This is just one post in the Salmon Category

It’s official: Salmon fishing season is a bust

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 10, 2008 at 6:28 am

From Stockton’s Record:

Wildlife regulators on Friday canceled most of the salmon fishing season in the Central Valley, a potential $20 million hit for the state’s already struggling economy. The unprecedented restrictions make it illegal to fish for salmon with one exception: a stretch of the Sacramento River from north of Woodland to Red Bluff, and only in November and December. Even then, limits will be strict: just one fish per person per day. A normal season would see up to six months of fishing with two fish per day.

“This is going to be a blow,” said Stockton fisherman David Scatena. “There are a lot of people that are going to be very disappointed.”

Friday’s action by the California Fish and Game Commission is just the latest blow for fishermen; federal regulators have already shut down commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the ocean. While relatively few salmon swim through Stockton on their way up the San Joaquin River to spawn, many fishermen from this area travel to the Sacramento River or its tributaries, including the Mokelumne River, each fall in the hope of landing a chinook or two.

In better years, there has also been a solid salmon fishery in the north and central Delta, around Rio Vista on the Sacramento River, Scatena said. He guesses that marinas and restaurants in the area will suffer this fall.

Read more from Stockton’s Record by clicking here.

From Dan Bacher over at IndyBay.org:

“The Department proposed and recommended this option, a hybrid of the originally proposed Options 2 and 3, because of concerns about impacts to spring chinook salmon,” said Steve Martarano, Department of Fish and Game (DFG) spokesman. “This option will provide maximum protection to Sacramento River fall chinook in the Central Valley while providing very limited access to late-fall chinook.”

Anglers will be able to fish for rainbow trout, steelhead, shad, sturgeon, striped bass, catfish, black bass and other species on the Sacramento River and its tributaries, according to Neil Manji, branch chief of the inland fisheries division of the DFG. The closure of salmon fishing on Central Valley rivers will cause an estimated loss of over $20 million to the state’s economy.

This river closure follows the closure of all recreational and commercial fishing on the ocean in California and most of Oregon in April by the federal regulatory body, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), and the state. The anticipated economic loss to California of the closure of the recreational ocean fishery will be around $167 million, while the economic loss of the commercial fishery will be approximately $63 million, according to DFG data.

The Klamath and Trinity rivers will be open to salmon fishing this year with the quota for recreational anglers over 20,000 fish. “If there is any silver lining to the dark cloud of the salmon closure, it will be the fishery on the Klamath and Trinity,” said Manji. The specific bag limits and other regulations for the Klamath system will be approved at the Fish and Game Commission on May 22-23.

Expect to see lots of anglers on the Klamath and Trinity this year, since this system will be the only one where you will be able to take river salmon, other than the limited late fall fishery on the Sacramento.