Best Time For Fishing

Best times to fish, tide charts, and the best fishing days this month.

The Best Fishing Days of the Month: How the List Is Picked

Every spot page on this site ends with a list of the best fishing days of the current month. This guide opens up that list for one real spot and one real month, shows every score that matters, and explains exactly how the winners won.

The spot and the month

Our example is San Francisco (Golden Gate), November 2026. Our engine rated all thirty days of that month for that one spot, using the rules on How we pick the best times: every day starts at 25 points, the moon phase adds up to 30, a best time at sunrise or sunset adds 25, and good times at sunrise or sunset add up to 20 more.

The top of the list

The first pattern is the one you would expect. The top of the list clusters around the new moon and the full moon, because the moon phase is worth up to 30 points and those days collect nearly all of them. If the list did nothing but circle the new and full moons, though, you would not need a list; a calendar with the moon phases printed on it would do. The list earns its keep in the details, and November 13 is the proof.

The day that broke the pattern

November 13, 2026, was a waxing crescent day, nothing special in the moon's cycle, the kind of day a phase calendar would rank in the middle of the pack. It scored 63, fifth best of the month, ahead of November 10 (61) and November 25 (60), which sit right beside the new and full moons. It got there on a light bonus: its moon overhead best time, 2:41 PM to 4:41 PM, ran into the half hour before the 5:01 PM sunset and collected the 25 point bonus that the phase-rich days around it missed. With 13 phase points and the 25 every day starts with, that made 63. That is the whole argument for figuring the rating day by day and spot by spot instead of reading phases off a calendar. The moon phase sets the ceiling for a day. Where the windows land against the light decides how much of that ceiling the day actually collects, and some ordinary-looking days collect a surprising amount.

Look at the winning day the same way. November 9 did not win on phase alone. Its moonrise good time, 6:58 AM to 7:58 AM, opened thirteen minutes after the 6:45 AM sunrise, close enough to earn the dawn bonus. Its moonset good time, 4:35 PM to 5:35 PM, sat squarely on the 5:05 PM sunset. Both good times earned their light points on top of a full 30 phase points. Stacked is exactly the right word: phase, dawn, and dusk all pulling the same day upward, to 75.

The bottom of the list

Now the other end. The lowest scores of the month were November 4, at 35 out of 100, and November 5, at 39, in the thin crescent days after the last quarter, with November 20 next at 40. Those are days when the phase points run low and no window happened to land on the light to rescue them. Notice the gap: the month's best day scored more than double its worst. If you had picked a San Francisco fishing day in November 2026 by throwing a dart at the calendar, you could have landed anywhere in that spread. The monthly list exists to keep you out of the bottom of it.

Why the list is figured fresh for every spot

None of these scores travel. The moon phase is the same everywhere on earth on a given day, but sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and the overhead times all shift with where you stand, so the light bonuses land on different days at different spots. A day that wins at San Francisco because its moonset sat on sunset will score plainly at a spot two time zones east, where the same moonset fell in full dark. The moon's windows also slide about 50 minutes later each day, sweeping across dawn and dusk on their own schedule. This is why the list on your spot page is figured for your spot and this month only, and why copying another spot's best days, even one in the same bay, gives you the wrong answer.

How to use the list

Open your spot from the California list or your state, and look at the best fishing days for this month. If you can only get out a few times, spend those trips on the top days. If a top day falls on a workday and the sixth-best day falls on your Saturday, take the Saturday and do not fret; the difference between 55 and 50 is real but small, and a fished Fair day beats an unfished Best day every time. Then, on the day itself, plan around that day's best times, because the day rating picks the date and the daily windows pick the hour. Day first, hour second, and the weather forecast last, since weather can still spoil a well-chosen day. The calendar stacks the odds. What you do on the water settles the rest.

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