Fishing forecast for San Francisco, CA

San Francisco Bay is where nearly half of California's surface water reaches the ocean: EPA says that water starts as rain or snow in the Bay-Delta watershed and flows to the Pacific through the Golden Gate Strait. Every tide moves in and out of the bay through that one strait, so in San Francisco the tide is a current as much as a water level, and a current table is worth reading beside the solunar times on this page.

Best fishing times in San Francisco this week

Majors run an hour either side of the moon crossing the meridian over San Francisco, 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 Francisco

This page is built around San Francisco Bay, with Pacific coast in reach — both salt and fresh water, about 15 minutes from the middle of San Francisco.

Current through the Golden Gate is strong enough to plan around: NOAA's 2026 current predictions at station SFB1201 give a peak ebb of 4.84 knots, the fastest predicted ebb of the year at that station.

Striped bass are an East Coast fish in this bay: they were introduced to the Sacramento–San Joaquin watershed in 1879 and stocked by CDFW until 2001, and each spring adults migrate from the ocean and the bay up into the rivers to spawn.

San Francisco Bay's shoreline runs about 400 miles, and the San Francisco Estuary Institute describes it as a mix of beaches, wetlands, marinas, ports, landfills, infrastructure and residential neighborhoods.

The nearest grids we publish are Sacramento, CA (121 km, Sacramento River) and Los Angeles, CA (559 km, Santa Monica Bay). Different water, and different minutes.

What you can catch in San Francisco

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

Rockfish on this coast means the Pacific rockfish of the genus Sebastes. On the Chesapeake Bay the same word means striped bass: the Chesapeake Bay Program's field guide lists the striped bass as also known as the rockfish or striper.

White sturgeon in the Central Valley system can live about 100 years and do not start spawning until roughly 14 to 19 years old, according to CDFW, and scientists estimate they spawn successfully only every six to seven years.

California halibut can be left-eyed or right-eyed: CDFW puts the split at about 60 percent left-eyed and 40 percent right-eyed. The agency finds the species in sandy and sand-mud environments, feeding almost exclusively on anchovies and similar small fishes.

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

Water temperature and season in San Francisco

Air here swings 10.7 °F across the year, from 52.2 °F in January to 62.9 °F in September. Water is measured separately, and it is not the same number: against these air normals the gauge reads 2.1 °F warmer in December and 0.7 °F colder in October.

Monthly climate for San Francisco, CA. The air line is the NOAA NCEI climate normal for 1991–2020 — the thirty-year average of a calendar month, not the weather of any one year — measured at SAN FRANCISCO DWTN, CA US (USW00023272), 0.6 km from the middle of town, with 27–29 of the thirty years behind each month. The water line is neither a normal nor the air: hourly readings at NOAA gauge San Francisco (9414290), 5.7 km out, averaged by calendar month over 2015–2023 — 8–9 complete years per month. It is the surface at the gauge, not the water on any particular spot, and it lags the air by weeks, so the two lines are not interchangeable. Read into this site on 2026-09-14.

The water at the Presidio gauge and the downtown air never drift far apart, and both reach their warmest in September rather than July, whose afternoons average almost four degrees cooler than September's. The year moves the water almost as much as the month does: October at that gauge has averaged anywhere from 57.7 to 66.1 degrees, a spread nearly as wide as the whole climb from January. One autumn is no guide to the next.

Sunrise, sunset and daylight in San Francisco

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

The longest day of 2026 is June 20, 14h 47m; the shortest, December 21, 9h 33m. The meridian passing drifts about 50 minutes later daily: a dawn window this week is an afternoon window in a fortnight.

Halibut are drifted over sand inside the bay in summer, while rockfish are worked over reef and pinnacle outside it. Two fisheries, two boats, two entirely different depths, within sight of the same bridge.

Ocean salmon fishing outside the Gate depends on the state of the Sacramento River and Klamath River fall runs: California's recreational ocean salmon fisheries were closed completely in 2023 and 2024 and limited in 2025, and opportunities widened in 2026 after both runs improved.

San Francisco's warm season comes late and its rain comes in winter. At the downtown station the 1991–2020 normals put the warmest afternoons in September, at 70.2 degrees against 66.3 in July, and 19.28 of the year's 22.89 inches of rain falls from November through March, against 0.37 inches from June through September.

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 Francisco

Public registries put 8 access points within reach of San Francisco, 6 of them trailer ramps. The nearest is Keel Park, about 1.9 mi out in a straight line.

8 access points within 25 km of San Francisco, 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.