Vermilion Rockfish Guided Fishing Trip Report

Dan McGonagle • May 22, 2026

For today's fishing trip, we went in search of our limit of Vermilion rockfish.  We traveled north up the beach past La Jolla, and just off the beach of Delmar. You don’t need to go far for rockfish, but sometimes we go a little farther to try and find certain species.  Either way, it went well.

Vermillion Rockfish Guide San Diego

We started out bottom Fishing, using swim, baits And live sardines to fill our bag with meat for a fish and chips dinner. With two hooks on each line, We are able to switch up our baits to see what they want the most. After this, we resorted to fly lining sardines to try and catch the white Seabass and yellowtail that have been around, but the sea lions and the birds were relentless and stole all our baits as soon as we put them in the water. When there are not many boats around, this can be a definite problem.


We always catch some cod on our inshore charters but the yellowtail and White Sea bass is always more of a gamble although it’s always worth a shot because they have been around.

We were able to manage our limit of Vermilion rockfish as millet as numerous different species. We also caught three Lingcod, but they were all short and we had to release them. The Link cod in La Jolla have been biting pretty good lately. Hopefully, they are making a comeback.



The morning started off beautiful, but there was a storm blowing in fortunately, we were able to make it off the water before it got too bad. Got out there just in time because the weather the following day was basically unusable with the wind and swell. Calm before the storm.

Rockfish fishing guide San Diego

There is a spot in town, called Bluewater Coronado Island that will cook your fish for you and that was the plan for today’s group. They got off the boat and went straight to the restaurant and had their fish cooked four different ways for them. Bluewater does a great job and it’s definitely a great finish to feast on your fresh fish straight out of the ocean without putting in the work to cook it yourself.

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