Fishing

It is the first question we hear at the ticket counter, usually before someone even asks what is biting: “How much does it cost to go out?” Fair question. You are about to spend a chunk of your day on the water, and you want to know what you are getting into before you hand…

There is a sound you learn to love on the back of a Dana Wharf boat in the summer. It is the drag screaming on a half-dozen reels at once, followed by the captain calling out “hookup, hookup” over the rail. Nine times out of ten in July, that chaos is a school of barracuda that just crashed our jigs. They are long, mean, and full of teeth, and pound for pound they will test your reflexes more than almost anything else we catch close to home. California barracuda are one of the most underrated targets in our whole sportfishing lineup. They are aggressive, they school up thick, and they hit a surface jig like they are mad at it. They are also the perfect fish to learn on, because the technique that catches them is the same technique that…

Ask anyone who runs the offshore boats out of Dana Point what they look forward to all year, and you will hear the same answer: bluefin. Pacific bluefin tuna are the hardest-pulling, most stubborn, most addicting fish that swim off our coast. They show up in late spring, stack up through summer, and turn ordinary…

Every weekend at Dana Point Harbor we watch the same scene play out. A group rolls down the dock at sunrise, coffee in hand, dressed for a beach day. Flip-flops, board shorts, a t-shirt, maybe a hat from a gift shop in Laguna. They are about to spend six to twelve hours offshore where the…

April 1st is one of the loudest mornings of the year at Dana Wharf. The gates open early, the parking lot fills up, the gear shop is moving like a Black Friday line, and every boat going out is loaded with anglers who have been waiting all winter for the same thing: the rockfish opener….

When the Dana Wharf sportboats head offshore in the summer and fall, every set of eyes on the boat—from the captain in the wheelhouse to the anglers on the bow—is scanning the deep blue horizon for one specific thing. A floating piece of detached kelp. In the vast, featureless expanse of the open…

You can have the most expensive rod and reel on the boat, but if your live bait is spinning in circles or dies the second it hits the water, the fish are going to swim right past it. When you fish with Dana Wharf Sportfishing, our bait tanks are loaded with fresh, lively…

If you fish Southern California year-round, you know that the Pacific Ocean has moods. During the winter months, the water is cold, the days are short, and the strategy is all about going deep. Winter fishing at Dana Wharf Sportfishing is dominated by heavy lead, dropping bait to the bottom, and pulling up…

When you drop your line down to the rocky reefs off the coast of Southern California, you never quite know what’s going to bite. While many anglers have their hearts set on a giant Lingcod or a colorful California Sheephead, there is one fish that often steals the show: the Ocean Whitefish. Don’t…

They have teeth that look like a human’s, they change gender from female to male, and they fight like a bulldog. The California Sheephead is one of the most iconic fish in our local kelp beds. While many anglers catching them by accident while fishing for bass, targeting them specifically is a skill. Known as…