California Rockfish Season & Depth Limits: The Five Management Areas, Explained

The short version: what is open right now

Every line below comes from CDFW's Summary of Recreational Groundfish Fishing Regulations, last updated June 23, 2026, and the Title 14 sections it cites. The dates in the regulation carry no year — they are the standing annual cycle — but CDFW's own warning sits at the top of that page: these regulations are subject to in-season change, and it is the angler's responsibility to know the rules in force on the day they fish.

Read the Southern row twice. South of Point Conception the year is split into four blocks rather than two, and the block we are in right now is the restrictive one.

Five management areas, and the one boundary that changes your trip

The four northern areas — Northern, Mendocino, San Francisco and Central — currently run an identical schedule: closed to boat-based take of rockfish, cabezon, greenling and lingcod from January 1 through March 31, then open at all depths from April 1 through December 31. For planning a trip anywhere from the Oregon border to Point Conception, that is the whole calendar.

So why four areas instead of one? Because the sub-limits differ, and because the lines move when a stock assessment moves. The Northern area allows four vermilion and sunset rockfish per person; everywhere else allows two. And the map itself changed recently: the Central-North and Central-South areas were merged into a single Central area in 2025 and the management line at Lopez Point was deleted, which is why older charts and older advice show six areas instead of five.

Point Conception, at 34°27' N, is the boundary that actually changes what you can bring home. Everything south of it is the Southern area, and the Southern area is the one whose seasons are still constrained by copper, vermilion and sunset rockfish limits. Two things catch people out. First, Santa Barbara Harbor sits at roughly 34°25' N — a couple of miles south of the line — so Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands are Southern-area water even though they feel central. Second, Shelter Cove sits just south of the 40°10' N line, which puts it in the Mendocino area rather than the Northern one, and drops its vermilion allowance from four fish to two.

• Northern area: Eureka and Crescent City.
• Mendocino area: Fort Bragg and Shelter Cove.
• San Francisco area: Bodega Bay, San Francisco, Emeryville and Half Moon Bay. Cordell Bank sits in this area.
• Central area: Monterey and Santa Cruz, Port San Luis and Avila Beach, Morro Bay.
• Southern area: Santa Barbara, the Channel Islands out of Ventura and Oxnard, Santa Monica Bay, Long Beach, Newport Beach, Oceanside and San Diego.

The depth limits almost everyone still quotes are gone — north of Point Conception

From 2023 through most of 2025, California anglers north of Point Conception fished under depth closures that existed to protect a single species. Quillback rockfish had been assessed as overfished, quillback live in shallow nearshore rock, and the way to keep anglers off them was to shut the shallow water. The result was a fishery defined by fathom lines that changed by area and by month, and a lot of trips planned around which contour the boat could legally sit on.

That regime is over. On August 14, 2025 the California Fish and Game Commission took emergency action, the updated state regulations took effect on August 28, 2025, and on September 18, 2025 the National Marine Fisheries Service adopted matching all-depth rules for federal waters. CDFW's own announcement is unambiguous: recreational fishing for the RCG Complex and lingcod is allowed at all depths in both state and federal waters between the Oregon border and Point Conception. The same package added a two-fish sub-limit on canary rockfish and began treating vermilion and sunset rockfish as one species for regulatory purposes.

The state-and-federal detail matters more than it sounds. Before September 18, 2025, state waters and federal waters could carry different depth rules, which meant a legal fish in one patch of ocean became an illegal fish three miles out. That mismatch is what was fixed, and it is why a Half Moon Bay or Fort Bragg boat can now work deep reef without a chart overlay.

What survives are four kinds of closure, and they are areas rather than depths: the Southern area's 50-fathom rules, which are alive and binding right now; marine protected areas, which bite everywhere and are not groundfish rules at all; the Cordell Bank exclusion area in the San Francisco management area; and eight Groundfish Exclusion Areas in the Southern area. Those eight replaced the old Cowcod Conservation Areas in January 2024 after cowcod were declared rebuilt in 2019, and the swap opened roughly 4,663 square miles of Southern California water back up to recreational groundfish fishing. Four species also remain off limits everywhere, at every depth, all year.

The ten-fish bag limit and the four sub-limits that catch people out

California manages rockfish, cabezon and greenling together as the RCG Complex. The limit is ten fish in combination per person — not ten of each — and there is no minimum size on any rockfish, cabezon or greenling. Inside that ten, four species carry their own ceiling, and that is where most honest mistakes happen, because a sack can be legal on the headline number and illegal on a sub-limit.

The sub-limits also interact with the Southern-area closure in a way worth understanding. Copper rockfish is classified as a nearshore species. Vermilion and canary are shelf species. So in Southern California between October 1 and December 31, the one-fish copper limit is academic — nearshore rockfish may not be possessed in any waters of that area at all — while vermilion stays legal at two per person if the boat is working seaward of the 50-fathom line. Knowing which bucket a fish falls into tells you more than the bag limit does.

• Ten fish in combination, not ten of each species.
• Copper rockfish: one per person. It is a nearshore species, so it is closed entirely in the Southern area from October 1 to December 31.
• Vermilion and sunset rockfish are now treated as one species: four per person in the Northern area, two everywhere else.
• Canary rockfish: two per person.
• Quillback, yelloweye, cowcod and bronzespotted rockfish go back in the water, every time, everywhere, all year.
• Rockfish, cabezon and greenling fillets have no minimum length but must have the entire skin attached.

Lingcod has its own rules: two fish, 22 inches, 14-inch fillets

Lingcod are not part of the RCG Complex and do not count against the ten. The limit is two fish per person with a 22-inch total length minimum, and total length has a specific legal definition — the longest straight-line measurement from the tip of the head with the mouth closed to the end of the longest lobe of the tail. Measure it that way, not nose-to-fork.

If you fillet aboard, each lingcod fillet must be at least 14 inches long with the entire skin attached. That rule exists so a warden can still size the fish after it has been cut, which is also why the skin requirement is absolute rather than a formality.

For season purposes lingcod travels with the shelf and slope rockfish column, not the nearshore one. North of Point Conception that makes no difference — both columns are closed January 1 to March 31 and open at all depths the rest of the year. South of Point Conception it makes a large one: from October 1 to December 31, nearshore rockfish, cabezon and greenling are closed in all waters, while lingcod and shelf and slope rockfish remain open seaward of the 50-fathom line. Right now, a legal lingcod trip out of San Diego or Long Beach is a deep-water trip or it is not a legal trip.

There is one more rule that trips up boats working near an area boundary. CDFW states it plainly: it is unlawful to possess a groundfish species inside a management area where take and possession of that species are prohibited in all waters of that area, or in excess of that area's bag limit, regardless of which area the fish came from. So a boat that fished nearshore rock north of Point Conception in November cannot carry those fish into Southern-area water. The general transit provision does let you move legally caught groundfish through a closed area while anchored, drifting or transiting with no gear deployed — but it does not override an all-waters prohibition.

The descending device: required since 2024, and the numbers behind it

Since 2024, no one may take or possess any federal groundfish — or any greenling of the genus Hexagrammos — from a boat or other floating device in ocean waters without a descending device in possession and available for immediate use. It is not a recommendation, and "available for immediate use" means rigged and reachable, not boxed in a hatch.

The reason is barotrauma. Rockfish control buoyancy with a gas-filled swim bladder, and reeling one up fast overexpands it. The fish arrives with a bulging stomach, protruding eyes or a swollen vent and cannot swim back down. CDFW's position on the consequence is blunt: a rockfish released at the surface after being caught deeper than 180 feet — 30 fathoms — without a descending device is counted as dead for management purposes. Not released. Dead.

The measured difference is large. For yelloweye rockfish, CDFW's figures put surface-release mortality at 22 percent from 0 to 10 fathoms, 39 percent from 11 to 20, 56 percent from 21 to 30, and 100 percent beyond 30 fathoms. With a descending device the same fish run 9 percent, 9 percent, 11 percent and 38 percent. Canary rockfish go from 21, 37, 53 and 100 percent at the surface to 3, 3, 18 and 92 percent with a device. CDFW cites a study finding mortality cut by as much as 62 percent when descending devices were used, and works a 10-metric-ton example: that much yelloweye released at the surface produces about 6.7 metric tons of mortality, against 1.3 with descenders — roughly an 80 percent reduction.

There is a direct self-interest argument here too, and it is why the rule exists rather than another bag-limit cut. Every fish that dies on release is counted against the recreational allocation whether anyone eats it or not. Descended fish that survive are not. The four no-retention species — quillback, yelloweye, cowcod, bronzespotted — are exactly the ones that close seasons when the dead-discard number runs hot.

Do not vent. CDFW calls puncturing the swim bladder a dangerous practice that commonly leads to injury or death of the rockfish. Use a device instead: a weighted milk crate with about five pounds of lead and at least 60 feet of rope, a shepherd's crook bent from a wire hanger, an inverted barbless hook on a dedicated rod, a hoop net, or a pressure-release clamp like a SeaQualizer or RokLees, which pop open at a set depth — 50, 100 or 150 feet on the standard model, 100, 200 or 300 on the deep one. A descending rod may carry only the device and no hooks.

• Required aboard any vessel taking or possessing federal groundfish, and available for immediate use.
• Fish released at the surface from deeper than 180 feet without one are counted as dead.
• Keep the descender rigged on a spare rod so a fish can be transferred and sent down fast.
• On a party boat the crew carries them and will show you. On your own boat it is your rule to meet.
• Venting is not a substitute, and CDFW advises against it outright.

Cordell Bank: 40 square miles reopened in June 2026

Here is a change almost nobody told anglers about. Cordell Bank — the seamount roughly 20 miles west of Point Reyes, in the San Francisco management area — had been inside the Cordell Bank Groundfish Conservation Area since 2004, when it was created as a recreational groundfish closure to protect widow, bocaccio, canary and yelloweye rockfish and lingcod while those stocks rebuilt.

On June 23, 2026 that closure came off. NMFS removed the Conservation Area and replaced it with a smaller Cordell Bank Groundfish Exclusion Area over part of the old footprint. The net effect is 40.1 square miles newly opened to recreational and non-trawl commercial groundfish gear, with about 10.2 square miles opened to trawl gear. The stated reasons were that nearly every species the closure was built to protect has been declared rebuilt, and that four overlapping closures in the same patch of ocean had become unworkable to enforce.

What is still shut is the new exclusion area itself, where all groundfish fishing is prohibited. Its coordinates are the same as the Cordell Bank 50-fathom isobath essential fish habitat conservation area — the shallow crown of the bank, the rocky reef the rule was written to protect once the surrounding water opened. Roughly 2.5 square miles that had been open to non-bottom-contact hook-and-line gear closed on the same date. A recreational vessel with groundfish aboard may transit the exclusion area continuously as long as gear is not deployed, and a boat fishing for non-groundfish species may not have groundfish aboard inside it.

If you fish out of Bodega Bay, San Francisco or Half Moon Bay, that is a meaningful amount of new rockfish ground inside long-range day-trip distance, opened for the first time in twenty-two years. It is also why CDFW's summary page now carries a one-line Cordell Bank warning that reads like a total closure: the line refers to the new exclusion area, not to the bank as a whole.

Two count sheets, one day, opposite sides of the line

Regulations stay abstract until you read them off a dock board. Here are two, both for Monday, November 10, 2026.

Out of Emeryville, in the San Francisco management area where all depths are open through December 31, the landing's own board recorded six full-day boats and 117 anglers bringing in 1,028 rockfish and 1,170 Dungeness crab. Five of the six boats were at exactly ten rockfish per angler and all six were at exactly ten crab per angler — those are not catch numbers, they are limits, and a column of identical ratios is how you read that at a glance.

Out of San Diego on the same day, the dock totals across four landings covered 288 anglers on 13 trips. The entire port's rockfish count was 57 fish, with one lingcod. The same boards logged 337 yellowfin tuna, 319 yellowtail, 220 skipjack, 185 barracuda, 63 dorado and 17 wahoo.

Per angler that is roughly 8.8 rockfish in the Bay against 0.2 in San Diego, a gap of about 44 times on the same date. Two honest caveats. The San Diego fleet had a genuinely unusual warm-water fall to chase, so part of that gap is boats choosing tuna over bottom fish rather than being pushed off it. And San Diego boats also run Mexican-water trips, where California groundfish rules do not apply, so a count sheet alone will not tell you where a particular fish came from. What the boards do show cleanly is that in November nobody in Southern California is selling a nearshore rockfish trip, because the law does not allow the product — while two hundred miles up the coast it is the default full day of the season.

What this means if you are booking a bottom trip

For the rest of 2026, north of Point Conception is the easy call. All depths are open through December 31, the fleet is running rockfish and Dungeness crab combos, and the boards are printing limits. Then everything boat-based shuts statewide on January 1 and stays shut until March 31 for rockfish, cabezon, greenling and lingcod — in all five areas, in all waters.

That January-to-March gap is worth planning around rather than being surprised by. Northern California boats pivot to crab-only trips in that window, Southern California half-days switch to sand bass, sculpin and whitefish, and April 1 is the single busiest bottom-fishing day on the California calendar. If you want the opener, book it early; if you want it cheap, the quiet weeks are mid-April through May once the opening-day crowd has gone home.

Two exemptions are worth knowing because they are genuinely useful and widely missed. Shore-based anglers — fishing from beaches, banks, piers, jetties, breakwaters, docks and other structures connected to the shore — and divers spearfishing are exempt from the season and depth restrictions, and may take RCG species year-round. The four no-retention species are still off limits, and no vessel may be used to help take or carry fish under the shore-based provision. For divers, when boat-based groundfish fishing is closed, no fishing gear other than spearfishing gear may be aboard the boat.

If you are booking in the Southern area between now and December 31, ask one specific question before you pay: is this trip fishing seaward of the 50-fathom line? A boat advertising rockfish inshore of that line in November is either running a non-groundfish trip or is wrong about the rules. And because the offshore trips are longer, fewer and more weather-dependent, they are exactly the kind of departure that ends up with unsold seats a day out — which is where a last-minute deal comes from.

• Through December 31: all depths open from the Oregon border to Point Conception.
• January 1 to March 31: boat-based take of rockfish, cabezon, greenling and lingcod is closed statewide.
• April 1: the statewide opener, and the most heavily booked bottom-fishing day of the year.
• Southern area, now to December 31: nearshore closed, lingcod and shelf rockfish offshore of 50 fathoms only.
• Shore anglers and spear divers are exempt from seasons and depths, but not from the four no-retention species.
• Confirm current rules on CDFW's groundfish summary page before every trip — in-season changes are normal.