The San Francisco Bay herring run is one of the more underrated nature spectaculars of the year, and it’s arriving at any moment. If you just happen upon it, consider yourself lucky . What you’ll see is amazing.
The run can happen anytime between November and March, when schools of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) that have swum into the Bay’s deep channels and estuaries make their way to spawn in shallow shoreline waters to deposit eggs in eelgrass, kelp beds, even along piers and rocks.
The roe sticks to every available surface, and males fertilize it with milt, or sperm, that can turn shallow water a milky white.
The millions, if not billions, of silvery fish — up to 10 inches long, bigger than an anchovy and smaller than a mackerel — bring clouds of marine birds, including pelicans, sea scooters, gulls and cormorants, along with various marine mammals for a feeding frenzy that makes for sublime nature watching.
Some humans like herring too, and the run attracts plenty of people with nets and buckets that can be cast from shore or dipped into the water from a pier. The bayfront from the Ferry Building south to Candlestick Point seems to be the best stretch within SF city limits. (This requires a sport fishing license from the state.)
The herring run doesn’t stir the same anticipation as, say, Dungeness crab season, say wholesalers and restaurateurs contacted by The Frisc. Dave Stern, who works in sales for the Monterey Fish Market, says, “The local demand for fresh herring is insignificant to overseas markets, and without these large markets, no one will fish,” meaning on the commercial side.
Traditionally strong foreign markets are Japan and Korea — the roe still stuck to kelp leaves is a particular delicacy — but economic hard times have dampened demand, says Stern.
William West’s enthusiasm is anything but damp, and not just because his grandmother’s name was Pekelharing, which is Dutch for pickled herring. West is among the diehards getting ready for the run, and he has dreams of getting his own business afloat.
“It’s a passion of mine, and I just want to inspire people to value this resource,” West tells The Frisc.
He’ll soon get his chance. This week, the first reports of the spawn emerged from the Sausalito shore. Earlier today, about a dozen people were casting nets as a king tide receded. Birds and sea lions feasted a few yards away.
Brandon Sterling, chief pie officer of a local family-run pie company, says he’s done this for a few years, and loves smoking, canning, and pickling the herring. Others had different motives. Stephen and Judy Weldon use the herring strictly as bait to lure halibut from their boat. “All we need is a full bucket to last us the year,” Stephen says.
“We were in Amsterdam recently and I had one bite of raw herring,” adds Judy. “That was enough for me.”
Delicacy there, baitfish here
Pacific herring in the Bay have long been an important fish, in part because of prodigious reproductive capabilities — a single female can lay as many as 20,000 eggs in one spawn, which is good because very few survive to become fish.
The adults don’t die after spawning as salmon do, and can live eight years or longer. Mature females can lay eggs every year.
Herring was one of many thriving commercial fisheries in San Francisco Bay in the 1870s, including sardines, halibut, crab, and oysters. But by 1900, only the herring fishery remained.
We used the herring in a kimchi pancake with great response from our diners.
anchovy bar chef de cuisine Koji Yokoyama
Bay herring is one of the last remaining urban fisheries in the country, but it’s still a shadow of its former self, notes sustainable fishing advocate Kirk Lombard. As late as the 1980s, it was in full swing thanks to demand in Japan for komochi konbu. By fishing for herring, “people were paying off houses and college,” says Lombard. ”It was an amazing time.”
Locally, Pacific herring rings up a few sales, but mostly it’s used as bait or for feed in aquaculture.
San Francisco’s Anchovy Bar has featured the small flaky fish on its menu in the past, says chef de cuisine Koji Yokoyama: “We used the herring in a kimchi pancake with great response from our diners.”
Monterey Fish Market’s Stern says its most recent sale of herring, either to a restaurant or at its Berkeley storefront, was in 2021.
The local taste and demand for herring might be thin, but the population isn’t. For his Sea Forager business, which catches and delivers local seafood to Bay Area customers and leads tours, Lombard spends a lot of time on the phone asking what’s getting hauled in.
The restaurant has purchased fresh herring caught farther down the coast. But as its name suggests, the restaurant mostly sticks to anchovies.
He hears that this year’s run could be huge, but that remains anecdotal. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife, worried about low counts for years, closed the commercial fishery for the 2019–2020 season. They reopened with fewer permits and lower catch allowances, and DFW marine biologist Tom Greiner says that last year was “really good looking. There were big spawns with one particularly massive spawn.”
Casting his own net
Until 2020, there were no limits on the daily recreational take, and Lombard recalls seeing people fill a trash can with herring, drive off in a truck, then return to fill the can all over again. Fish and Wildlife has now set the daily personal limit at 10 gallons — roughly 70 pounds, according to Lombard.
The commercial fishery has been regulated since the 1970s with separate permits and limits for herring and roe on kelp. At its peak, there were 400 permits issued for the Bay fishery. Today, under a new management plan that started in 2020, there are 10 permits for herring and eight for roe on kelp.
William West, with his plans for the San Francisco Herring Company, is now one of the lucky few; he managed to lease someone else’s permit for the year. He’s eager to chase his own catch in The Mamma Mia, which he describes as a 1939 wooden Monterey Clipper ship. Beyond this year, herring permits will continue to be tightly held; the state won’t issue new ones until 2025, with a maximum of 30 for fish and 10 for roe on kelp.
West’s infatuation took root in childhood, when he and his mother would cast nets from the shoreline, often in Richardson Bay, which tends to be ground zero for the run. His history helps explain why he’s putting a lot on the line. He was working as a state park biologist when he became a Sea Forager customer. He was inspired to quit his job in 2020 and work for Lombard, then in 2022 try his own hand at business, focusing just on herring and roe. (Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.)
With the herring run imminent and ample freezer space rented at Pier 45, West could sell herring, pickled or otherwise, directly to the public, but still lacks the permit to sell into stores. (His ultimate dream is to open a stand at the Ferry Building.)
One reason West is pursuing this dream — against some odds — is altruistic. He plans to donate some proceeds to local eelgrass restoration and supply herring to local animal rescue organizations like International Bird Rescue.
But before any of these good deeds can happen, West has to find the fish, fill his freezer, and clean and pickle the herring by himself.
Can he also be a one-man herring evangelist and build a local market for it? “I can dream, I guess,” West says, and thinks it’ll be a “fun thing” to “try to get herring on people’s plates so they can see how great it is.”