California Striped Bass Season & Limits: Open All Year, Two Fish, 18 Inches

The short version: season, bag and size by water

Striped bass are governed by two different sections of Title 14 of the California Code of Regulations, depending on where you are fishing. Inland waters — the Delta, the rivers, the reservoirs — fall under section 5.75. Ocean waters fall under section 27.85. The two sections mostly agree, and where they diverge, they diverge in ways worth knowing before a fish goes in the kill bag.

Possession is capped at one daily bag limit

A rule anglers miss more often than the size limit: section 1.17 states that no more than one daily bag limit of each kind of fish may be taken or possessed by any one person unless otherwise authorized, and it applies "regardless of whether they are fresh, frozen, or otherwise preserved." Two stripers in the freezer from Saturday plus two in the cooler on Sunday is two daily bag limits in possession.

The exceptions the section names are narrow and mostly irrelevant to a striper trip — the multi-day ocean trip permit is the one charter anglers ever encounter, and that is a long-range tuna instrument, not a Delta one. On a Bay or Delta guide boat, assume the cap is two fish, full stop.

"All year" does not mean "everywhere, every day"

The exact wording of section 5.75(a) is "Open season: All year except for closures listed in special regulations," and that trailing clause is the one that catches people out. The closure, when there is one, is on the water — not on the species. California's freshwater regulations set district-by-district and sometimes stretch-by-stretch open dates, and a piece of river can be closed to all fishing, typically to protect spawning salmon and steelhead, while striped bass remain open statewide.

So two rules have to be open before you fish: the species season, and the season for the exact water you are standing in or anchored on. For the big striper waters this is rarely a problem — San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay and the main Delta run year-round — but upriver on the Sacramento and the Feather it is a real planning constraint, and it changes by river mile.

• The species season and the water's season are separate rules; both must be open.
• River stretches carry their own open dates in CDFW's freshwater regulations — check the stretch, not just the river.
• The Bay, San Pablo Bay and the main Delta are open to stripers year-round.
• Fishing with a guide? Confirm the stretch when you book, not at the ramp. Keeping track of that is part of what the day rate buys.

Two fish, 18 inches — and how the state measures it

The 18-inch minimum is a total length measurement, and California defines that precisely in section 1.62: total length is "the longest straight-line measurement from the tip of the head to the end of the longest lobe of the tail." That is not fork length, which the same section defines separately as the distance from the tip of the head to the center of the tail fin, and which the state uses for other species. On a striper the gap between the two measurements is easily an inch — enough to turn a legal fish into a citation.

Measure before you decide, not after. A borderline fish measured on a rolling deck is a fish that goes back, and every guide on the Delta will tell you the same thing.

• Total length: tip of the head to the end of the longest lobe of the tail (14 CCR 1.62).
• Two fish is the daily bag everywhere except the five exception waters below.
• Possession is capped at one daily bag limit, fresh, frozen or otherwise preserved (14 CCR 1.17).
• Any striped bass hybrid with white bass counts as a striped bass for limit purposes (14 CCR 5.75(e)).

The ten-fish waters most Bay-Delta anglers have never heard of

Section 5.75(d)(1) carves out a short list of waters where the limit is ten striped bass and there is no size limit at all: the Colorado River District, the Southern District — two of CDFW's inland regulatory districts — plus New Hogan Lake in the Sierra foothills and San Antonio and Santa Margarita lakes on the Central Coast.

The logic behind the carve-out is that these are landlocked populations. A reservoir striper has no route to the Bay-Delta spawning run, so it is managed as a self-contained fishery rather than as part of the anadromous stock the two-fish limit is built to protect. Genuinely different fishery, genuinely different rules.

If you booked a trip through this site, you are almost certainly not fishing one of them. Every striper operator in our network works the California Delta, the Sacramento River, the Feather River or San Francisco Bay — all two-fish, 18-inch water.

The gear rules that apply to striped bass and almost nothing else

Section 27.85(d) sets out how stripers may be taken in ocean waters: angling, spearfishing, and bow and arrow fishing tackle. Snagging is an illegal method of take. Then come two oddly specific prohibitions that exist for striped bass and are quoted almost nowhere else — no striped bass may be taken while using a sinker weighing over four pounds, or while using any power-driven gurdy or winch.

Both make sense once you know what they are aimed at. A gurdy is a powered line-hauling reel, standard equipment on commercial trolling boats, and four pounds of lead is far past anything a sport angler ties on — a heavy Bay sturgeon or halibut sinker runs a few ounces to a pound. These are rules written to keep commercial-style gear out of a sport fishery, not to catch out the person fishing a 16-ounce slider in a hard ebb.

They are still live rules, though. If your boat carries powered line-hauling gear of any kind, read that clause closely before you target stripers with it.

The 30-inch maximum that was voted down in October 2025

The biggest recent story in California striper regulation is a rule that did not happen. An externally submitted petition asked the Fish and Game Commission to keep the 18-inch minimum and add a 30-inch maximum length for harvest in anadromous waters — the waters stripers migrate through to spawn. The stated goal was protecting the large, mature fish that do most of the spawning.

The Commission took it up at its October 8-9, 2025 meeting in Sacramento and turned it down. CDFW's announcement of October 15, 2025 states plainly that "the Commission voted 3-2 to not set a maximum size limit," a decision that followed what the department described as years of discussion and consideration of public comment and scientific research.

What that means on the water today: as of November 2026 there is no slot limit on California striped bass. A forty-pound fish is as legal to keep as an eighteen-inch one. What it also means is that the margin was a single vote, and a 3-2 outcome on a petition that took years to reach a hearing is not a settled question. If you are planning a trip around keeping a trophy fish, re-check the regulations for the season you are actually fishing.

When the fishery is actually worth booking

Because the season never closes, booking a striper trip is entirely a question of where the fish have moved. CDFW's own account of the fishery gives you the circuit: spawning generally runs April to mid-June in water between 61 and 69 degrees, by mid-June most legal-sized bass have left fresh water for the bays, and the fall migration back toward the Delta may begin in October. That is the calendar guides work to.

• Most striper fishing is six-pack guide work — two to six anglers, all tackle and bait provided.
• Our guide-cost research puts a 6-to-8-hour Delta striped bass trip at roughly $275 per person.
• Bay Area party-boat potluck trips that include stripers are the cheaper way in during the summer.
• Small boats mean open seats appear and vanish fast — which is exactly where the discounts are.

License, report cards and eating what you keep

Every angler 16 and older needs a California fishing license, and small guide boats generally do not sell them onboard the way a big party boat does. For 2026 CDFW charges $55.05 for a resident annual and $142.05 for a nonresident annual.

Striped bass does not require a report card. That matters on a combination Delta trip, because sturgeon does: CDFW issues five sport fishing report cards — sturgeon at $8.13, North Coast salmon at $9.21, steelhead at $10.29, spiny lobster at $12.70, and abalone, whose fishery is closed. If your day includes a sturgeon rod, you need that card in possession before the first bait goes down, and white sturgeon remains catch-and-release.

On eating them, there is one advisory that follows the fish wherever it swims. OEHHA's statewide advisory for fish that migrate, effective November 2022 with no expiration date, covers striped bass through the bays, the Delta and the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Women 18 to 49 and children 1 to 17 are advised not to eat striped bass at all. Women 50 and over and men 18 and over are advised to limit striped bass to one serving per week — a serving being about the size and thickness of your hand.

• License required at 16 and older: $55.05 resident annual, $142.05 nonresident annual for 2026, per CDFW.
• No report card exists for striped bass; sturgeon requires one at $8.13.
• OEHHA: one serving a week for men 18 and over and women 50 and over; women 18 to 49 and children 1 to 17 should avoid striped bass.
• Buy the license online before the trip — it is the single most common last-minute scramble on a guide-boat morning.

What this means if you are booking a striper trip

The regulations are not the constraint on this fishery — the fish are. Two fish at 18 inches is a modest limit by California standards, nobody is going to send you home for picking the wrong month, and the water is open every day of the year somewhere in the system. The planning question is which leg of the circuit you want: the spring run on the river, the summer tide drift in the Bay, or the fall bite as the Delta refills.

That year-round open season is also why striper seats are such good deal hunting. Guides run small boats nearly every month, a single cancellation puts an empty seat on a prime date, and those short-notice openings are the ones that get discounted. Browse what is live now, or set up deal alerts so the spring-run and fall-bite dates reach you before they fill.

• Open all year statewide; confirm the specific river stretch is open when you book.
• Two fish, 18 inches total length, on every water our operators fish.
• No maximum size limit as of November 2026 — but the margin was one vote, so re-check before a trophy trip.
• Measure total length, not fork length, and keep no more than one daily bag limit in possession.