UTERPacific fish species: all 23
23 species — inshore, surf, reef, offshore, sharks, fresh water, and the bait. What each one is, what it eats, how to fish it, the live bait for it, what it's worth in the book, and the rule — with the date the rule was checked.
The points scale
rarity and size; bait scores nothingA catch scores the fish's base points times how many, up to double again for a trophy-size fish photographed on a ruler, plus ten for a photo and fifty for the first of a species in your book.
Inshore
7 fish
Pink (humpy) salmon
The humpy: the smallest and most numerous salmon, on a strict two-year cycle — Puget Sound gets millions in odd years and almost none in even years; Alaska gets them every summer.
Chum (dog) salmon
The dog salmon: a big, calico-barred, hard-pulling fish with a mouth full of teeth, late in the year in Puget Sound and Hood Canal and summer in Alaska's terminal areas.
Steelhead
The sea-run rainbow trout: chrome-bright from the ocean, running the coastal rivers from California to Alaska in winter (and some in summer).
California halibut
The flatfish of the Southern California bays and beaches and San Francisco Bay: a big-toothed ambusher on the sand that moves shallow to spawn in spring and summer.
Pacific bonito
A small, striped tuna-cousin that boils on the bait off the Southern California harbors and breakwaters all summer — great fun on light gear and good bait..
Pacific barracuda
A slim, schooling spring-and-summer barracuda that moves up from Baja to the Southern California kelp and beaches with the warming water.
White sturgeon
A living dinosaur — North America's largest freshwater fish, feeding in San Francisco Bay and the Columbia estuary.
Surf
2 fish
California corbina
The gray ghost of the Southern California surf: a whiting-cousin that tails in a foot of water for sand crabs on summer high tides.
Surfperch
The surf fish of the Pacific beaches — barred surfperch in California, redtails from Humboldt to Washington.
Reef & bottom
7 fish
Pacific halibut
The barn door: a flatfish that grows past 300 pounds on the gravel banks from northern California to the Bering Sea.
Lingcod
Not a cod: a toothy, green-fleshed rock predator of the whole West Coast and Alaska, the reef fish everyone wants.
Rockfish
Dozens of species — black, blue, vermilion, copper, canary, yelloweye — on every reef from San Diego to Kodiak, the backbone of the West Coast half-day boat.
Cabezon
A big-headed, mottled sculpin of the shallow rocks and tide pools from central California to Washington.
Kelp (calico) bass
The calico: Southern California's kelp-forest bass, the fish the half-day boats and kayakers live on from Point Loma to Santa Barbara.
Barred sand bass
The kelp bass's sand-flat cousin: schooling in the thousands to spawn on Huntington Flats and the Silver Strand every summer — the classic Southern California summer bite..
White seabass
The ghost of the kelp: a big croaker that follows the spring squid spawn into the kelp beds of Southern California and the Channel Islands.
Offshore
6 fish
Albacore (longfin tuna)
The longfin: a canyon tuna with pectoral fins like wings, white meat, and a run that strips a reel.
Atlantic bluefin tuna
The giant: the biggest tuna in the sea, a thousand pounds on Stellwagen Bank and off Cape Cod in the fall, with school fish on every inshore lump from Virginia to Maine.
Chinook (king) salmon
The king: the biggest Pacific salmon, black-gummed, spotted on both tail lobes, feeding on herring and anchovy in the ocean from Monterey to Kodiak before it runs home to its river.
Coho (silver) salmon
The silver: an acrobat that hits fast-trolled lures near the surface all summer and floods the bays and river mouths in the fall from Oregon to Kodiak.
Pacific yellowtail
The California yellowtail: a hard-pulling jack that runs for the kelp and the rocks the second it's hooked — the fish of the islands, the Coronados and the kelp paddies.
Striped marlin
The billfish of the Southern California late summer and the Hawaiian winter, tailing on the surface where you can pitch to it.
