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This Week’s Surf Fishing Report
3/13/26
March 2026
Important personal note: I’ve been hacked and lost my channels on Youtube and Facebook. I’ve placed all my weekly fish reports and how-to videos on Rumble.com. You’ll find them under: fishthesurf Please click on “Follow” once you’re there and you’ll be notified each time I post a new video. Thanks for your help…I really appreciate it!
March is officially the beginning of our grunion season (although they came ashore in February!). Reports from this week were good with big numbers south and smaller number to the north. Look for the number of grunion, in their runs, to increase over the next 3 months….and for halibut, white seabass and other fish to follow them, close to shore. More info on the runs below and all the run dates and additional info can be found under “grunion runs” on fishthesurf.com.
March also often comes in like a lamb and goes out like a windstorm. Traditionally, April is our most windy month where conditions are upset and need to reset for surf fishing to improve. March has some of this in store for us later in the month, but for the most part is starting out very calm, with even a moderate Santa Ana in place.
This month looks good for corbina fishing to begin to pick up as the water warms and more sand crabs come to the surface. This month is often good for spotfin and yellowfin croaker, with the former being enticed with natural baits like mussel, ghost shrimp and lug/blood worms, and the latter chasing bright spoons through the surf. March is also the beginning of the Spring spawn for halibut. these fish will gorge themselves this month to prepare for the spawn and in doing so come very close to shore to follow protein rich grunion for food.
GRUNION: Received great reports (thank you beach reporters!) of runs from Santa Barbara to San Diego. In SB runs were seen in Goleta and Carpinteria but with very small numbers. Santa Monica and Redondo were grunion no-shows. South, in both Carlsbad and Coronado, grunion runs were very heavy with thousands of grunion coming ashore. Next run is March 18th (also the last day of lobster season).
Have a great month at the beach and please send your fish reports to: fishthesurf@mail.com
Santa Barbara/Ventura: Storm debris has begun to clear up but there are still some junky areas. Anglers report that BSP in the 8-12” size are everywhere from La Conchita to Jalama. Just about everything is working for the perch with the biggest barred surfperch being caught on hardbaits. Halibut fishing continues to improve during and after the grunion run with fish from 24” to 30” being landed between Goleta to Gaviota for anglers using hardbaits like Lucky Craft and BattleStar. One angler also landed a nice striper using a Gulp Sand Worm. While another angler reported catching a 24” white seabass in the same area. South of Santa Barbara, along the La Conchita coast anglers had good fishing for barred surfperch, one spotfin and saw several schools of corbina roaming the coast but had no luck with Gulp or Sand Crabs to entice them to bite.
In Ventura, barred surfperch fishing with perch to 14” remained good for all of Ventura County beaches. This week also saw a big uptick on corbina fishing with a great report of four anglers catching fish to 24”. With so many corbina around your best bet may be to use an exotic bait like a blood, lug worm or a ghost shrimp to entice the big corbina to bite. Because there are so few sand crabs around, and very few molting with eggs, corbina are still keying in on “bay/estuary” forage.
Tackle/Bait: Hook, Line and Sinker. Ask for Ben and tell him Bill sent you!
South Bay:Reports this week really varied in the South Bay. Extremely slow to red hot. Marina Del Rey reported in with a good, barred surfperch bite, a sargo and a sub-legal halibut. The water in Hermosa cleaned up quite a bit and the barred surfperch bite turned back on. No real big fish, but quite a few 6″-10″‘s on Gulp and dried lug worms. Redondo reported in slow with one angler catching and releasing a sub-legal halibut between the Topaz Jetty and the Redondo Pier. El Segundo was the hot spot this week with one angler bagging 4 corbina to 22” on live lug worms. No reports of grunion along the South Bay this week.
T-Shirt SALE!
(Get’em While They Last)
Hand-made using the age-old Japanese Gyotaku process to capture the image of fish. This form of nature printing, where ink is applied to a fish, is then transferred to paper and then on to shirts.
Check out these cool Gyotaku shirts with a perch image pressed on to cloth from a real SoCal barred surfperch. So original, you won’t find another shirt like this anywhere in the world!
Orange County:Anglers along Seal Beach saw lots of bait balls outside the surf line with small striper swarming them. For one angler using a live smelt landed a 26” halibut. Along the Huntington Beach stretch anglers report good perch fishing for barred surfperch to 13” and lots of walleye surfperch. Best baits were Gulp, mussel and grubs. South Orange County had anglers finding sand crabs and using them for barred surfperch and Walleye. One angler fishing the San Onofre area landed a big yellowfin croaker and another 20” spotfin, both on Mussel.
Tackle/bait: Big Fish Bait and Tackle, Seal Beach
San Diego:In San Diego our grunion angler checked in with a great video of tons of grunion along the beach. We also received reports from Carlsbad and Coronado, which had a good run. I’d be fishing both these spots over the next week! Along Mission Beach fishing really picked up after the grunion run with one angler using the Lucky Craft Super Glow Pearl Squid to land a 13” BSP and a 22” halibut.
TIP: Very little tidal change, very small surf, light offshore winds mean you’ll have to look for areas where water is moving. Look for areas where surf breaking, water is swirling around tidal change on the edge of rocks points, etc….this is where you’ll find fish.
Tackle/bait: Pacific Coast Bait and Tackle/ Seaforth Landing
A massive cyclone spins off the coast of Chile and will send chest to head high surf this way starting next weekend. These sets of south swells will bring clear, warm water into the West Coast bight.
Conditions To Watch This Month
Synopsis: What an uninspiring February it was! So, unlike most February’s where storms pound the beaches, change the structure, reshape the beach, leave mounds of trash and slow surf fishing. Instead, last month gave us warmer than normal water and storms that replenished our freshwater stocks but had very little destructive wind or swell.
March looks to be very similar to February…with the big difference we see being, three sizeable south swells, each very early for the season, roaring up the coast and pushing warmer water into the California bight. Might the water temperature reach 65+ degrees before the end of March…goodness, we’ll have to see.
Water Temp: 60-64 from SB to SD. Water warmed in a few spots along the coast but may cool a bit next week from outer water winds…just to be replaced by two south swells that should raise water temps and introduce both cleaner water and the beginning of reshaping our beaches for the summer.
Tides: Slack neap tides characterize the next week….a great opportunity for halibut and jetty fishing. With tidal swings of only 3′ look for hungry halibut to come close to shore to feed.
Swell: The first South swell of the year is winding down now and will be replaced over the weekend and into next week with a small NW wind swell. Surf on most beaches between today and Wednesday will be knee to chest high or even flat on some beaches. This will be replaced with a 2nd and 3rd South swell beginning around the 14th. With 40′ seas from these storms churning off Chile look for head high surf later next week.
Wind: Light morning offshore winds will be accompanied by afternoon winds of 8-12 knots Friday, which will be replaced by a modest Santa Ana through Monday. Winds speeds look light but may have a few higher gusts embedded within the Santa Ana.
TIP: Very little tidal change, very small surf, light offshore winds mean you’ll have to look for areas where water is moving. Areas where the surf is breaking, tidal change around the edge of rocks creating swirling eddies…this is where you’ll find fish.
