The bottom is still the best thing going. Monday and Tuesday the boats out of Berkeley, Emeryville, Half Moon Bay and Monterey came in with 330, 260, 230, 210, 150 and 130 rockfish — limits on every one of those trips — and the lingcod are riding along with them: 56, 42 and 12 on three of those same runs. If you want a full sack and a short argument about it, that is your week.

The salmon kept sliding. Across the ten salmon trips posted Monday and Tuesday, two came in at limits — Bodega’s Dragonfly and Emeryville’s Scallywag, both six-rod loads. Everything else ran between half a fish and one and a third per rod. And the clock is short: San Francisco and Monterey are the only two areas still open, and both close August 31 — thirteen days from this morning.

Two things changed inland. The fall striped bass run is on in the Delta — the first guide reports we have had out of Central California in a month, and they are good ones. And on the water side, Pine Flat has now dropped 10.2 feet in eight days while the lower Kings release went back up. That reverses three straight weeks of cuts. Details below.

Two sections in this issue are here because you asked for them. The Eastern Sierra coverage — June Lake Loop up through Bridgeport — and the Southern California dock totals covering San Pedro, Long Beach, Newport, Dana Point and San Diego, along with the Catalina block, both went in after readers wrote in and requested them. Keep it coming: there is a button near the bottom of this issue for telling us what water we are still missing.

◉ This Week’s Best Bets

Reservoir Levels

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District, data ending midnight Aug 18, report generated this morning at 07:00 — except rows date-stamped as of Aug 17. Percent full is against gross pool.

§ Don Pedro and McClure percentages are calculated against the commonly cited gross pools of 2,030,000 AF and 1,024,600 AF. Those capacities are not printed on the Corps sheet — the elevation and storage are. Treat the percentage as our arithmetic, not theirs.
† Success capacity shown as 82,300 AF gross pool. A dam raise may have added roughly 28,000 AF — verify with the Corps before quoting the percentage.
A note on conflicting numbers. A widely read regional fishing column this week lists Pine Flat at 842.42 ft and 47% of capacity, Eastman at 537.48 ft and 50%, and Hensley at 490.32 ft and 32%. Those elevations and percentages do not reconcile with the Corps daily sheet, which is what we print here and which is internally consistent week to week. Don Pedro is the one where the two agree closely (798.50 ft here, 800.49 ft there). We are not going to guess which basis the other column uses — we are telling you the two exist and that ours comes straight off the USACE report.

Bite Report

Good news: after three weeks of blank sheets, the Central California regional column filed again — with named guides, quotes and numbers. Everything below attributed to a person came from that report or from a landing’s own post. Everything in the Conditions column is measured water off the Corps sheet.

From Fresno it is roughly five hours over Tioga Pass to the June Lake Loop, six to Bridgeport. Thinner reporting over there this week than last — only one new filed report came through the regional feed, from Bridgeport. What is solid is the stocking list, and CDFW put fish in three Mono County waters this week.

June Lake Loop & Mono Basin

Crowley, Owens & the Mammoth Side

Bridgeport & the Walkers

The Delta — The Fall Run Is On

This is the section that changed most this week. Striped bass are flooding back into the Delta. Alan Fong has been taking linesides to 13 pounds on topwater in the shallows at Liberty Island and is moving west toward Sherman Lake. On the bass side he is flipping Brush Hogs in green pumpkin or watermelon red, and D-Bombs in Delta Red, on a one-ounce weight in one to two feet of water: “The current is ripping, and the northern largemouth bass are hunkering down on the shallows. They are transitioning to wood as the water temperature has dropped around 8 degrees.”

Johnny Wang at Turner’s in Stockton puts the stripers on the San Joaquin side at the Shoals, Frank’s Tract and Prisoner’s Point, with mostly undersized fish in downtown Stockton. South of the Mossdale Bridge, Omega Nguyen reports the river loaded with threadfin and the best window two hours before high tide into the peak — blood worms, pile worms or fresh shad, with the larger fish coming on shad. Randy Pringle’s read from running two tournaments last weekend: wind is your friend. Spinnerbaits and bladed jigs when it blows, prop baits worked with long pauses when it lays flat, and flip wood with big profiles on the high tide.

On the tide book, the front half of this window is a proper neap at Port Chicago — lows of 0.9, 0.8 and 0.6 ft, highs barely clearing 3.6. By Monday the lows are back to 0.1 ft and Wednesday the 26th brings a 4.9 ft high at 12:44 a.m. against a 0.0 ft low at 8:22 a.m. That is the swing worth planning around.

California Aqueduct, San Luis & O’Neill Forebay

San Luis and O’Neill are Reclamation and DWR facilities and appear on neither Corps sheet, so we still have no independently measured storage here. What we do have is people on the water. Josh Mesa reports the main lake kicking out limits of striped bass from the banks around Dinosaur Point on jumbo minnows, anchovies or blood worms, and the forebay slow because the grass is thick and limiting bank access. Roger George called the week tough for trollers between wind storms — seven fish to 23 inches on a guided trip — but then went scouting and landed a 44-inch, 30-pound striper on electric scales, his biggest of the year, released with a Seaqualizer. Water temperature 74 to 78 degrees.

In the aqueduct proper, Bill Sterling reports tough daytime action in the northern reaches and says it will be a month before temperatures cooperate — but plenty of largemouth in the local irrigation canals on crankbaits and plastic worms. Omega Nguyen adds a decent morning striper bite at Clifton Court Forebay on fresh shad. In the south aqueduct in Kern County, striper action has improved with cooler water — cut sardines, anchovies or jumbo minnows.

Rivers — Measured Flows

USACE Sacramento District. Gages read at 0700 Aug 19 or as the Aug 18 daily value, except where date-stamped as of Aug 17.

Dock Totals — Boat by Boat

Monday Aug 17 and Tuesday Aug 18 for the northern ports. Central Coast and Southern California run Aug 17 and 18; San Diego is Aug 18. Fish-per-rod is calculated from reported angler counts — on multi-day trips it is per angler for the whole trip, not per day.

What the numbers say. The bottom is carrying the fleet. Nine trips at full limits of rockfish across two days, with lingcod at 56, 42 and 12 on the same boats — that is a healthy, dependable fishery and it is where the boats are putting their trips. Salmon is the other direction: ten trips, two at limits, and only Bodega and one six-rod Emeryville load managed it. Bluefin, which led this newsletter last week, showed up on three boats Monday for a combined six fish and posted nothing at all Tuesday — though Fish Emeryville’s own Tuesday morning post said the captains were “killing it with Bluefin.” Those two things can both be true if the counts have not caught up. We are printing the counts and flagging the gap.

Down south, it is still a yellowtail story. The San Diego fleet posted 523 yellowtail and 165 yellowfin Tuesday. New Lo-An came in with 205 to 32 pounds on 25 rods off a two-day. Nine hours from Fresno and a different kind of trip — but the grade is worth knowing about.

Three source oddities we are noting rather than repeating. The New California Dawn entry again lists “200 Sandab, 200 Sanddab” — plainly one number entered twice under two spellings, so we have not totalled it. Its 56 lingcod on 26 anglers works out to 2.2 a rod against a 2-fish limit, likely crew fish; we show it as reported. And Davey’s Locker’s own page and the SoCal count feed disagree on the Freelance’s Aug 17 three-quarter day — the feed says 202 sculpin and 33 bonito, the landing says 192 sculpin, 19 rockfish and 3 barracuda. We used the count feed and are telling you the other exists.

NOAA harmonic predictions, MLLW datum, local time. Minus lows in red. Predictions run about ±10 minutes and ±0.5 ft; sustained wind and river flow move them further. The source publishes two highs and two lows per day, so a late-evening high occasionally falls off the end of a row.

San Francisco / Golden Gate — Station 9414290

Port Chicago / West Delta — Station 9415144

Monterey — Station 9413450

Port San Luis / Avila — Station 9412110

Clam diggers: nothing for you until the very end of this window. The first minus tides since August 14 arrive Tuesday the 25th at Monterey and Port San Luis and Wednesday the 26th at all three ocean stations, bottoming at −0.2 ft at Port San Luis at 4:04 a.m. Port Chicago does not go minus at all this window — 0.0 ft is as low as it gets, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Modest by this month’s standards, but it is the leading edge of a bigger run that peaks with the full moon on the 27th. Confirm the current health advisory and any closures before you dig.

Phase computed from a 29.530588853-day synodic month against the January 6, 2000 reference new moon. First quarter falls Thursday morning the 20th, around 10 a.m. and full moon Thursday evening the 27th, around 7 p.m. The almanac convention brackets new and full, which means the window opens on the 25th — the last two days of this coverage period — and runs on into next week. This one starts flat and finishes strong.

Sunrise at the Gate runs 6:29 a.m. Aug 19 to 6:35 a.m. Aug 26; sunset 7:57 p.m. to 7:48 p.m. Central Valley times run a few minutes earlier at sunrise and later at sunset. Illumination is the mean-synodic value at evening and can differ two or three points from published almanacs — the tide station data for today, for instance, shows 47% where our calculation gives 44%. Solunar major timing is estimated from lunar transit, not measured — treat the times as approximate and the rating as a tiebreaker, not a guarantee.

CDFW posts plants as week ranges, not specific dates. Week of Aug 16–22, 2026. All rainbow trout. Pound totals were not published for any of these waters.

CDFW regional plant lines:
Central Region — (559) 243-4005 ext. 151
North Central Region — (916) 351-0832
Bay Delta Region — (707) 944-5581

This Coverage Window — Aug 19 through Aug 26

A regional column separately lists several club events inside this window that do not appear in the CDFW permit database this cycle — a Wednesday night shootout out of Ladd’s Marina, Valley Backlashers at Tulloch Aug 24–25, Oro Madre at New Melones Aug 24, and 805 Bass Addicts at Santa Margarita Aug 24. Some of those dates also do not line up with the calendar. We list only permitted events above. If you are fishing one of the others, confirm directly with the club.

Two things to act on. If you want one more king before the season shuts, you have thirteen days, and the honest read is that it is getting harder, not easier — two limit trips out of ten. And if you would rather fill a sack than chase one, the rockfish and lingcod bite is the best it has been all year and it is not fussy about the tide.

Inland, the news is the Delta. The fall striper run is on, the water has cooled about eight degrees, and for the first time in a month we have real reports from people who were actually out there. Save the ocean plans for the back half of the week when the tide finally builds — but the Delta is worth a morning right now.

Tight lines, Bryan Mello B Mello Ag Services · Central Valley, California