California Sturgeon Regulations for 2026-27: What Is Actually Legal Right Now

The short version: what is legal in 2026-27

If you read nothing else, read this table. Every line is current as of November 2026, from CDFW's own regulation pages and the text of Title 14.

Why there is a season at all for a protected fish

This is the part that trips people up, and it has a clean answer. On July 12, 2024 the California Fish and Game Commission found the petition to list white sturgeon warranted consideration and directed CDFW to carry out a status review. That decision made white sturgeon a candidate species, and as CDFW puts it, a candidate "receives the same legal protection afforded to an endangered or threatened species." The petition had been filed in November 2023 by a coalition that included San Francisco Baykeeper, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and Restore the Delta.

Under the California Endangered Species Act, take of a listed or candidate species is prohibited. CDFW states the position plainly: outside of the seasonal catch-and-release fishery, white sturgeon take is prohibited under CESA. The words "outside of" are doing the work there — something has to carve the fishery out.

That something is Fish and Game Code section 2084, which allows the Commission to authorize take of a candidate or listed sport fish by hook and line. CDFW's own reading of the science is that non-lethal take would not harm the long-term viability of white sturgeon in California, and on that basis the Commission kept a catch-and-release season open when it adopted permanent regulations in August 2025, replacing emergency rules that were about to expire. So the fishery is not an oversight or a loophole left open by accident. It is a specific statutory authorization, granted on a specific finding, and it is the reason your line can be in the water at all.

It also explains why the rules are as fussy as they are. Every restriction below — the single barbless hook, the ban on gaffs and lip grippers, the rule against lifting a big fish out of the water — exists to make the take genuinely non-lethal, because non-lethal is the condition the whole season rests on.

Two rule books, and they meet at the Carquinez Bridge

California splits sturgeon water into ocean and inland, and the dividing line runs right through the middle of the fishery. CDFW's San Francisco Bay District — which is ocean-regulation territory — covers San Francisco and San Pablo bays plus their tidal bays, sloughs, estuaries and the tidal portions of their rivers and streams, between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Carquinez Bridge. East of Carquinez, into Suisun Bay, Grizzly Bay and the Delta, you are under the inland rules.

The good news is that the two rule books now say nearly the same thing. Section 27.93 governs catch-and-release sturgeon fishing in ocean waters and section 5.78 governs it inland, and on bag limit, hook, handling and report card they match almost word for word. The difference is in the seasons and the closures.

Inland, the open area is defined by the calendar as well as the map. From October 1 through June 30 you may fish from the west Carquinez Bridge east to downstream of the confluence of the Feather River on the Sacramento River, and downstream of the I-5 bridge on the San Joaquin River. From October 1 through December 31 only, the open water extends upstream of the Feather River confluence to the Highway 162 Bridge on the Sacramento, and upstream of the I-5 bridge on the San Joaquin. In other words, the upper reaches shut on New Year's Eve while the lower river and Delta keep going until the end of June.

In ocean waters the season is the same October 1 to June 30, with one long-standing area closure. Between January 1 and March 15, sturgeon may not be taken from the portion of San Francisco Bay bounded by a direct line between Point Chauncy and Point Richmond, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and a direct line between Point Lobos and Point Bonita. CDFW cites that closure to Title 14 section 27.90(i), and it applies to green sturgeon and white sturgeon alike. Note what it does not cover: San Pablo Bay, Suisun Bay and the Delta stay open through the heart of the winter season.

The gear rules — including one that changes at a different bridge

Only one single-point, single-shank, barbless hook may be used on a line when taking sturgeon, and the fish must voluntarily take the bait or lure inside its mouth. That second clause is not decoration: it is what makes a foul-hooked fish an illegal fish rather than bad luck. No sturgeon may be taken by trolling, snagging or by the use of firearms, and sturgeon may not be gaffed, nor may any person use a snare — defined in the regulations as a flexible loop that can be tightened around any part of the fish.

Lip gripper devices may not be used. That one catches out a lot of well-meaning anglers, because a lip gripper feels like careful handling and is standard kit for bass and stripers. On a fish that may weigh over a hundred pounds, hanging it by the jaw is exactly the kind of handling the rules are written to stop.

Then there is the rule almost nobody knows, and it is CDFW's own warning rather than ours: hooks with a gap larger than 1 inch may not be used in waters east, meaning inland, of the I-680 Benicia-Martinez Bridge. CDFW adds the practical half of it — some sturgeon tackle sold for ocean waters exceeds that size limit. Read that twice if you fish both sides. The jurisdictional line between the ocean and inland rule books is the Carquinez Bridge; the hook-gap line is the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, a few miles upstream. They are two different crossings and two different rules, and a rig that is perfectly legal in San Pablo Bay can put you on the wrong side of the law by the time you anchor up in Suisun.

The fix is unglamorous: carry a tape or a gap gauge, measure the hooks you actually fish, and buy sturgeon hooks from a shop that knows which side of the bridge you are heading to. A guide running Delta water will already be rigged correctly, which is one more argument for booking one.

• One single-point, single-shank, barbless hook per line. No exceptions.
• Hook gap of 1 inch or less once you are east of the I-680 Benicia-Martinez Bridge.
• No lip grippers, no gaffs, no snares, no trolling, no snagging, no firearms.
• The fish must take the bait inside its mouth, voluntarily.
• Inland above the Highway 162 Bridge: wire leaders and lamprey or shrimp bait are prohibited in the closed Sacramento River reach.

The 60-inch rule, and the arithmetic behind it

Any white sturgeon greater than 60 inches fork length may not be removed from the water and must be released immediately. Not lifted for a photo, not swung over the rail, not laid on the deck for a quick measurement. It stays in the water.

And regardless of size, sturgeon may not be held out of the water suspended by the gills, gill plates, mouth or solely by the tail, and may not be dragged across the ground, boat decks or piers. Those rules apply to a 30-inch fish as much as a 70-inch one.

The 60-inch threshold is not arbitrary, and CDFW's own biology page gives you the arithmetic. Female white sturgeon produce an average of 5,648 eggs per kilogram of body weight, and a 60-inch individual averages over 200,000 eggs. A fish that size is a spawning factory, and in a population this thin, each one is a meaningful share of next year's recruitment. Protecting it from the twenty seconds of air time and spinal load that a grip-and-grin costs is the cheapest conservation measure available.

The numbers behind the concern are stark. White sturgeon are the largest freshwater fish in North America, with historical records up to 20 feet, though CDFW says it is now rare to encounter one over about six and a half feet in California waters. The average fish captured in the Delta in recent years is roughly 3.6 feet. The oldest on record was 103 years old at capture, but CDFW believes most Delta fish today are under 20 years old — and age at first reproduction is roughly 10 to 19 years. Much of the population, in other words, is at or below breeding age. Females then spawn only every two to four years.

Add the shocks. CDFW records that a harmful algal bloom in 2022 killed at least 691 sturgeon in San Francisco Bay. Court filings in the August 2026 lawsuit over the delayed status review cite a 2024 CDFW survey estimate of 6,447 adult white sturgeon, against roughly 150,000 in the 1980s. Those figures come from the litigation rather than a CDFW publication we could verify directly, so treat them as the plaintiffs' characterization — but the direction is not in dispute, and it is why a fishery that allowed recreational harvest from 1954 through 2024 no longer does.

The report card: what changed, what it costs, how to fill it in

Possession of a sturgeon report card is required of any angler fishing for white sturgeon in all California waters. The 2026-27 card costs $8.13 and went on sale August 15, 2026. You need a valid sport fishing license before you can buy one — and separately, the card is required even in situations where a fishing license is not, such as fishing for sturgeon from a public pier in ocean waters. Children fishing for sturgeon need their own card too.

The card year changed recently and it is worth knowing which version you are holding. Before September 9, 2025, report cards ran on the calendar year, January 1 to December 31, and had to be reported by January 31. Cards now run with the season, October 1 to June 30, and must be returned by mail or reported online by July 31 after the card expires. Returning the card is mandatory whether or not you caught anything.

How you fill it in also changed, and this is where anglers who have fished sturgeon for years get it wrong from memory. Do not write down the lengths of the fish you caught. Instead you record a tally of the number caught in each of four categories: white sturgeon under 40 inches fork length, white sturgeon 40 to 60 inches, white sturgeon over 60 inches, and green sturgeon. Fill in a line for every location code you fished that day — if you move from, say, Suisun Bay to Grizzly Bay, that is two lines. If you fished and caught nothing, you still complete the card with the day, location and hours fished. If you did not fish at all that season, mark the "Did Not Fish" box and return it anyway.

Two housekeeping items. The Sturgeon Reward Tagging Program ended in 2023 and reward tags are no longer funded, so if you find one still on a fish you may keep it as a trophy but there is no reward to claim. And if your card is lost or stolen, you buy a replacement — do not copy the old data across. Report the lost card's information online during the July window to the best of your recollection, or file a signed affidavit with a CDFW license sales office giving your name, GO ID number and the circumstances.

• Cost: $8.13 for the 2026-27 card, on sale since August 15, 2026.
• Valid October 1 to June 30; report online or by mail by July 31.
• Tally fish by size category. Do not write individual lengths.
• One line per location code per day, even on a blank day.
• Mail returns go to CDFW, Sturgeon Fishing Report Card, PO Box 944209, Sacramento, CA 94244.

Green sturgeon: leave it in the water

California has two sturgeon species, and only one of them has a season. Green sturgeon are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, take is prohibited, and CDFW states flatly that it is illegal to fish for green sturgeon in California. A green sturgeon may not be removed from the water, taken or possessed at any time, and must be released immediately without being lifted out.

In practice that means the strictest handling rule on the water applies to the fish you are least likely to be able to identify in a hurry. You cannot lift it to get a better look, which is the whole point. If there is any doubt about what is on the end of your line, treat it as a green sturgeon: keep it in the water, unhook it there, and let it go.

The report card has a column for them, so a green sturgeon you release still gets tallied. And if you come across a dead sturgeon of either species, researchers studying causes of mortality in adult fish ask that carcass sightings be reported to CASturgeonResearch@gmail.com.

What this means if you are booking a trip this winter

Practically, nothing about this should put you off. Sturgeon fishing in California is now a pure catch-and-release fishery, and the fight — a heavy, stubborn, sometimes airborne fish in moving tidal current — was always the point. What changes is that you book it knowing the fish goes back, and that the handling rules are part of the trip rather than an afterthought.

One warning worth having. As of early November 2026, every page in CDFW's sturgeon section still carries a notice reading that the season is closed as of June 30 and will reopen October 1. That notice is left over from the summer closure and reads as though the fishery is shut. It is not — CDFW's San Francisco Bay District regulations summary, updated October 1, 2026, gives the season as open from October 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. When the two disagree, the dated regional regulations page is the one to trust, and a quick call to the CDFW Fisheries Branch settles anything genuinely unclear.

Sturgeon is guide-boat and private-charter water, not party-boat water. Most trips run from Delta and Suisun-area ramps or Bay marinas on small boats, and the landings that do offer it price the whole boat rather than the seat — the Emeryville landing's published rate card, checked November 2, 2026, lists a private sturgeon charter on the Lady K at $2,300 for up to nine anglers, which works out around $256 a head with a full boat. Because these boats carry so few people, a couple of unsold seats on a prime tide is exactly the kind of thing that turns up as a last-minute deal.

The regulatory picture is also stable enough to plan around, which is new. CDFW's status review was due January 12, 2026 and was not delivered; at the April 2026 Commission meeting the president asked the Department to deliver it no later than the April 2027 meeting, and in August 2026 four organizations sued over the delay. The Commission cannot make a listing decision until that report lands. Whatever you think of that, the practical consequence for an angler is simple: catch-and-release under candidacy protection is the regime for this entire season, and almost certainly the next one.

• Buy the $8.13 report card before the trip; your guide cannot sell you one on the water.
• Expect to release everything, and expect big fish to stay in the water for photos.
• Check your hook gap if you are fishing east of the Benicia-Martinez Bridge.
• San Pablo Bay, Suisun and the Delta stay open through the January to March central Bay closure.
• Watch the deals feed — six-pack sturgeon boats are where open seats on a good tide show up.