Calico Bass Fishing in California: Where, When and the 14-Inch Rule

Calico bass, kelp bass, and the bass that isn't

Calico bass is the dock name. CDFW calls the same fish kelp bass, and it is one of three closely related sea basses that share a set of regulations in Southern California: kelp bass, barred sand bass and spotted sand bass. Kelp bass is the biggest of the three, growing to 28.4 inches and about 14.5 pounds. The International Game Fish Association world-record kelp bass weighed 14.5 pounds and was 27 years old; the oldest fish CDFW has on record was 34.

It is not the bass on our black bass page. Largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass are freshwater fish in Delta sloughs and foothill reservoirs. Calico bass are saltwater, and they are a Southern California fish specifically: the species ranges from the Columbia River in Washington down to southern Baja California, but CDFW describes it as rare north of Point Conception. If you are fishing out of Monterey or Bodega Bay, calicos are not what is coming over the rail.

One more thing worth knowing before you book: there is no commercial calico fishery. A small hand-line and set-line fishery existed into the middle of the last century, and commercial take of the sea basses was prohibited in 1953 over sustainability concerns. There has been no market for them since. Every calico bass caught in California is caught by a sport angler, which is why recreational rules carry the entire management load for this species.

Where the boats find them

Calico bass live in nearshore structure — kelp forests, rocky reefs, bays and estuaries — and the fishery works shallow reefs and kelp beds at depths down to about 70 feet. They are also homebodies. Telemetry studies cited by CDFW put their home range between 33 and 11,224 square meters (roughly 108 to 36,800 square feet), most tagged fish are recaptured where they were tagged, and in one experiment that moved fish away from their home site only 8.5 percent found their way back. The practical meaning for a passenger: the captain is not chasing a migrating school. They are working a specific piece of structure that holds its own fish.

That is why the trip descriptions read the way they do. H&M Landing in San Diego says its half days "fish the coastline from Imperial Beach to the Point Loma kelp beds according to the 'best bite'." Pierpoint Landing's City of Long Beach runs half days and three-quarter days "to the local kelp beds, the breakwater, and Catalina Island." Davey's Locker in Newport Beach says its half days can fish over 40 miles of coastal water. Dana Wharf points at the water just outside Dana Point Harbor.

The catch numbers say something the marketing does not, though. Here is what one Long Beach landing's own fish-count page showed for the 2026 season to date, boat by boat.

• The half-day boat is the cheap seat, not the big calico count. Most of this fleet's calicos came off boats that had time to reach Catalina.
• Rockfish outnumber calicos on every boat here, which is why a "bass trip" in practice is usually a mixed bag of bass, rockfish, sheephead and whitefish.
• If calico bass are specifically what you want, ask the landing which boat is fishing the island kelp that week rather than booking the cheapest departure.

Season: open all year, best when the water is warm

There is no closed season. CDFW's current ocean regulations summary, updated September 1, 2026, states that the fisheries for kelp bass, barred sand bass and spotted sand bass remain open year-round. That is unusual on this coast and it matters in winter, when the rockfish season is shut and the boat schedules thin out — the bass are still legal.

Biology still sets the rhythm. Calicos spawn from April through November with a summer peak, and they are group spawners: aggregations form in kelp beds, over rocky reefs and in open water down to about 150 feet, in groups ranging from three fish to more than 200, each subgroup made up of several males and one female. Females spawn multiple times in a season. Researchers found spawning activity in summer revolved around sunset, and while calicos do not make the long spawning migrations their barred sand bass cousins do, they move more during the spawn.

So the warm months put more fish in a smaller number of places and more of them on the chew, which is why summer and early fall are the classic calico window. The rest of the year they are still there, still catchable, and the boat is cheaper. Our California fishing seasons guide lays out how the rest of the calendar lines up.

The rules, and how a bass actually gets measured

Title 14, section 28.30 is short: the minimum size is "fourteen inches total length or ten inches alternate length," and the limit is "five in any combination of species." Alternate length is the measurement most rail stickers use — CDFW defines it as the length from the base of the foremost spine of the dorsal fin to the longest tip of the tail — and a fish that makes 10 inches that way is legal even if it falls short nose to tail.

One number in that five-fish limit changed recently and catches people out. CDFW's current summary reads: five fish in any combination, "except no more than 4 barred sand bass may be taken." The Fish and Game Commission adopted that sub-limit on April 17, 2025, with a sunset date of June 1, 2028, to reduce pressure on barred sand bass spawning aggregations while CDFW works on a longer-term plan. It does not cap calicos — five of your five can be kelp bass — but if you are filling a mixed bass limit, only four of them may be barred sand bass.

Why most of what you catch goes back

Calico bass grow slowly. CDFW's growth model gives them a relative growth rate of 0.06, which is a fish that puts on length in small annual increments once it is past its first couple of years. Half of both males and females are sexually mature at three years old, at roughly nine inches. All males are mature by four years and all females by five. The 14-inch legal size, in CDFW's own words, "corresponds with fish that are 7-plus yr of age and allows for several years of spawning before fish can be legally taken." That gap between nine inches and 14 inches is deliberate, and it is where almost everything you hook lives.

Before April 2013 the rules were ten bass at 12 inches. The Fish and Game Commission cut that to five bass at 14 inches, and the effect was immediate: charter-boat landings of kelp bass fell 70 percent from 2012 to 2013, private and rental boat landings fell 30 percent, and calico dropped from ninth to seventeenth in Southern California's catch rankings. The share of discarded calicos that were undersized rose from an average of 89 percent across 2003 to 2012 to 97 percent across 2013 to 2017. CDFW's onboard observers have recorded released calicos as small as four inches.

The good news is that they survive it. CDFW estimates initial discard mortality at 1.72 percent, and an earlier study put initial and short-term mortality at 1.87 percent for kelp bass — low enough that CDFW calls bycatch of sublegal discards a minor concern. The caveat is barotrauma, which CDFW estimated occurs in 14 percent of released calicos and can push short-term mortality higher. Most calicos come out of shallow kelp, so it is less of an issue than it is for rockfish, but it happens on the deeper reef drifts.

• Unhook the fish in the water or over the rail and put it back quickly. Most released calicos go straight back in at the same spot, which is exactly what the low mortality numbers are built on.
• If a fish comes up bloated, with its stomach pushed out of its mouth or bulging eyes, that is barotrauma. Send it back down rather than tossing it on the surface.
• California already requires a descending device aboard when you are taking federal groundfish, which the same trips usually target — so there is normally one on the boat even though the rule does not extend to bass. Ask the deckhand.
• Measure before you decide. A fish that fails at the nose but makes 10 inches on the alternate measurement is legal, and a fish that looks legal at a glance often is not.

What a calico bass trip costs in 2026

This is the cheapest saltwater charter fishing in California, because the fish are close, the trips are short and the boats carry a lot of people. Here is what the landings themselves were publishing in September 2026.

• The ticket is the boat and the bait. A one-day license is $21.09 on top, rod rental runs $22 to $25, and tackle is sold individually from about $8 to $27.50 depending on the landing.
• Fish cleaning and gunny sacks are extra almost everywhere — Davey's Locker says so outright.
• Tips are separate. Dana Wharf tells half-day passengers that typical tips run $5 to $10 per adult ticket; our tipping guide covers what the rest of the fleet publishes.
• Weekday departures are softer than weekends on every schedule we checked, and 22nd Street's kids-fish-free promotion is weekdays only.

The state of the fishery, honestly

There is no formal stock assessment for kelp bass, so what follows is CDFW's read of the catch and survey data rather than a population number. The trend that prompted the 2013 rule change was steep: recreational kelp bass landings fell 72 percent between 1982 and 2012, charter-boat catch and catch-per-angler dropped 70 percent and 48 percent from 1992 to 2012, and private and rental boat catch fell 76 percent from 2004 to 2012.

Since 2013 the direction has changed, modestly. CDFW reports that charter-boat landings and catch-per-unit-effort have started to increase and private-boat numbers have stayed stable. Diver surveys found juvenile calico abundance up 78 percent at Palos Verdes and 72 percent at King Harbor between 2012 and 2016, and adult density at Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands rising since 2013 — though adult numbers at the mainland sites are still near the low point of a record that goes back to 1974. CDFW's own summary is cautious: additional management measures may be necessary if the 2013 rules do not prove sufficient.

Not everyone on the water agrees with the framing. A study CDFW cites found that captains considered the new minimum size their single biggest challenge in 2013, that ridership and trip frequency fell, and that effort shifted from bass to rockfish — and that many captains did not believe recreational fishing had much effect on the population in the first place. That disagreement is worth knowing about before you get into it at the rail.

Getting on a calico trip for less

Calico trips are already the budget end of California saltwater charter fishing, but there is room below sticker. The short local trips run every day of the week, they carry 40 to 80 anglers, and a boat that leaves half full has lost that revenue permanently — which is exactly the inventory problem last-minute deals exist to solve.

• Book the half day midweek. Same boat, same kelp, softer schedule.
• If you want numbers rather than the cheapest ticket, pay the extra $20 to $35 for a three-quarter day that reaches the island kelp.
• Buy an annual license if you will fish more than about three times a year — at $21.09 a day, a $64.54 resident license pays for itself on the fourth trip.
• Ask what is not in the ticket price before you pay: cleaning, gunny sacks, rod rental, tackle and the crew tip add up faster than the fare does.
• Watch for open seats on trips that are already scheduled to sail. Those are the seats that go out at a discount, and they are what Mixed Bag Sportsman posts.