A quiet day at Bean Hollow
09 Aug 2025
I had a long week at work so I was itching to get out onto the rocks today. Originally, I was planninng on making the drive out to the Monterey/Carmel cliffs, but unfortunately I woke up too late and the drive ended up being about an hour longer than usual thanks to traffic. So, I decided to pivot to Bean Hollow State Beach.
I’ve fished here at Bean Hollow many times before, but I’ve always primarily fished the northern end of the park. Thus, I decided to use the time to try and scout out a couple more spots here more on the southern end. I first went to the very southern tip of Bean Hollow, where a rocky point juts out just past a sandy cove. I was hoping that this spot would give some nice deep water access, but no cigar — it did not really seem particularly deep, and some big waves kept crashing through that made fishing here pretty spooky. I did see someone catch a small cabezon when casting into the sandy cove, so guess there might be more fish if the conditions are calmer. Afterwards, I decided to try and do a bit of pocket fishing in some of the more protected areas of the park. However, it was pretty hard to get to any of the more interesting rocky spots as there were just enough waves today to make it a bit dangerous.
Unfortunately, I did not catch any fish for about 7 hours of scrambling about the rocks. Usually, dropping a bit of squid into a good tide pool can net you a good eel or rockfish, but no cigar today. Bean Hollow tends to be pretty shallow, so usually it fishes best at either high tide, when enough water comes in for the bigger fish to make their way within casting distance, or at low tide when you can walk out to deeper water. However, today the tide was falling all day to a pretty mild low tide, making the conditions pretty suboptimal when combined with the big waves. I’d probably wait for a good low tide to come back.
Check out our fishing guide for this spot.