Chris Rogers learns salmon, you should too! Get ready for the rush for 2 day salmon season that starts June 7!

Can you be one of the chosen 7000?

The Department of Fish and Wildlife will close the season at 7000 fish. That’s for the whole state. If anglers aren’t too skilled at catching king salmon and everybody together doesnt hit the 7000 fish mark, the season will reopen for another fish rush on July 5 and 6 and July 31 and Aug. 3. 

The Summer season closes Aug 3 or when that 7000th fish is caught, whichever comes first. Commercial fishing has been canceled for three years now.

This is early. The fish may not be out there yet. There  is pretty much no chance the quota will be hit this weekend but the scientists and the fishermen usually get salmon forecasts wrong. 

Water calmed down Friday and lots of people will be here this weekend to give the first, and possibly only, two-day recreational fishing season of summer 2025 a try.

Fort Bragg’s salmon season will open Saturday and close Sunday. It is only two days the season will be open for sure here, so expect a rush for the pink gold!

 But the big pink chinooks aren’t usually all that plentiful in early June. But you can bet a lot of people will try. Don’t die trying!  Stay out of the ocean if its like this.  Angry Mother Ocean is not to be trifled with. You might also catch a silver or Coho salmon out there too. But those are still protected because of the devastating impact legacy logging had on streams. 

So the Coho are the fish of our rivers and streams here in Mendocino. The Chinook are usually headed back to the Sacramento, Klamath and Eel River systems. 

The simple rule is the king is the biggest fish. Biggest fish are in the biggest rivers.  The silver is slightly smaller and lives in much smaller rivers, creeks and even dribbles that look like a fish could never swim up them.  Slightly smaller fish, smaller rivers. 

And if you catch a silver salmon and keep it, its a crime.  If you use the explanatory videos and other Google search results on how to tell the difference, you will probably end up arrested. Mos are wrong.

Coho salmon do not have a more pronounced hook in their nose.  That is a feature of all salmon once in rivers, but you won’t see it in the sea.

When you are on a boat the experienced anglers will show you.

The most reliable method for identifying coho is through examination of the lower mouth and gums. The gums at the base of the bottom teeth on a coho salmon are gray, whereas Chinook gums are all black. Another way to distinguish a coho from a Chinook is to rub a finger along the fin rays of the caudal (tail) fin. The fin rays on a coho will feel rough like the edge of a dime, whereas the fin rays on a Chinook are smooth. Fishing deeper and using bigger lures helps  you avoid the Coho.I was delighted to find out completely by accident how much our new Assemblyman has learned with the tutelage of local experts recently \While out in Jackson Forest, I happened upon our Assemblyman, Chris Rogers, getting a spectacular tour and hearing about the dramatic comeback that the Silver or Coho salmon has made, hosted by CalFire members and two restoration biologists. 

Rogers got his loafers dirty, peered in buckets and took the opportunity offered to hold tiny smolts and invited his staff members to come up and participate. We saw the old hatchery at the Egg Take Station off Highway 20. Chris went down into the bowels of the egg take, where salmon still swim through and are extensively studied. 

We watched the Screw trap and learned how it works. Ingeniously.. It looks like a cement mixer in the creek and we saw how it captures and conveys captured coho smolts. We saw how grant funds had created pools and spawning grounds by moving trees into streams like they would have been had people not “fished” them out. 

Rogers did not hold a press conference. He was the invited guest for the tour. I was NOT invited so, aware of the obvious inadvertent oversight, I invited myself along when I spotted them deep in the forest. I came over with a friendly wave and camera. I got a few nods. Nobody seemed surprised. Gee, i had hoped this ambush would be more fun!

Almost everyone on the tour recognized me and my ever-present massive camera.  I focused it on Kevin Conway, hoping to catch him grimacing or shaking his head at my improbable arrival out in the middle of the boreal forest. 

But he was stony-faced. It was as if there was nothing amiss about a Magic Johnson-sized 400-pound, 6’ 8” newsman emerging from the forest. (good news, I now weigh 350 and will never eat another jelly donut in my life). Rogers was also nonplussed by whoever I was and gave me a quick interview when he found out.  I have to like this guy after watching him there and at the town hall, where he gave better answers to salmon questions, having taken this tour. Its just not possible to get the full story of the Coho without hearing it first hand and putting the little fish in your hands.

This was one of the best nature tours I have ever taken, the other also being a Cal Fire tour that I was invited to two years ago. My late friend Keith Wyner and I went and we, and especially the towering and dimumnitive environmental figure Naomi Wagner. and members of the JAG (Jackson Advisor Group), fired questions at the “forest rangers” for hours, until it was dark and we had all overstayed that tour by more than an hour. Like much of my other best work, the full version story was rejected by all but the Anderson Valley Advertiser. You can find it here and here

And don’t gripe about the AVA’s paywall If you can’t afford a pocketful of change to subscribe to the AVA for a year, you shouldnt be reading. Subscribe to MendoFever and Redheaded Blackbelt and the Independent Coast observer too.  Don’t give the hedge fund any money is my advice and now they own the Press Democrat too.

Back to the tour with Chris Rogers, I participated in the grant process for these types of projects as a member of the Salmon Restoration Association board, which puts on the aforementioned World’s Largest Salmon BBQ.  We were an all-volunteer organization at the time and devoted all income to these types of causes. They still do, it’s not 100 percent volunteer anymore under the leadership of Michael Miller, an expert in Coho salmon. Originally, the SRA was run by fishermen and focused on bringing back the fish they could catch- the kings. Michael started steering the restoration efforts to the local, but still not fishable, silver salmon and now, as I understand it, that’s all they do. This was a needed and significant shift. Work to restore the salmon we destroyed right here. Seems responsible and appropriate to me, right? The way things are going, we may be back to fishing for silvers faster than the PHD prophets had predicted, but it won’t be soon. I heard about it on the tour. I have a bunch of videos of the tour and will write a longer story later, probably for the AVA too, so look for it here.

The ocean salmon season in Fort Bragg, CA (specifically the area from 40°10′ N latitude to Point Arena) is open for two days on June 7-8, 2025. Additionally, the season may continue on July 5-6, July 31-August 3, and August 25-31, depending on the harvest quota being met. The minimum size limit for Chinook salmon is 20 inches total length. 

Detailed Breakdown:

• Initial Open Dates: June 7-8, 2025.
• Potential Extension Dates: The season may continue on July 5-6, July 31-August 3, and August 25-31 if the 7,000 Chinook salmon summer harvest guideline is not attained.
• Minimum Size Limit: 20 inches total length.
• Harvest Guideline: A statewide limit of 7,000 Chinook salmon, meaning the season may be closed if the harvest is approaching this limit. 

The next season, as I said, is fall, when the fishing is best but also is restricted to similar numbers.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife has a full explanation of the rather confusing season openings and closings here. It comes with a handy dandy map and full, if dry, dry press release.

There is an excellent article in Cal Matters. Remember the thrill of the salmon returns in 2000 and 2001????  Problem solved! Everything worked.  Greater numbers than the 50s!  But those were hatchery salmon, genetically weak and inbred compared to wild. Rogers asked a lot of good questions about the end of hatcheries and how we would go forward. 

Everyone now recognizes that fishermen can’t live without the scientists and visa versa. Its been slow coming, the scholars recognizing their inferior knowledge in many area. The tough guys having to accept science findings that conflicts with what they see in the sea. But they are doing it. Really.

This was going to be a story much earlier on in mendocinocoast.news, but the iPhone erased on its own my entire audio recording program where I had names, spellings and half the audio and video. Hours of work and about 10 stories lost.  I had severe depression for 90 minutes. But it’s getting late for the story, so I’m doing this.  Technology hates me! LOL.  I tried to get the names with image search, but even then the distinctive-looking man from Rogers’ staff doesn’t come up for me. Never does, boo hoo me. 

If you know the names, send em!!!!. If you know how to recover lost video and audio on the iPhone, ill pay!  The iPhone deleted videos that were too long, even though they were there for a week after my forest encounter.

Enjoy the videos and photos and Ill do a longer story later.