Fishing the Shelter Island Pier, and where to eat after
Six miles from downtown on Point Loma, Shelter Island's T-shaped pier is open 24 hours, lit, with a bait shop on it, and California waives the fishing licence on any public pier. Bay bass and halibut on live anchovies, mackerel and bonito on the surface, barracuda after dark. A guest guide from Smells Like Fish, ending at three Point Loma tables on the way home.
Six miles from downtown, on the bay side of Point Loma, Shelter Island’s pier runs about 200 feet out into San Diego Bay and opens into a T nearly 500 feet across. It is open 24 hours, lit, with fish-cleaning stations, restrooms, free parking, and Sharkey’s Bait and Tackle on the pier itself. And it costs nothing to fish, because California law says “a sport fishing license is not required to take fish for any purpose other than profit by means of angling from a public pier in the ocean waters of the state.” This is the fishing half of a day that never leaves the peninsula. The eating half is at the end, in Point Loma, on the way back to the freeway.
I write the guides on Smells Like Fish, a bait and tackle site, and I am a guest here. Top of San Diego asked for the water. They supplied the tables.
The day, in order
Be on the T at first light on a rising tide with live anchovies from Sharkey’s. Fish one rod on a Carolina rig on the bottom for spotted bay bass, sand bass, and halibut, and a second rod with a size 4 hook near the surface for mackerel and bonito, which is the rod that will bend first. Fish the top of the tide, then drive five minutes up Rosecrans into Point Loma for lunch. If you want an afternoon, the Embarcadero Marina Park pier downtown is the same fishery a mile from the Gaslamp, or Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, reopened after 18 months of storm repairs, fishes halibut and croaker off the sand until the 7 p.m. gate. Dinner is back in Point Loma, and if you have the energy, the pier is still open when you leave the restaurant.
What is in the water
Pier Fishing in California’s Shelter Island page lays out the calendar: sand bass, halibut, and croakers summer through fall; blackperch and opaleye winter and spring; mackerel, bonito, and barracuda year-round, the barracuda at night; sharks, rays, and lobster in the eelgrass. Live anchovies are the bait for nearly all of it. The limits are the state’s for the Southern Management Area: kelp bass, barred sand bass, and spotted sand bass “five fish in any combination of species, except no more than 4 barred sand bass” at a 14-inch minimum; California halibut “five fish” at 22 inches; white seabass three at 28 inches, one only from March 15 to June 15; yellowtail ten at 24 inches fork length. The sand bass move into the bay from November through March, and the winter pier crowd is fishing for them.
Where to fish from shore
- Shelter Island Pier, 6 miles: 24 hours, lights, bait shop, cleaning stations, free parking, no licence.
- Embarcadero Marina Park South, 1 mile: the downtown bay pier, spotted bay bass, halibut, croaker, bonito, no licence.
- Coronado Ferry Landing, Pepper Park, Chula Vista Bayside Park, 5 to 9 miles: the south bay piers, sand bass in winter, no licence.
- Crystal Pier, Pacific Beach, 10 miles: 872 feet, reopened after 18 months, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., no licence. The Ocean Beach Pier next door has been closed since October 2023, and the city’s replacement does not start construction before 2028.
- Imperial Beach Pier, 14 miles: open, with the water around it subject to sewage closures that lifted in April 2026 for the first time that year.
- Lake Jennings, 22 miles: 19,000 pounds of trout a winter and night catfishing Fridays and Saturdays in summer, $12 plus the state licence.
Licences and the limits
None on a public pier. Everywhere else, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife sells a resident licence for $64.54 a year, a nonresident for $174.14 or $64.54 for ten days, and one- and two-day licences at $21.09 and $32.40, plus the $7.30 Ocean Enhancement validation south of Point Arguello and $20.26 for a second rod. Under 16 fishes free. The lakes add their own permits: $10 a day at the City of San Diego reservoirs (Murray, Miramar, San Vicente, El Capitan, Lower Otay) with the state licence, $12 at Lake Jennings with the licence, $10 at Santee Lakes and Dixon Lake with no licence at all, and free at Chollas Lake for ages 15 and under. Fresh water is five trout, five bass at 12 inches, no limit on catfish, and 25 sunfish and crappie combined.
The gear side
Which hook holds a live anchovy on a Carolina rig, how to fish a high-low rig for croakers, what a clamp-on rail holder does when a bat ray takes the squid at midnight, and which of the county’s lakes has the trout truck this week: that is my beat, and it does not belong on a restaurant site. The full San Diego fishing guide on Smells Like Fish has the map of all 14 spots with drive times from downtown, the live bay and La Jolla water temperatures, the licence link, which piers the storms closed and when they come back, every lake’s permit price and open days, the state limits, and the tackle list.
Where to eat after
Shelter Island Drive runs back to Rosecrans Street, and Rosecrans is Point Loma’s main street. These three are on the Top of San Diego Point Loma list. The scores are theirs, not mine.
Sources. California Department of Fish and Wildlife licence fees, the public pier exemption, and Southern Management Area ocean regulations; Pier Fishing in California, Shelter Island Pier and Crystal Pier pages; City of San Diego reservoir pages and the Ocean Beach Pier Renewal project; Lake Jennings fishing page; Times of San Diego and 10News on Imperial Beach water closures. Drive distances computed on OpenStreetMap roads from downtown San Diego.
Ray Dodson writes for Smells Like Fish. Ray is the pen name of that site's research desk: every recommendation is built from documented angler consensus, state fish and wildlife guidance, and published testing, with sources named in every article. This piece was written for Top of San Diego.