Guide
Ocean fishing seasons, explained
Checked September 18, 2026 against CDFW’s ocean salmon regulations, its groundfish summary, its Pacific halibut page and Marine Management News.
The Fishing tile says one word — OPEN, CLOSED or CHECK — for Chinook, coho, halibut and bottomfish in the ocean off the town you are looking at. The words are this board’s reading of CDFW’s rules. The rules are CDFW’s, and they can change with a day or two of notice.
The tile is not a licence to fish. It is a reading of a season table and the notices published since. Bag limits, size limits, gear and closed areas are none of its business, and a word can be right while the thing you are about to do is still illegal. Read the rule before you go.
One line splits this coast, and it splits it twice
CDFW manages the ocean off these towns in areas, and the boundary that matters here is 40°10′ north latitude — a line of latitude out on the Lost Coast, south of Petrolia and north of Shelter Cove.
The convenient thing, and it is genuinely convenient, is that CDFW draws that same line for two different fisheries:
| Fishery | North of 40°10′ | South of it, to Point Arena |
|---|---|---|
| Salmon | Klamath Management Zone | Fort Bragg Management Area |
| Groundfish | Northern Management Area | Mendocino Management Area |
So every town on this board from Fort Dick down to Petrolia reads the northern rules for everything. Shelter Cove alone sits south of the line and reads the southern ones. That is not a detail: in 2026 the two areas fished different dates in August, and the bag limit on vermilion rockfish is four in the north and two in the south.
Which area each town fishes
| Area | Towns on this board |
|---|---|
| Klamath Management Zone | Fort Dick, Crescent City, Orick, Trinidad, McKinleyville, Arcata, Manila, Samoa, Eureka, King Salmon, Fields Landing, Loleta, Fortuna, Ferndale, Petrolia |
| Fort Bragg Management Area | Shelter Cove |
The board works out which side a town is on from its latitude, and nothing else. That is safe here in a way it would not be further north: the line is a parallel rather than a headland, and no town on this coast fishes out of a bay whose mouth is on the other side of it.
What each word is worth
OPEN
A season CDFW adopted covers today, and no notice since has closed it. Where a quota can end a season early, the tile says or until the quota is caught beside the word — which is a real warning, not boilerplate. Both of this coast’s 2026 salmon seasons ended on a quota, weeks before their printed dates.
CLOSED
A season row or a notice says so. CLOSED is earned exactly as hard as OPEN is: the board will not call something closed because it cannot find a rule.
CHECK
The honest answer when there are two answers, or none. You will see it when:
- No season is written for today. A new year nobody has read yet, or a stretch of the calendar CDFW never printed a date for. The board does not fill a gap with a guess.
- A notice could not be read in full. CDFW publishes its in-season changes as posts on Marine Management News, and the feed the board reads carries only an excerpt — which often stops in the middle of the rule. A notice the board cannot parse turns that species CHECK until a later one it can read replaces it, or until a person here reads the post and writes its dates down.
- A page that carries a season has changed since somebody here read it, or could not be read at all.
CHECK always names what to read and links to it. It is never a polite way of saying closed.
The four species, and what is peculiar about each
Chinook
The ocean salmon season is set in the spring for the whole coast and then cut down in season as the quota fills. In 2026 the Klamath zone opened June 13, ran to July 19, and had its August called off when its 3,900 Chinook were taken. Fort Bragg fished the same dates, got August 1 to 9, and lost the rest at 5,100. CDFW put it plainly on August 21: sport fishing for ocean salmon north of Point Arena had already concluded for the year.
Coho
Coho is not a season on this coast. It is a prohibition. The daily bag is “2 salmon of any species except coho (silver) salmon”, every day of the year, and so the tile says CLOSED for coho in January as firmly as in September. If you cannot tell a coho from a Chinook in the water, that is the fish to leave alone.
Halibut
Pacific halibut opens April 1. North of Point Arena — which is both of these areas — it runs to November 15, one fish a day. The catch is that CDFW does not announce halibut changes as dated notices the way it does salmon: the season lives on its Pacific halibut page, and whether the quota has already closed it is only ever on the hotline. The tile gives you both instead of pretending to know.
Bottomfish
Rockfish, cabezon, greenling and lingcod. Both areas run April 1 through December 31, all depths, and are shut January through March.
The winter closure is a boat closure. “Closed — unlawful to possess in all waters” applies to fishing from a vessel. From shore, and for divers with spearfishing gear, most groundfish stay open year-round. A man on the jetty at Crescent City in February is not breaking the rule the tile is describing — which is why the closed word on this board says so in its own line rather than leaving you to find out.
Inside the ten-fish limit there are sub-limits that catch people out: one copper rockfish, two canary, no quillback at all, and vermilion four in the north but two from 40°10′ south. Lingcod is two fish at 22 inches.
Why the notices under the tile matter
Under the words the board prints CDFW’s own notices, dated and titled, with a link to each. Those are the agency’s words, not ours. When a word above and a notice below seem to disagree, the notice is the one that is right — it is the agency’s, it is dated, and it is newer than anything written here.
This is also the board’s weakest joint, and it is worth knowing where it is. CDFW’s feed gives an excerpt, not the rule. A notice that a person here has read in full is written into the season table with a link back to it, and the tile will then stand on that reading. A notice nobody has read yet turns the word CHECK. Both of those are deliberate, and the second one is the one that keeps you safe.
Who to ask
- CDFW Marine Region, for salmon: 707-576-3429.
- CDFW recreational Pacific halibut hotline, for whether the quota has closed the season: 831-649-2801.
- Marine Management News for the in-season changes as CDFW publishes them: cdfwmarine.wordpress.com.
Where this comes from
- CDFW ocean salmon sport regulations — wildlife.ca.gov ocean salmon
- CDFW ocean sport fishing groundfish regulations — wildlife.ca.gov groundfish
- CDFW Pacific halibut — wildlife.ca.gov pacific halibut
- CDFW Marine Management News — cdfwmarine.wordpress.com
- CDFW ocean sport fishing regulations, the whole booklet — wildlife.ca.gov ocean regulations