The daily catch of commercial sportfishing boats along the southern California coast are reported in the Los Angeles Times newspaper. Microfiche copies of the L.A. Times from 1959 to 1997 were searched and more than 14,000 daily reports were assembled and photocopied. These data, representing almost 400,000 catch reports for some 25 sportfishing landings were complied into a CD-ROM database that allows rapid retrieval of historical catch and angler effort data and the analysis of spatial and temporal trends.