The fish egg is the early stage in the fish life history, which influences the recruitment of the fish population. There are internal relationships between the distribution of eggs and environmental factors. In recent years, influenced by climate change and global warming, the growth and breeding habits of the small yellow croaker () have changed. The spawning ground of the small yellow croaker has shifted. In addition, the range of the spawning ground of the small yellow croaker has extended to the open sea, and the distribution characteristics of temperature, salinity, and depth of spawning grounds have also greatly changed compared with that of the past. The goals of our study were to reveal the spatial and temporal distributional pattern of eggs of the small yellow croaker in Haizhou Bay and its adjacent waters, as well as determine the relationship between this distributional pattern and environmental variables. A two-stage GAM (two-stage Generalized Additive Model) is a flexible method for modeling zero-flatted data, which are typically found in the data collected from ichthyoplankton surveys. This method is to model the distribution of species in two steps, firstly modeling presence/absence data and secondly modeling density of presence observations. In this study, we conducted an ichthyoplankton survey of the small yellow croaker in Haizhou Bay and its adjacent waters during May in 2015, 2017, and 2018. Based on these data, the two-stage GAM between the distribution of small yellow croaker eggs and environmental factors was constructed. The results showed that the abundance of eggs of the small yellow croaker varied greatly among different years. The eggs were distributed in estuarine waters at depths of 10-20 m between 33.5°N and 34.5°N. Additionally, the temperature and salinity were important factors affecting eggs distribution of the small yellow croaker. The eggs were distributed in areas where the sea surface temperature was 17℃ and the sea surface salinity was between 29.5-30.5. Furthermore, the sea bottom temperature ranged from 16℃ to 18℃ and the sea bottom salinity was 29 in high-destiny distribution areas. In addition, the interannual variation in water temperature also affected the abundance of small yellow croaker eggs. The abundance of fish eggs was significantly higher in the years with higher water temperature. This research revealed changes in the distribution and interannual variation of yellow croaker eggs with respect to changes in environmental variables, and consequently could be valuable for understanding the supplementary mechanism of the small yellow croaker, conservation of spawning grounds (e.g., marine protected areas), and quantitative management of the small yellow croaker. Although the coastal waters of Haizhou Bay and adjacent regions were the focus of our study, the framework and results derived in this study could also be applied to other coastal marine ecosystems.