Central California Archives - Pier Fishing in California

Seacliff State Beach Pier — Aptos

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required Only a few piers have truly unique features and this pier is/was one of them. The end of this wooden 500-foot-long pier connects to the old cement ship Palo Alto, a bad idea turned good that has now…

Capitola Wharf

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required While some piers along the coast (such as Seacliff) have characteristics that help define and give identity to the pier, here it is the area itself that makes the pier special. Supposedly the oldest seaside resort along the…

Johnson Pier — Pillar Point Harbor — Half Moon Bay

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required There are two public piers in the Half Moon Bay/Princeton area and both are located in Pillar Point Harbor. For many years the larger pier, the Johnson Pier, was open to fisherman and heavily used. Then, with the…

Morro Bay Finger Piers

Public Access Area — Status Unclear — Fishing License May Be Required Streets that end at the bay along Morro Bay’s Embarcadero, those between Beach and Anchor Streets, provide public access, several in the form of small viewing/fishing platforms. None are very big, facilities are…

Moss Landing Pier aka Sandholdt Pier — Gone But Not Forgotten

Most of the earth’s continents are girded by shallow shelves that slope gently away from the land for many miles, their depths seldom greater than a few hundred feet. On the East Coast of the United States, the shelf stretches for more than one hundred…

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…

Pacifica Pier

Public Pier — No Fishing License Required The question of what is the best pier in the state is one that I have been asked fairly frequently over the years. Given that the answer depends on a number of factors (including the personal affection which…

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…