Bodega Bay Fisherman's Festival

Each spring the Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Festival sets up its tents at Westside Regional Park, on Westshore Road just off Highway One, and runs two days from ten to five. The 2026 festival, the 53rd, fell on May 2 and 3 under the theme “Fish to Dish.” The Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Marketing Association chooses the theme each year.

Oysters, mimosas, and six bands

The food runs from barbecued oysters, local fish and chips, and clam chowder to a line of trucks. In 2026 the vendors included Anello Family Seafood, Nellies Oysters, the Tri Tip Trolley, Lins Dim Sum, Gerrards Paella, Kokos Korean BBQ, World Famous Corndogs, Kettletopia kettle corn, and Kona Shave Ice. A wine booth pours more than 25 Sonoma County wines, and a beer booth serves local ales. “Every year the mimosas are a big hit,” Suzann Mathers, chairperson of the wine booth, said in 2022, adding that donations from Sonoma County wineries “help make the Wine Booth a big part of the event fundraising effort.”

Bands play the main stage all day both days. In 2026 the Saturday bill was the Rotten Tomatoes Rock Band, the Dry Creek Station country band, and Tainted Love, billed as the best of the 80s live. On Sunday 40 Fathoms opened at 10:30, followed by Petty Rocks, a Tom Petty cover band, with Mustache Harbor closing from three to five. More than 60 craft booths hold artisans and vendors from across California and beyond. Children have face painting, spin paintings, games, pony rides, jumpy houses, and a tide pool touch tank, which in 2026 carried thanks to UC Davis marine science. Leashed pets are welcome, and at one o’clock both days in 2026 a pet parade went through the grounds, with llamas expected. The Coast Guard and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s rescue helicopter have staged demonstrations in the harbor. At the 2015 festival a mock water rescue by the crew of the sheriff’s Henry 1 helicopter was the big afternoon draw.

The festival is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit run entirely by local volunteers, and its proceeds go to Bodega Bay area community services. The festival’s website counts 22 local organizations that rely on it each year. The 2026 ticket page put the number at 25.

Three hours to build a boat

On Saturday, teams of four build wooden boats from scratch and then race them through a marked course in the bay. Adult teams get three hours and youth teams get four. They use only materials the organizers provide and simple hand tools, with no power tools except battery-operated drills. The festival’s 2026 notice expected a crowd of 2,500 and promised “creative designs, costumed teams, skilled craftspeople and at least one ‘sinker.’” The Coast Guard stands by, according to the Rancho Bodega Historical Society, “as not all vessels are seaworthy.”

The challenge grew out of the bathtub regatta of the festival’s early years. On April 14, 1984, Theresa White, Randy White, and Tim Gilette raced a boat they had made of 312 half-gallon milk cartons. They called it the Low Fat Express, and it finished second. Accounts of the bathtubs themselves differ. The historical society recalls entries “of all varieties, from contraptions made of milk cartons to real bathtubs.” A Press Democrat caption from the April 20, 1985 race says no actual bathtubs competed, “but most of the vessels were wet as a bathtub for the racers aboard.”

Taps off Doran Park

Sunday morning belongs to the Blessing of the Fleet, which the festival names as its highlight. The fishermen decorate their boats in the year’s theme. The festival tells people on land to gather on the shoreline by the grounds and to be there by 11:30 to watch the parade pass. The 2022 press release put the blessing at noon. The boats make a ceremonial lap of the harbor and then head out to the bay. As the historical society describes it, they gather in the outer bay off Doran Park, where a bugler plays Taps and a wreath is cast into the sea for those who died earning a living from it. The boat carrying the clergy then stations itself at the harbor entrance and blesses each boat as it sails back in.

The Press Democrat’s photographs show the ceremony changing hands over the decades. In 1976 the Rev. Henry Faucher, pastor of St. Philip Apostle Church in Occidental, aimed a holy water sprinkler at the passing boats and threw the flower wreath himself. Father Norman Van Siles blessed the fleet in 1980 and 1982. In 1985 Monsignor Thomas Keyes, vicar of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, put the wreath overboard with Richard Mache. In 2012 Father Robert White of Saint Anthony of Padua read his prayer over the radio so every boat could hear it. In 2017 the wreath went into the bay from the New Sea Angler. The festival now says all the local clergy perform the blessing.

The parade around it is less solemn. On April 12, 2015, local clergy blessed a fleet of about 30 boats. The Smith Bros. No 2 was among them. Kids on the Bella Bleu traded water balloons with Tammy Zepeda and the crowd on the Legacy, while Randy Burke sat at the Legacy’s helm. Zach McGowan turned a hose on the people aboard the Melissa Jo. After the blessing came a barbecue aboard the Regina Marie, which was decorated with ladies’ underwear. There, eight-year-old Aarineva Weinzinger held a crab. In April 2023 Mark Anello and John Scheirbeck fixed a giant foam crab to the Donna Mia before the parade.

Discovery Day, 1958

The blessing is older than the festival. In 1958 Bodega Bay needed money for its newly built volunteer fire house, and the town started an October festival called Discovery Day. It honored Lieutenant Juan de Bodega y Quadra, the Spanish naval officer for whom the town is named. The historical society tells the story this way. Sailing down the coast from Sitka, Alaska, in his small sloop the Sonora, he thought he had found San Francisco Bay. On October 3, 1775, he learned he had found a smaller harbor on what is now the Bodega Bay coast.

The first Discovery Day had a Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round at Doran Park. The Old Adobe Antique Car Club came out to the airfield, and the Tomales High School band played. On Saturday night there was a Dime-A-Dip potluck supper at the Grange, followed by fireworks and a dance to Gene Carter’s five-piece orchestra, a San Francisco combo. The highlight was the boat parade around the inner harbor. Some 17 decorated boats passed a stand where they were blessed in a short religious ceremony. Eddie, William, and Steve Smith led them. The festival describes the Smiths as members of the large local Miwok Indian family that began Bodega Bay’s commercial fishing industry in the 1920s.

Mary Darling, a local fisherwoman, led the Discovery Day committee until she became pregnant with her first child. After the 1964 festival the event was discontinued.

From the Chamber to the gate

The Bodega Bay Chamber of Commerce brought the festival back. It moved the date to the opening of salmon season and renamed it the Fisherman’s Festival. The festival itself and the Press Democrat give the year of the revival as 1973. The historical society’s archivist, Robin Rudderow, gives 1974. Visitors at the 1974 festival included former 49ers quarterback Y. A. Tittle and Congressman Don Clausen. The fire department remained a beneficiary. In 1975 the town formed its own ambulance service, Bodega Bay Area Rescue, and it began to receive money from Fish Fest, as locals call the festival.

For years the Fisherman’s Auxiliary chose the coming year’s theme at its Golden Hook award ceremony in November. That party honored whoever landed the season’s biggest salmon. The themes included “Mariner’s Mardi Gras” in 1981, “Harbor Hoedown” in 1982, “Adios El Nino” in 1984, “Salmon-Chanted Evening” in 1992, and the “somewhat controversial” “Golden Hooker’s on Parade” in 1996. For decades, judges on a reviewing stand awarded prizes to the best-decorated boats.

For more than twenty years the festival spread across the whole town. The art show hung at the Bodega Harbour Yacht Club on Smith Brothers Road, and fish and chips were served at the Grange. A 1980s map put a trap shoot below the old fire station in Porto Bodega and the Grange dance from 8:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. There were foot races, kite flying, a “White Whale sale,” and a children’s corner called Clown Lagoon. Rudderow writes that locals remember when women brought their knitting and homemade crafts to sell.

In 1996 the festival grossed $60,000 but had only $17,000 left to give away. In 1997 it charged admission for the first time, $3. Park rangers welcomed the change, since the park took a share of ticket sales and alcohol was easier to watch inside a fence. Everything except the art show moved to Westside Park, and the art show stayed at the Yacht Club for several more years. In 2000 the 25-year alliance with the Chamber ended over liability insurance and tax concerns, and Fish Fest formed its own nonprofit. By 2002 the music ran a full lineup both days, from Celtic to swing and blues. The early stage had belonged to high school bands and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Bagpipe Band.

The money stayed close to the water. In 2015 the festival distributed $66,000 to 22 local nonprofits and scholarships. When the crab season was closed, the board unanimously gave $10,000 from its reserve to the Spud Point Fishermen’s Assistance Fund. The festival returned in 2022 after a two-year absence under the theme “Gone Fishing Weather or Not,” and that year it gave away $58,000. The total included six scholarships for Tomales High students. For the 50th festival in April 2023, the committee chose a salmon painting that Janet Moore, a NOAA SeaGrant scientist, had made for the 2005 poster.

The 2015 festival drew an estimated 6,500 people. Chairwoman Brooks Rooney noted that about 80 percent of the volunteers were 60 or older and that fewer young people were going into fishing. “Kids don’t see cows and they don’t see tractors. It’s the same with the fishermen,” she said. Aldo Cima, then 90, was helping in the wine tent that weekend. He recalled the first festivals as a simple blessing and “a few hot dogs and such” in the parking lot by the docks, and the fishermen who once tied up near where the Tides Wharf restaurant now stands, with women cleaning and filleting the catch for sale. “It was just like an old fishing village,” Cima said. “It was just a little place then.”