Pelagic fish and reef associated fish both underpin the economic and food security of Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) nations. Despite this region experiencing strong ENSO impacts, we still lack a detailed understanding of how this regional climate phenomena affects the distribution, and thus availability, of fished species. Here, we filtered out the most intense year of each multi-year El Niño and La Niña event from 1957 to 2019 and then calculated how each functional group’s catch, per EEZ, changed in response to climate transitions. This allowed us to explore the potential ENSO-induced longitudinal shifts in catch and whether fishers can switch their fishing effort to target the most abundant type of fish. We found that pelagic fish shifted their distribution between western and eastern WCPO with the warm pool, but reef fish did not. Also, we found that fishers did not switch their fishing target from pelagic to reef fish to compensate the catch change when the pelagic fish shifted away. Our results show that ENSO can significantly impact the availability of pelagic species that poses the capacity to move. Importantly, we highlight opportunities for fishers to adapt their practices to improve catches in an increasingly volatile climate.