — Half Moon Bay

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required The Pillar Point Pier is relatively tiny (extending only 33 feet out from the jetty rock) and sits off by itself to the far end of the main parking lot. It juts out into the outer harbor water,…

Morro Bay South T-Pier

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required Sitting just a few hundred yards south of the North T-Pier, the South T-Pier is slightly larger and seems to be seeing an increasing proportion of the local pier anglers choose it as home. Perhaps this is due…

Gopher Rockfish

Scorpionfishes and Rockfishes: Family Scorpaenidae Species: Sebastes carnatus (Jordan & Gilbert, 1880); from the Greek word sebastes (magnificent), and the Latin word carnatus (flesh colored). Alternate Names: Butterball, butter bass, gopher cod. Called rocote amarillo in Mexico. Identification: Deep, stout body with a steep porofile.…

Port View Park Pier — Oakland

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required Called the Seventh Street Pier by most locals, this pier offers a pleasant park setting and some of the best fishing in this area of the bay. It is one of the best piers to fish at night,…

Citizen’s Dock — Crescent City

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required Every pier has its story and one of the most interesting here took place during a visit in 1997. I had arrived late in the afternoon, checked into the motel, and headed straight over to the dock for…

Goleta Pier

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required “Proceeding down the length of Goleta Pier is almost like walking along a rustic, folk version of a Parisian quay… The course along the pier is full of events and interest. There’s much that’s worth pausing over and…