Complete Guide To Corbina Fishing Tackle, Tips, Baits & Rigs
- Ben Hervey-Murray
- Feb 18, 2023
- 14 min read
Updated: Mar 13
This page is all about surf fishing for California Corbina (Menticirrhus undulatus) - a hugely popular and hard-fighting West Coast surf species that grows to well over 20 inches and 5 pounds in weight. They're a premiere game species in SoCal and a great challenge for any level of surf angler.
The corbina is a member of the croaker family (although it cannot croak like its cousin, the yellowfin croaker) and lives in shallow, sandy waters in Southern California, from Point Conception down to the Gulf of Mexico, feeding on sand crabs and small food items close to shore.
Over a few years of guiding clients, and success at tournaments, light line fishing for corbina and similar species in Southern California, I’ve developed a few rules around the best tides, locations, baits, rigs and tackle for corbina fishing.
I’ll happily share these corbina fishing tips in the detailed article below, or with anyone who comes on a guided trip with me.
Corbina Fishing in California Guide
11 The best seasons for Corbina Fishing
Basic Information about Surf Fishing for Corbina in California
Corbina - also sometimes called 'binas, beans, California whiting, California croaker, grey ghosts, poor man's bonefish, or, mistakenly, corvina - are a prized fish for surf anglers on the West Coast.
Representing somewhat of a challenge to hook and land on light tackle from the beach, they're caught mostly in the warmer months when sand crab beds are common on beaches from Ventura down to Mexico.
The current IGFA all-tackle world record is a fish weighing 7 pounds 15 ounces - a fish caught in Mission Bay, San Diego by Scott Matthews - and the California state record is a fish weighing 7 pounds 1 ounce, caught in Newport in 2005.
If you're interested in getting started targeting corbina, the first step to regularly experiencing the best corbina fishing from the surf in Southern California is to make sure you’re set up correctly before you even leave the house…
Best Rods (Poles) for Corbina Fishing
Let’s start with the rod and reel. Leave your 7-foot combo at home and go with a specialist rod around 8 to 10-feet in length and rated for 4 or 6 to 10-pound line, or very similar (e.g. 6 - 12 pound rating).
The extra length in the rod will help you manage your line and keep the sinker in the right zone for longer compared to a short rod. It'll make a big difference.
The Phenix Featherlite range of rods are popular, but a little pricey for a surf rod for some, whereas the Okuma SST, Rockaway SP and Guide Select Pro range is a little more affordable and durable.
In summary, aim for models rated for 4- to 12-pound line, and around a ¼- to ¾-ounce sinker rating for corbina fishing. Light weight, slow to medium action.
The Penn Carnage III range and Daiwa West Coast Special line also has a couple of good options for corbina rods.
Best Reels for Corbina Fishing in the Surf (West Coast)
Reel-wise, buy the best spinning reel in the 2500-3500 size range you can afford. I currently use a mixture of Penn Authority, Penn Battle 3 2500 DX and Penn Slammer IV DX models loaded with 10-pound braid.
I’ve veered more towards Penn reels in recent seasons –especially Battle and Slammer models due to their durability. I find they just last forever and work regardless of what you throw at them.
I frequently guide young anglers or beginners, and they might not understand that dunking a reel in the sandy shore break is bad news for most reels (but good news for my reel servicing guy…) so something that can take some punishment and carry on fishing is a welcome attribute.
Another factor to consider is the quality of the drag mechanism. The Penn HT-100 systems holds up really well and doesn’t stick or become jerky, even after a sand bath.
This really matters when it comes to corbina fishing; those long, drag-pulling runs must be handled by the reel in such a way that it doesn’t lock or bind due to sand in the drag. I’ve seen lesser reels lose significant fish due to this issue.
Best Rigs, Sinkers, Leader and Setups for Corbina Fishing
Having tried many variations back-to-back, I’ve arrived at the following set-up as my go-to for summer corbina.
First, 10-pound braid main line (one of the new generation of smooth casting braids in moss green), then enough 6 or 8-pound fluorocarbon or clear mono so the leader knot (the connection between the fluorocarbon and braid – a back-to-back uni, FG or crazy Alberto knot in this case) just sits just below the rod tip ring when teeing up a cast.
With a 8 to 9-foot rod, that’s about 3 to 4 foot of leader above the sinker. I’ve found this leader to be pretty important. Catches fell noticeably when I’ve done without it.
Think of how a corbina finds its food – scoping tiny items like sand crabs and worms in the turbulent shore break… To feed successfully, they must have evolved incredible eyesight to pick out a tiny sand crab in the sandy maelstrom.
Thus, your braid main line must look like an abomination floating around their feeding area, whereas clear mono, and fluorocarbon with its refractive index similar to water, are much more subtle.
From the clear leader, I run a ¾-ounce egg sinker (or 1/2-ounce if its flat calm) down to a tiny clear bead, small stainless steel swivel and 30 inches of 4–6-pound fluorocarbon leader with a size 4, 6 or 8 Tanago Match hook, Carolina Rig-style.
Everything is kept as subtle and discreet as possible – I don’t want the corbina seeing anything other than my hook bait. This is really important.
The corbina below is a good example of a large fish feeding in shallow water that fell to a subtle Carolina rig with a fluorocarbon leader.
So, in summary, the best type of corbina rig for surf fishing is a simple Carolina rig (also known as a C-rig, slider rig or sinker rig) with a mono or fluorocarbon casting leader, egg sinker, rigging bead, swivel, 25 to 40-inch 4 or 6-pound fluorocarbon leader, and small J hook with either a sand crab, ghost shrimp, bloodworm, mussel meat or sandworm as bait.
Try this kit for everything you need to catch big Corbina from the Surf!
Fishing for corbina requires a specialist set of tackle and tactics, and through our surf fishing guiding services we’ve put together a kit containing the best available tackle, sinkers, hooks, swivels, beads, baits and accessories for catching corbina from the beach.
It’s way easier to get this kit than to shop around, which is what we used to do before developing this one-stop solution to corbina fishing tackle requirements.
Mainly based around a light line roving approach, the Light Line C-Rig Kit comes with everything you need to get started apart from a rod and reel, and the rigs come with full instructions written by a specialist guide.
In short, if you’re looking to catch corbina from the surf this season, this kit contains all of the items of tackle you’ll need. It’ll save you money when compared to buying these items separately, too.
Tides and Session Planning info for Corbina Fishing
On my calendar, I mark likely tides and session windows well in advance and this allows me to plan a session around optimal conditions.
For corbina, ideally I look for a small swell (1- to 3-foot) and an early morning, outgoing tide a couple of hours after the high until an hour off the low – a state that leaves lots of sand crabs exposed whilst still offering enough water close to shore on the average beach to keep the fish within casting range.
If you’re keen on sight fishing for corbina, the best tides are as follows: aim to fish an early morning minus or negative tide which happens when the tidal swing is so wide that it water retreats to below the average low tide mark.
This exposes lots of structure and during summer months, corbina love to hunt these shallows on beaches with shallow inclines and lots of skinny water for sand crabs and food items.
Look for dark grey shapes in the skinny water, backs out of the water, and small splashes as the corbina turns to swim back to deeper water. Always wear polarized glasses and a peaked hat.
It can be trickier to target corbina in such shallow water, but this can also be a lot of fun!
Timing-wise, dawn is the time to be out there and I like to be home and hosed by the time the crowds, surfers and wind builds around mid to late-morning.
Dawn and dusk are definitely the best times to fish for corbina fishing in the surf, with early usually better than late for the big ones.
What to look for when you hit the Beach (corbina session game plan!)
So, you've got your combo set up, your rig tied and you've worked out the ideal tides and location for a corbina mission...
Let's run through a hypothetical, but typical session and what I'd be looking for to score a nice corbina.
The first thing I'd look for is bait, and this is almost always sand crabs. I want masses of of crabs - big room-size beds. Move until you find them. No crabs? Hit another beach.
If you've never found sand crabs on the beach before, we love to help anglers get this element of bait hunting dialed in on a tuition session, or you can look for the large patches of little V shapes moving in the surf line as the water retreats.
Use a small sieve or sand flea rake to scoop up a few handfuls for bait, stored in a small tub or ziplock bag for a couple of hours, taking care to keep the small and medium size ones for bait.
Best Baits for Corbina Fishing in California
Now you've caught some sand crabs for bait, the temptation is always to hook on the biggest sand crab you can find and cast that out.
No doubt this will work some of the time, maybe picking up a trophy or two, but more frequently it’ll either come back chomped in half or missing...
Nearly every single big corbina I’ve ever caught has been on a medium size crab or bunches of smaller crabs; usually three or four samples the size of a small pea or grain of baby corn.
This creates a bait that’ll cast further than one larger crab, and fish will readily inhale the whole lot, leading to more hook ups.
Plus, if you do miss a bite or a small surf perch crunches one off the hook, you’re still going to get bites because the rest of the crabs are enough to get the interest. The only time I use a big sand crab is when I find a soft shell variety.
The fish seem to inhale these more readily – maybe that soft shell allows them to squish it a little so the whole lot enters the mouth a little easier than compared to a hard shell model. The sample below is prime corbina bait.
Or maybe the extra juices and chemical signatures given off by a molting crab is the X-factor that fish can’t resist.
Either way, if you see an off-color crab in the sieve that’s soft to touch, like the top crab in the photo below, use that one first or whenever you’re on fish but can’t seem to get any takers but you know you're on fish or in a good area.
Also, note that a small Gulp! sandworm or curlytail grub bait is pretty effective when you can’t find crabs for bait.
I’m very happy to use these fake baits in winter and regularly catch corbina on the 1-inch sections of camo neris variety of the Berkley Gulp! Sandworm range, fishing to structured water in the same way I would if fishing over (or near) a bed of sand crabs.
How to hook a Sand Crab (sand flea / mole crab)
Now you've found some awesome bait, and maybe a likely structured spot in the surf, let's look at how to hook a sand crab.
For small bunches of crabs - sometimes called a meatball - I hook small sand crabs by skewering one or two right through the middle of the shell on the shank of the hook, and one or two through the backside digging spike and up into the main shell on the hook bend so they just fill the gape.
Leave the hook point and barb exposed, like the set-up in the photo below.
Bigger soft-shell crabs are rigged more like a tiny soft plastic bait, with the hook coming up through the little digging spike on the underside and the point just emerging from the middle of the main shell.
Just like fishing a weedless bait for bass, the corbina and similar species have no problem in squashing the softer bait enough to release that hook point.
More generally, for a typical single crab corbina bait, the best way to hook a sand crab is as follows: I'll take a medium size (thumbnail) sand crab and pass the hook up through the base of the digging spike (situated at the opposite end to the head) and out through the base of the main shell. It should look like the above photo.
Hooked this way, the hook point will always be exposed so any fish grabbing the bait will get the hook too without any hard shell to mask the point. It will also cast a long way without coming off.
For bigger crabs, I just hook into the main shell to the side, like the photo below.
Sight fishing vs Fishing over Sand Crab Beds
Whilst there’s no doubt that sight fishing for corbina in California is one of the most satisfying strands of surf fishing, it’s also one of the hardest things to achieve. You need everything to be working in your favor and a high degree of skill in casting and not spooking them.
I’ve found that a far more reliable way of catching them, is to be fishing with the tactics described above and targeting large beds of sand crabs like the thick bed in the video below - note the density of the crabs - and nearby structured water such as troughs and holes, regularly hoping between the larger patches that pop up during the warmer months.
The corbina below was caught doing that just; roving between the larger beds of crabs, never staying for more than a few casts. No bites in five or ten minutes, or no signs of fish? Move on.
Hook-ups are often within seconds of hitting a new patch and casting into associated structured water, like a trough or gully, where the corbina are less cautious and waiting for stray crabs to be washed out.
The real gold here is finding those mega, room-size beds of sand crabs rather than little patches. In summer, I target these areas nearly exclusively.
I suggest you do the same on your next corbina fishing trip; roving the beach and targeting the sand crab beds, like the one circled below, and any likely structure adjacent to the beds such as holes, troughs, gullies or any deeper area with darker water.
That’s not to say you won’t frequently see corbina in the shallows and that this isn’t a big clue on where to fish.
In fact, you'll frequently see corbina as they swim up the beach with the incoming surf to grab a mouthful of sand crabs before the water retreats.
Look for the dark shapes moving in small pods, backs out of the water, and tail splashes as they turn to swim back into the deeper water.
A recent session illustrated this well; we pitched up next to a large bed of crabs, casting a bunch of small crabs into the breakers whilst stood in the middle of the bed.
First cast, we saw a corbina come in with the wave, turn and swim back out.
For my client’s next cast, I put on a soft-shell crab and we hooked a very similarly-sized corbina a few seconds after casting blind into the surf adjacent to where we saw the fish.
This is a pretty typical scenario in the summer. Try following the same strategy when you next find a feeding corbina in the shallows.
Look for the clues and bait and you will find them, even if they’re not obviously there. For example, if we'd not seen that corbina in the shallows, we'd not have known to cast right where it was staging for the next wave in the deeper water.
Best Seasons for Corbina Surf Fishing in California
Peak seasons for corbina fishing are June through to Thanksgiving, but I’ve caught corbina all year round and there’s definitely a small resident population in various SoCal harbors, rockier beaches, and wherever there's food on the open beaches. Find the sand crabs in winter, and the fish are often nearby.
When the water temperature hits 63-degrees, that’s usually when the mass of sand crabs turn up along with the corbina, so follow that data point and you’ll have a good idea when it’s go time for this fascinating species.
Warm water (as warm as possible) and the presence of lots of sand crabs, are the two biggest influencing factors to look for when trying to work out the best times to go corbina fishing. Winter is harder work, but the rewards are there...
Thank you for reading this article on corbina fishing - one of my favorite strands of surf fishing in California.
If you'd like to learn more, I run specific guided corbina fishing sessions in Southern California, with more info also available via ben@americanseafishing.com
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