Hiking Your local trail guide for all ages and skill levels. Fishing Local fishing holes, gear advice, and retailers. Camping Discover local campsites, helpful hints, and where to buy gear. Hunting Education, permits, regulations and where to hunt in your area. Archery Local archery ranges, tips for beginners, and advice on the proper gear.
Shooting Sports Get started right with local safety education, training, ranges and retailers. Motor Sports Off-road riding in your area, plus instruction, rentals and dealers. The San Francisco Municipal Pier was built in the early s as a recreational pier. Today it continues to be heavily used by anglers but also is heavily trafficked by joggers and tourists visiting the area. Listening to the conversations of passing strangers is like being in Babylon, or wherever the Tower of Babel was located.
A veritable United Nations of languages. The pier is a short walk over the hill from Fort Mason past picnic areas and gardens.
On a sunny day people will be sunning themselves on the steps and perhaps even putting a toe into the chilly water at the small beach. Ghirardelli Square, its chocolate, its ice cream, and a plethora of shops and restaurants filled with tourists sits just up the hill from Aquatic Park. There is obviously plenty to see for everyone.
Unfortunately, the pier itself is not in the best of shape. Not only is it filthy at times but it is also in severe need of maintenance. Nevertheless, it remains one of my favorite spots on the waterfront. Perhaps due, at least in part, to the fact that it was the first pier I fished in San Francisco. Way, way back, in , I managed a short visit to the pier during a trip to The City.
Three silver surfperch were the sum total of my catch that day. The surroundings as much as the fish remained a beacon for many years. There is also the already mentioned smaller pier that sits near the foot of the Municipal Pier.
That pier, formerly known as Transport Wharf No. The pier is currently closed; prior to closing it was primarily used by those crabbing or fishing the inshore area for seaperch. The 1,foot pier is built over clay, sand, and mud, but considerable material has built up under it over the years.
As a result, a great number of different species of fish have been caught here. Department of Fish and Game studies showed more than 45 species of fish caught at the pier in a single year. The vast majority of the fish that are caught are the old standbys for this area: white croaker, walleye and silver surfperch, striped seaperch, black seaperch, white seaperch, pileperch, shinerperch, jacksmelt, Pacific tomcod, sand sole, Pacific sanddabs, starry flounder, English sole, California halibut, brown rockfish, black rockfish, striped bass, brown smoothhound sharks, leopard sharks, California skates, big skates and bat rays.
Fishing Tips. As is true at most Bay Area piers, the best time to fish for large perch pileperch, blackperch, rubberlip perch and striped seaperch is in the winter and spring.
Use pile worms, mussels, or small pieces of shrimp, and small hooks, size 6 or 8. A few redtail surfperch and rainbow seaperch will also enter the census as may a few eels—monkeyface eels and wolf-eels—although neither is a true eel.
The winter months may also produce a few starry flounder but fish further out on the left side of the pier; use pile worms or anchovies, and a sliding sinker rigging. Wintertime also seems to be the best time for Pacific sanddabs. Although they will bite throughout the day, they seem to bite best right at daybreak.
Unfortunately their numbers, as well as the number of starry flounder seem to be decreasing. Summer is definitely the best time for the smaller perch — primarily silver and walleye surfperch, although white seaperch are also common and shinerperch can be over abundant. All of these can be caught with small hooks, size 8 or 6, and pile worms, strips of anchovy or pieces of shrimp. Fish for the perch and tomcod at mid-depth and the kingfish on the bottom.
The small fish are truly pests but they do make great striper bait. Most are taken near the shallow inshore area and occasionally a reef perch may also make an appearance. Both perch are primarily inter-tidal herbivores vegetarians so not particularly easy to catch, but a few are generally taken each year. Fishing around the pilings can provide several different rock-frequenting species such as black rockfish, blue rockfish, olive rockfish, grass rockfish, kelp rockfish, cabezon, lingcod, kelp greenling, giant kelpfish and buffalo sculpin.
For children, the summertime can provide non-stop fishing for small brown rockfish. They are really too small to keep, but a size 8 hook, with a small piece of pile worm, mackerel, or even squid, fished directly under the inner side of the pier, at almost any spot, will yield a fish on nearly every cast.
Occasionally you may hook one of the aforementioned rockfish, perhaps one large enough to keep, but it will be the exception to the norm. Some years will also see schools of juvenile bocaccio enter the catch but their numbers have diminished greatly during the last decade and you can only keep two of the fish with a ten inch minimum length.
Flatfish such as sand sole and English sole are a frequent possibility most of the year and late spring to the early fall may also see a few halibut landed. Fishing Local fishing holes, gear advice, and retailers. Camping Discover local campsites, helpful hints, and where to buy gear.
Hunting Education, permits, regulations and where to hunt in your area. Archery Local archery ranges, tips for beginners, and advice on the proper gear. Shooting Sports Get started right with local safety education, training, ranges and retailers. Motor Sports Off-road riding in your area, plus instruction, rentals and dealers.
Some Images Courtesy of Polaris Adventures.
0コメント