Fishing South San Mateo Beaches

Along Highway 1 on the southern end of San Mateo County lie a number of beautiful sandy beaches, where tall sandy cliffs form a stunning backdrop to fairly quiet sand that is perfect for fishing. The main beaches here are Martin’s Beach, Tunitas Beach, San Gregorio State Beach, Pomponio State Beach and the northern end of Pescadero State Beach. The fishing and crabbing here can be decent at the right times.

About the Beach

With the geography of these beaches, the amount of fishable area often depends heavily on the tide and how much you are willing to wade. At low tide, you can usually hike along the foot of the cliffs for miles, providing excellent fishing access. At high tide however, the ocean can come all the way up to the foot of the cliffs, so make sure you time your beach stroll if you don’t have any waders and you don’t want to get wet. With sufficient flows, a number of rivers and creeks also pour into the ocean at the beaches here, which you may need to wade across.

In general, fishing Berkley Gulp Sandworms or shrimp pieces in the holes and troughs here can yield excellent catches of surfperch — typically barred, silver or walleyes. They can come in close to shore so you don’t necessarily need a long cast. Throwing a crab snare can also net some nice Dungeness crab here — the classic squid, chicken or cut fish should do just fine. There can be some big currents so make sure you use enough weight in the snare. For both perch and crab, an incoming tide is usually the best time to fish for them, so time your arrival if you don’t have all day to fish.

In the summer, striped bass can make their way down here, although not as frequently as the beaches to the north — fishing sandcrabs or large spoons/streamers can yield a big catch. The rivers here at these beaches are also home to steelhead that can be caught by throwing a fly/lure into the surf in the cooler months. The local populations have struggled in recent years however, so catch rates are not great.

Notes

Most of the beaches here have parking fees. If you don’t want to pay them, there are a few turnouts along Highway 1 that you can park for free.

Recommended Gear

For the crab:

Crab Snare

Your basic setup for catching crab. Fill the cage with some kind of bait - squid, chicken, or fish usually do well. Cast out, and reel in every 10 minutes or so - if there's a crab nibbling on the bait, the loops of the snare will catch on the crab. I like doing a slow smooth "hookset" to engage the snare loops. While you're reeling in, try and maintain pressure on the snare, to make sure a crab doesn't get loose! I've linked a nice, but somewhat expensive crab snare here; a cheaper option is here, but it doesn't really work as well in practice.

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My baits of choice for the perch (fish on a high-low rig or fish-finder aka Carolina rig):

Raw shrimp

The jack-of-all-trades bait for our local saltwater fish. Works for rockfish, cabezon, lingcod, surfperch, jacksmelt, croaker, and many more. It can be a bit hard to keep on your hook --- switching to cooked from raw shrimp can help with that problem, with IMO slightly decreased bite rate.

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Berkley Gulp Sandworms

These fake worms are one of the best baits for catching surfperch off beaches on the West Coast --- for whatever reason, they really love these scented pieces of plastic. They also stay on the hook a lot better than shrimp, so you can really bomb them out past the breakers.

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The weights I use:

Cloth Bags

I hate snagging off and leaving a hunk of metal at the bottom of the ocean. As a result, I recently switched to using cloth bags, which I fill with gravel and small rocks at the fishing spot and hopefully biodegrade in the water. I've found that these cloth bags work incredibly well. They snag much less frequently than the metal weights I used to use, and the fish don't seem to mind. In addition, they are much cheaper.

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Ultra Steel Bullet Weights, 3/4 ounce

I usually use steel weights whenever I can. While they tend to be somewhat more expensive than lead-based weights, they lack most of the toxicity and developmental impacts of lead. In regards to your own health, you should use steel weights whenever possible. However, steel weights can be hard to find in larger sizes.

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Lead Sinkers, 2 ounces

These lead weights are much cheaper than steel, and come in much larger sizes. However, keep in mind the toxicity and developmental impacts of lead. Use at your own risk.

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