Grunion Watch This Weekend

They’re baaack! Those little slippery silvery fish that reclaim their beaches every so often to spawn will be on Venice and Dockweiler beaches Friday through Sunday nights. The best times to observe or fish the Grunion Run will be after 10:20 PM Friday night, after 11:00 PM on Saturday and after midnight on Sunday. With the warm weather we’ve been having, the beaches should be very pleasant for grunion watchers.

You can catch and keep grunion if you have a valid fishing license (unless you are under 16 years old - then no license is required.  April and May are closed season for grunion take, so you can only watch the little wrigglies during those months as they invade the sandy beaches and spawn. If you’ve never seen this phenomenon, you should put it on your bucket list.

One year I was on Venice beach a few hundred yards north of the Marina jetty. We had been waiting nearly an hour for any sign of grunion, when all of a sudden, a wave brought in tens of thousands all at once. As the wave retreated, there was hardly a sandy spot on the shoreline - the entire beach was carpeted with grunion for hundreds of yards. The female digs into the wet sand tail first in order to deposit her eggs at a safe depth, while as many as eight males wraps themselves around the female and release their milt. In that instant before the next wave comes up onto the beach, the eggs are fertilized. The eggs stay in the sand for about 10 days and hatch during the next high tide series, when the little fry wriggle out of the sand and swim into the ocean.

For a good Grunion resource, check out the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/grunionschedule.asp, as well as their downloadable pamphlet at: https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=36316&inline=true

Another good source is http://grunion.pepperdine.edu/

Enjoy your Ballona Wetlands!