Kelp paddy season · Southern California

About Paddy Hopper

Paddy Hopper is a free, kid-friendly fishing game set in Southern California. Play as a yellowtail or an angler at Point Loma, La Jolla, Catalina and the Coronado Islands. It runs in a browser on a Chromebook, laptop, tablet or phone, with nothing to download.

Is there a free fishing game I can play in a browser on a Chromebook?

Yes. Paddy Hopper is free and runs in Chrome on a Chromebook, and in other modern browsers. Open paddyhopper.com, pick a fish or the angler, and start. There’s nothing to install.

What do you do in the game?

As a fish (yellowtail, mahi mahi, mako shark or marlin) you hop between floating kelp paddies, crash bait balls of anchovies, sardines and mackerel, and grow, while dodging hooks, lures and sharks. Or fish as an angler: you start in a pedal kayak and earn a jet ski, skiff, center console and sportfisher by catching fish: yellowtail, calico bass, white seabass, bluefin tuna, dorado, giant sea bass, California halibut, leopard sharks, rockfish and more. You can also dive in with a speargun.

Where can you fish?

• Home Island, a hand-made island block
• Point Loma and San Diego Bay, with the bait barge and the kelp along the point
• La Jolla, from the canyon and the Cove down to Mission Bay
• Catalina Island, the whole island
• The Coronado Islands, where the fish run biggest

The real maps are built from NOAA depth data for Southern California.

Is it multiplayer?

Yes. Everyone fishing the same map shares the same ocean, so friends see each other’s fish and boats, and up to four can ride along on a sportfisher. There’s a leaderboard for the heaviest fish.

Privacy

Paddy Hopper is a free hobby game made by a dad in San Diego County for his kids and their friends. Questions or suggestions: feedback@paddyhopper.com.

What the game saves

• Your nickname and color, your saved fish and boats, your heaviest fish and a few settings (junior mode, sound, up/down).
• Your spot in the water while you play, so other players can see you. It disappears when you leave.
• Leaderboard entries: nickname, fish and weight.
• A random sign-in number for each device, made by the game’s database so it can tell devices apart.
• Radio clips, if you use the boat radio. Everyone in the game hears them, and they’re deleted within about a minute.

What it doesn’t do

• No email, real name or birthday is asked for. Please use a nickname, not your real name.
• Nothing is sold or shared.

Your fishing code

Each player gets a game-made fishing code, like KELP-TUNA-482. It’s kept on the devices where you’ve used it and saved online only in scrambled form. Anyone with the code can play as that player, so keep it in the family. In the game, Pause → My fishing code shows it, and from there you can forget it on a device or delete the player for good.

Who runs things

The site is hosted by Netlify, and saves and multiplayer run on Google Firebase. If you’ve lost a code or want a player deleted, email feedback@paddyhopper.com.

For parents

Players can’t hurt each other, and there’s no text chat. The boat radio is open to everyone playing, and it can be switched off on a device in Pause → Radio. Nicknames are filtered, and bad ones can be removed. If anything seems off, please write to feedback@paddyhopper.com.