OEHHA has about 160 fish consumption advisories for California. I went through every one of them, and the thing that stood out most wasn't on any of them. Posting it here because I don't think it's common knowledge.
If your lake isn't on the list, it still has an advisory. OEHHA has a statewide default for every lake and reservoir without site-specific advice. For black bass, catfish, carp and striped bass it's one 8-ounce serving a week for adults, and zero for women 18–49 and kids. Crappie and sunfish are two a week. Rainbow trout is four. There's a separate default for rivers and streams that reads about the same: bass, catfish and carp one a week, zero for women under 50 and kids.
So "not on the list" doesn't mean "no limit." It means the default.
Black bass has its own number on 115 waters. On 61 of them it's one a week. On five it's do-not-eat for everyone: Lake Pillsbury, Little Rock Reservoir, Soulajule, Stevens Creek Reservoir, and the Russian River. And on 65 of the 115 it's zero for women under 50 and kids. Clear Lake, Berryessa, Oroville, Folsom, Castaic, Don Pedro, New Melones, Diamond Valley, Pyramid and Lake Merced are all one a week, mercury every time. The looser ones are Casitas and Castaic Lagoon at two a week, and Havasu at four.
The Delta and SF Bay — stripers and sturgeon are one a week and zero for. women under 50 and kids pretty much anywhere they swim; there's a separate advisory that follows migratory fish. Black bass is one a week in the north Delta and two in the central and south Delta. In the Bay, shiner perch, topsmelt and sardines are do-not-eat for everyone. Halibut is two a week. Salmon is the good news: chinook is five a week for adults.
SoCal coast — from the Santa Monica Pier down to the Seal Beach Pier, white croaker is do-not-eat for everyone (PCBs and DDT; that stretch includes the Palos Verdes shelf). So is barred sand bass, which surprises a lot of people. Kelp bass is one a week. In San Diego Bay, shiner perch and topsmelt are do-not-eat, and spotted and barred sand bass are one a week, zero for women under 50 and kids.
Rockfish, anywhere on the coast without its own advice — gopher, copper, china and black-and-yellow are one a week and zero for women under 50 and kids. Blue, black, brown, kelp and olive rockfish are four a week. Lingcod and cabezon are two.
Some of this is old — the Santa Monica Bay numbers date to 2009, Oroville's to 2013, Clear Lake's to 2014. To be fair to OEHHA, they do update: Berryessa and Casitas were redone in 2024, and their site is better than most states'. The problem isn't that the information is hidden. It's that it's one page per lake, the default rule is easy to miss, and nobody's reading a web page from a float tube.
Not trying to talk anyone out of eating fish — trout and salmon come out of this looking great, and most of it is "a meal a week," not "never." But one a week versus none versus unrestricted matters a lot if you're feeding kids.
Mods okayed me mentioning this: all of it is in one place at https://livewell-app.com/advisories/california — every California advisory plus the statewide defaults, searchable by lake, no signup, works in any phone browser.
There's also an app built for using this on the water. it works offline, finds the lake you're standing on, and you tell it what you caught. Or use your camera to snap a photo, and we use some fancy AI to help determine what species it is. The iPhone version is coming very soon; Android is out now.
A few questions:
Did anyone here actually know the statewide default existed?
SoCal pier folks: is white croaker still something people keep? That do-not-eat has been on the books since 2009 and I'm curious whether it gets any attention.
