How this works
We don’t catch
your fish.
We just know
who does.
Fresh Catch Daily is a small operation in Dana Point, California. We don’t own boats. We don’t run nets. We do something narrower and harder: we know which boat is coming back to which dock with what, every morning, up and down the California coast — and we move it from that dock to your door before it’s been on land a full day.
Eight harbors. One cutting room. A dog at the dock.
The Headlands, the jetty, the marina, the Pilgrim. Home.
The Long Version
A guy from Dana Point, a list of boats, a dog.
Fresh Catch Daily started in 2026 with one observation: there is no good way to buy fresh wild fish if you don’t live next to the boats. By the time most online fish reaches a customer’s kitchen, it’s been through three brokers, a frozen warehouse, and a grocery-store case. Twelve days from boat to plate. That isn’t fish. That’s a memory of fish.
We’re a small operation based in Dana Point, California. Our founder grew up here, learned the harbor from a kid, and spent enough mornings watching boats come in to know which captains were worth knowing. We don’t own boats and we don’t pretend we caught your fish ourselves. What we do is keep a list — captains, boats, harbors, methods — of people we’ve spent years getting to know up and down the California coast. When a boat comes in with something worth shipping, we know about it.
From there it’s the shortest path we can build:
Boat in by morning. Cut by 2 PM at Santa Monica Seafood. On a truck by 4. On your doorstep by 10:30 AM the next day.
That’s the entire model. No warehouse, no middle day, no mystery. The fish you order is the fish that was swimming when you woke up — wherever it was swimming. Some weeks that’s Monterey Bay. Some weeks San Diego. Some weeks Humboldt or the Channel Islands. We’ll always tell you which.
The only constant across every harbor is Hatchi. He’s our Shiba Inu, he’s at the dock for every haul that comes through Dana Point, and he’s the closest thing this operation has to a mascot. He does not catch the fish. He just makes sure we’re there when it lands.
That’s the whole story. Now go cook something.
The First Mate
Meet Hatchi.
Shiba Inu. Dana Point local. Self-appointed harbormaster. Has personally inspected every box that’s left our dock since 2026.
He doesn’t catch the fish.
He just makes sure
we’re there when it lands.
Breed
Shiba Inu
Posting
Dana Point Harbor
Tenure
Since 2021
Specialty
Swordfish recognition
Likes
Salmon skin · sunrise
Refuses
Email · cucumbers
8
Harbors on the list
24hrs
Dock to door
0days
In a warehouse
1
Dog at the dock
Our Partner at the Dock
Santa Monica
Seafood.
Since 1939.
The West Coast’s oldest and most respected family-owned fish house. Three generations of cutters who know what a fish looks like three days after it stops moving — and who refuse to ship one.
Every fish we ship — from every harbor on the list — passes through their hands the same day it leaves for your door. The relationship is the product.
★ The Daily Route ★
Boats come in across the California coast — dawn to mid-morning.
We pick the day's allocation, harbor by harbor, before noon.
SMS cutters break it down in Santa Monica by 2 PM.
Boxes get packed in insulated foam with dry-ice gels at our Dana Point ship room.
FedEx Priority pickup, same afternoon. Doorstep by 10:30 AM next day.
House Rules
What we promise. And don’t.
★
Wild, not farmed.
Every fish in our store was free, swimming, and caught by people with hooks or harpoons. Not net pens. Not pellets.
✦
Same day cut.
Your fish is broken down on the day it ships. Not yesterday. Not Tuesday. Same day.
★
Boat-to-box honesty.
You'll know the boat, the captain, the method, and the latitude. If we don't know, we'll tell you that too.
✦
No middle days.
Most online fish has spent a week in cold storage. Ours hasn't. The shortest path from water to plate is what we're selling.
Come see what’s at the counter