Understanding how fish communities respond to rising water temperatures due to global warming is crucial for seafood security and ecosystem conservation. Previous studies have reported the northward migration of low-latitude fish species and a reduction in fish body size in response to increasing temperatures. However, threshold temperatures at which the abundance of individual fish species increases or decreases, as well as the relationship between these thresholds, species distributions, and body sizes, remain unclear. In this study, we analyzed long-term fish community data collected at Maizuru Bay in Kyoto, Japan to investigate the relationships between water temperature and fish species abundance. Water temperature and fish abundance have been monitored twice a month for over 20 years (2002 to 2024), resulting in 540 data points on 113 fish species and water temperature. We applied two nonlinear time-series analyses: Unified Information-Theoretic Causality (UIC) to detect causal relationships between temperature and species abundance, and Multiview Distance Regularized S-map (MDR S-map) to quantify the effect of temperature on species abundance. Additionally, we examined the correlations between the effect of temperature and species' distribution centers (i.e., latitude) and body sizes. Our results suggest that fish species can be classified into three types based on species’ responses to temperature changes: (1) low-temperature adapted species, which are negatively affected by rising temperatures and absent above a certain temperature threshold; (2) high-temperature adapted species, which are positively affected by rising temperatures and absent below a certain temperature threshold, and (3) species observed across a wide range of temperatures. We also found negative correlations between the effect of temperature and the distribution latitude of fish species; fish species whose distribution latitudes are located further north tend to experience more negative effects from rising temperatures. Notably, from 2002 to 2013, negative correlations between the effect of temperature and distribution latitude were mainly observed from spring to fall, whereas since 2014, negative correlations have also been frequently observed in winter. These findings suggest that species that previously remained unaffected in winter may now be experiencing population changes due to rising water temperatures. Further research is needed to determine whether similar trends occur in other regions to improve predictions and management of ecosystem responses to rising temperatures.