After two seasons of effective closure, California's commercial-and-recreational king salmon fishery has been handed a longer 2026 ocean window — and the early-May trip from Die Hard Fishing's Adam Irino shows the fish are biting on the maiden voyage of his friend's new rig. The video, posted within twelve hours of the trip wrapping up, captured the first salmon of the year for the channel and a roadmap for any angler planning their first 2026 ocean run.
"Last year we had an extremely limited season. I was lucky enough to get out and catch a few fish. Um the years before that we didn't have any season at all. This year we have a little bit more of a season," Irino told viewers as he sorted tackle the night before the trip. He warned that the 2026 opener has shifted again. "Early on in the season, you know, in April when it used to open normally — now you never really know."
For the kayak community Die Hard Fishing was built around, the early-season offshore distribution has historically locked the small-craft angler out — most fish sitting too far off the coast for a comfortable kayak run. The longer 2026 window gives the kayak fleet a real shot at the in-season inshore push, when salmon move onto the structure within paddle range.
Irino's tackle setup keeps it deliberately minimal. The lighter rod is a 9-foot medium-action salmon stick with a parabolic bend, fished on either a diver or a downrigger and built to handle the constant rise and fall of a coastal swell. The heavier rod is an 8-foot setup designed around the sinker-release method that the California charter fleet still favours. A two-to-three-pound sinker pops free under load, freeing the angler to fight the fish, with the trade-off being a string of lead bombs left on the bottom every drop.
The terminal end is even simpler. Irino runs a flasher or a triangle dodger out front to draw the salmon's attention, then a crippled anchovy head pinned with a red nail as the most common business end on the fishery. He acknowledged a Vpex in watermelon as a reliable artificial alternative and noted hoochies behind a flasher are also productive, but argued the rigged anchovy remains the standard rig for any angler running their first trip of the year.
The trip itself paid off on the very first reel-up. As Irino cleared a line to check the bait, a salmon hammered the anchovy head and lit up the rod. "Yeah, it's a fish. Yeah. Hell yeah. On the way up. Yeah," he called. The fish hit the deck shortly after at an estimated 10 pounds. "First one of the season. I'll take it."
The morning was not without complications. The pair fought a brown jelly-like substance in the water column that piled up on the line and clogged the rod guides, with Irino slapping the rod tip on the surface to knock it free. "It was getting so much that it was getting caught in the eyes and I wasn't able to reel," he said. "Serious problems out there. But, uh, yeah, just part of the challenge."
A second hookup later in the morning came unstuck after a slack-line moment, but the trip closed out as a clean opening salvo for the season. Die Hard Fishing's audience now has a tackle list, a confirmed first fish and a season longer than anyone has seen in three years.
For Californian anglers, the broader story is straightforward. The salmon are biting again, the season window is longer, and the inshore push that follows the offshore opener should give the kayak fleet its first real shot at king salmon since 2023.