Fishing forecast for San Diego, CA

San Diego fishes three kinds of water from one city. Mission Bay, a park the city dredged out of a tidal marsh, gives protected water inside the city limits. The city's reservoirs hold Florida-strain largemouth bass, the strain Upper Otay Reservoir was established in 1959 to raise and introduce. Offshore lie the waters NOAA Fisheries names as the main West Coast recreational grounds for Pacific bluefin tuna: southern California and northern Baja.

Best fishing times in San Diego this week

Majors run an hour either side of the moon crossing the meridian over San Diego, CA; minors, half an hour either side of moonrise and moonset. Where those widths come from: best fishing times and how we compute these times.

When these windows are not the right tool

Solunar theory is John Alden Knight's 1926 prediction; the ±60 and ±30 minute widths are convention, not calculation. The times are computed astronomy, the claim that fish feed inside them is not. The day rating follows moon phase — identical nationwide, so every city shows it the same. A moving front beats the moon: apps that read pressure.

Where to fish in San Diego

This page is built around Mission Bay, with Pacific and Miramar & Otay in reach — both salt and fresh water, about 15 minutes from the middle of San Diego.

Tides are computed for this coast separately: the San Diego tide chart carries high and low water for the next sixteen days.

Mission Bay gives protected water inside the city for fish that use bays as well as the open coast. CDFW describes California halibut as an estuarine and inner-shelf species of sandy and sand-mud bottom, so the same fish is a target in the bay and along the coast outside it.

NOAA Fisheries determined Pacific bluefin tuna rebuilt in 2024, and it says sportfishing party boats and private boaters both target the species off southern California with live bait, casting jigs and trolling jigs.

Mission Bay Park was developed from the 1940s through the 1960s out of a tidal marsh that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo named False Bay in 1542. Twenty-five million cubic yards of sand and silt were dredged to shape it, and the City of San Diego describes the park as almost entirely man-made.

The nearest grids we publish are Los Angeles, CA (179 km, Santa Monica Bay) and San Francisco, CA (737 km, San Francisco Bay). Different water, and different minutes.

What you can catch in San Diego

State listings put these 6 fish in the water around San Diego. Plan around the peak, not the open season.

Upper Otay, the smallest of the City of San Diego's impounding reservoirs at 20 surface acres when full, was established in 1959 as a hatchery for the propagation and introduction of Florida-strain largemouth bass. It has been open to the public since 1996.

California halibut spawn from April through July, according to CDFW, and April through July are also the halibut peak months in the species table on this page.

Upper Otay protects what the City of San Diego calls the last significant population of northern-strain largemouth bass in the area. In virtually all other Southern California waters, the city says, the northern strain has been replaced by the Florida strain.

Tackle sits outside a forecast page: start with how to catch largemouth bass.

Sunrise, sunset and daylight in San Diego

The moon window moves daily; the sun does not. Plan a season against this block.

The longest day of 2026 is June 21, 14h 18m; the shortest, December 21, 10h 00m. The meridian passing drifts about 50 minutes later daily: a dawn window this week is an afternoon window in a fortnight.

Market squid spawn off southern California from October through the end of April or May, according to NOAA Fisheries, gathering in large schools usually over sandy habitat. They die shortly after spawning, and the whole population replaces itself every year.

Daylight in San Diego runs from about 14 hours 20 minutes on the longest day of the year to about 10 hours on the shortest, a swing of about four hours twenty minutes between the June and December solstices.

San Diego's water has real seasons. At NOAA's San Diego gauge, station 9410170, the monthly mean water temperature in 2025 ran from 57.7 degrees in the coolest month to 72.1 in the warmest, a spread of 14.4 degrees within one year. The species table on this page follows the year too, with largemouth peaking from February, halibut from April and bluefin from June.

License and seasons in California

Rules for California come from the California agency, and the calculation behind the table is set out in how we compute these times.

Boat ramps and fishing access in San Diego

Public registries put 5 access points within reach of San Diego, 2 of them trailer ramps. The nearest is Shelter Island Boat Launch, about 3.7 mi out in a straight line.

5 access points within 25 km of San Diego, CA, from 0 agency registries and OpenStreetMap — the same records the table below lists. Each dot is a record its source publishes, not a place we have visited; click one for what that source says. The dashed ring is that 25 km circle, centred on the point every distance is measured from — click that centre for its coordinates, even when a cluster sits on it. Zoom in to split a cluster.