Inshore · 60 ft · beaches, bays, inlets and rips

California Corbina

Menticirrhus undulatus. Prime water reaches San Francisco in California right now (63°F at the surface). Fish it around 0 ft down — that is where 63°F water sits off San Francisco.

California Corbina identification illustration
LaneInshore · 10 fa (60 ft)
Depth it holds2–16 ft
Prime water63–73°F (workable 63–79°F)
Holds in the column0–13 ft down below the surface, over 2–16 ft of water
Judged onsurface temperature (NASA MUR satellite)
Structurenone

The water column off San Francisco

0 ft26 ft52 ftNo workable layer here today

The strip is the water itself, coloured by temperature from the surface down to the 52 ft surveyed bottom at that spot — one band per RTOFS model level. The outlined stretch is where California Corbina's temperature band (63–79°F) and the depth it holds actually overlap. That thickness is the number that matters: it is how much water you can work, not just whether the spot is warm enough somewhere. One model cycle, not a weekly archive — this holds still while the surface map scrubs.

In 3D

Drag to rotate, pinch or scroll to zoom. 3D model traced from a Chao 江星辰 (chao7) / iNaturalist, CC0 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ reference — source.

How it's fished

Sand crabs fished right in the wash — sight-fish them cruising the trough on a rising tide.

Region by region — right now

RegionSeasonPrime waterTempFish it atMonths
California in season reaches San Francisco 63°F ~0 ft
J
F
M
A
M
J
"Fish it at" is where this species' temperature band and its holding depth overlap in the water column, from the RTOFS profile (13 levels, 0–300 m) — the depth to actually put a bait, not just the place. "Prime water" is the furthest sampled station on the 10-fathom lane whose surface temperature sits inside this species' band. It is water, not a sighting report.
Charted grounds on the 10-fathom lane
The Farallon Islands