Spearfishing Stats

Taxonomy

Rarity

Jacksmelt are among the most abundant fish a California diver will ever swim through, and almost nobody stops to look at them. They are the long silver schools that hang under a pier, drift along a jetty, or hold in the top few feet of a bay. The recreational catch alone runs into the hundreds of thousands of fish a year. Between 1980 and 2003 the combined silverside catch ranged from a low of 315,000 fish in 1999 to a high of 1.08 million in 1993, and jacksmelt made up 85 percent of it. Under the survey that replaced it, the catch ran from 350,000 fish in 2009 to 744,000 in 2006, with jacksmelt still averaging 82 percent. The IUCN lists the species as Least Concern, assessed in 2008. California has never set a season, a size limit, or a bag limit on jacksmelt, which places it in a small group of species the state considers effectively unlimited. The Department of Fish and Wildlife says plainly that the stock size has not been determined and that there is no indication the species is being over harvested. The pressure the agency does name is habitat rather than take, because jacksmelt spawn in bays and estuaries and are exposed to pollution and to the loss of eelgrass beds.

Regulations

CDFW rules verified 2026-09-06

Seasonality

Edibility

Location

Jacksmelt range from Santa Maria Bay in Baja California, Mexico, north to Yaquina, Oregon, which makes them one of the few fish in the Ichthyopedia that a diver meets in the same numbers in San Diego and in Humboldt County. Recent California surveys actually caught more of them in the northern half of the state than the southern, 57 percent to 43 percent. They hold inshore and in bays, near the surface, and they favor rocky structure such as jetty rock and pier pilings. Depth is not part of the picture. The species has been recorded to about 100 feet but lives in the top few feet of the water column, which is where the name of the family comes from. Silversides are surface fish.

The part of the life cycle that most divers actually see is the nursery. Jacksmelt spawn in shallow water from October through early April, and a female spawns several times across that season. The eggs are large for a small fish, about a tenth of an inch across, and they come out in masses tied together and tied to something solid by long filaments, most often kelp. The larvae and juveniles then live in the surface canopy of the kelp forest in enormous numbers. A snorkeler moving through kelp fronds at the surface in spring is moving through a jacksmelt nursery, whether or not anything larger shows up that day.

Spearfishing Brief

The honest starting point is that nobody writes about spearing jacksmelt. No California spearfishing account for the species turned up in any source searched for this entry. It is a hook-and-line fish with a large and old pier fishery, and the ratings below are reasoned from what the fish is documented to do, not from a diver's account. That distinction matters more here than on a species with a hunting literature behind it.

Finding them is the easiest task in the Ichthyopedia and rates a 1. Jacksmelt school near the surface, inshore and in bays, at nearly every pier and jetty on the California coast. A diver does not search for jacksmelt so much as decide whether to bother with the ones already there. The shot is a different matter and rates a 3. These are small, fast fish in open water with nothing to hold them in place. There is no ledge to corner one against and no hole to pin it in, and a school that starts moving takes every fish with it. Overall difficulty is 3, driven by the shot rather than the search.

Weapon choice is inference rather than reported practice. An adult jacksmelt runs 8 to 16 inches, the fish sit in the top few feet of water, and the shot would be close. A pole spear or the shortest speargun available covers that. Anyone hunting them in California is doing something the published record has not caught up with.

The reason to know all this is not really the hunt. It is what the school tells a diver. Jacksmelt are forage, which is to say they are what larger animals come to eat. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife lists them as an important food source for marine birds, fish, and mammals. A dense silver school at the top of a kelp bed is the reason a sea lion is there and can be the reason a larger predator is nearby.

On the table, jacksmelt are honest but modest. The flesh is mild and soft with a moderate amount of fat, and California markets do sell them. The rating is held down by 2 things. The first is yield. A jacksmelt is a long, thin fish, so a 12-incher gives up almost nothing as a fillet and carries a lot of fine bones, which is why most people cook them whole rather than cut them. The second is worms. Parasites are common in jacksmelt flesh and are visible when the fish is cleaned, which puts more anglers off the species than the taste ever has. They are harmless once the fish is cooked. Pan-frying is the standard treatment, with deep-frying in a beer batter, grilling, and smoking all documented as well.

Deep Dive

The most useful thing to know about a jacksmelt is that it is not a smelt. True smelt belong to a separate family and are closer relatives of trout. They carry an adipose fin, the small fleshy fin between the dorsal fin and the tail, they have a single dorsal fin, and their pectoral fins sit low on the body. Jacksmelt have none of that. They carry no adipose fin, 2 dorsal fins, and pectoral fins set high on the side. Their actual relatives are the mullet and the barracuda. A jacksmelt in a harbor is closer kin to the mullet jumping in the same harbor, and to the barracuda outside the mouth of it, than to anything called smelt.

California ocean water holds 3 silversides: jacksmelt, topsmelt, and the California grunion. Telling the first 2 apart is a matter of 2 characters. On a jacksmelt, the anal fin, the unpaired fin on the underside behind the vent, starts between the 2 dorsal fins. On a topsmelt it starts directly below the back end of the first dorsal fin. The teeth differ too. Jacksmelt teeth are unforked and set in several bands on each jaw, while topsmelt have forked teeth in a single row. Jacksmelt also grow larger. The biggest one ever measured was 17.5 inches, against 14.5 for the biggest topsmelt.

Then there is the thing a jacksmelt does not have, which is a stomach. In 2006 a team led by Michael Horn published a study in Marine Biology comparing the digestive tracts of these silversides, and the first thing the work did was confirm that none of them has one. Food goes from the throat to the intestine with no acid chamber in between. What the study found next is the interesting part. The 3 species have taken the same stomachless plumbing in 3 different directions. Grunion are strictly meat eaters. Jacksmelt sit in the middle, somewhat omnivorous but mainly carnivorous, taking mostly zooplankton along with detritus and algae. Topsmelt do both, depending on where they live, and their guts change to match. The gut lengths, the surface area of the intestinal lining, and the activity of the starch-digesting enzymes all track the diet rather than the species. It is a clean example of the same basic equipment being tuned to different food.

Growth is fast at first and then slows. A jacksmelt averages 4.5 inches at the end of its first year and 7.3 inches at the end of its second, and most are sexually mature at that point. After that the growth curve flattens and the fish spends the rest of its life spawning. Early work put the maximum age at 9 or 10 years. That figure was revised upward in 1958 when a 16 inch male taken off Balboa Pier in Newport Beach was aged at 11 years by counting the growth rings on its scales, the same technique used to age a tree. Nothing older has been published since.

The commercial fishery is a footnote with an odd wrinkle in it. Silversides have never been an important commercial species in California, and most of what is landed comes in incidentally to other fisheries. Historically the catch came from encircling nets such as purse seines and lampara nets. From 1991 onward hook-and-line gear took over, and by 2010 it accounted for 95 percent of the commercial catch. The wrinkle is in the paperwork. Since 1994, jacksmelt has been the only silverside preprinted on a California landing receipt, and every other silverside has to be written in by hand by the buyer. Jacksmelt promptly jumped to 98 percent of all silverside landings. The Department of Fish and Wildlife says that number reflects the form, not the fish.

The recreational fishery is where the species actually matters, and it splits by region. Southern California anglers fish bare or yarn-wrapped snag lines with small hooks, jigging them repeatedly through a school. Northern anglers prefer a baited multi-hook leader hung under a bobber and drifted with the current, which often comes back with 3 to 6 fish on it at once. Juveniles of both jacksmelt and topsmelt are easier still, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife describes anglers chumming with bread crumbs and scooping the feeding mass with a net. That last method is legal for topsmelt and not for jacksmelt. California allows dip nets and throw nets only for a short list of species, and topsmelt is on it while jacksmelt is not, so the larger of the 2 fish has to be taken on a line or with a spear.

Where to Find Them

Beaches whose habitats match this species

Matched by habitat: a beach is listed when its biome tags overlap this species' biomes.