John Gebers, owner of Noyo Fishing Center, was exchanging stories with local fishermen John Innes and Jim Martin on a sunny Tuesday mid-morning this week when this reporter dropped by the Noyo Harbor store.
Everybody is talking about widespread enthusiasm that the salmon will really be back this year, and the three were no exception.
Are there any facts this reporter could quote?
“You”ve noticed that facts are one thing often missing from the discussion on the Internet,” laughed Martin.
The Coastside Fishing Club discussion boards are a favorite spot for anglers, fishing business owners and even scientists.
“Like anytime you get fishermen going, there are a lot of stories to be taken with a grain of salt,” said Martin.
Gebers store has almost everything one would expect, from flashy lures with bug eyes to more than a dozen types of T-shirts celebrating Noyo Harbor. There is a mounted 50-pound salmon caught by Carolyn Thompson aboard the Rumblefish in 2002.
There is an even more mind boggling 11-inch abalone in a case that also includes chrome reels and abalone earrings. What”s been missing begins with fish and fishermen; especially those who travel to Fort Bragg for the delight of catching the hard fighting pink king salmon of the ocean. That led Gebers to lay off his three employees when the crisis began about three years ago. He now mans the store himself, depending on his wife”s job and benefits through the hard times.
So he”s eager for the rumors of the big salmon return of 2011 to come true, although he”s cautious.
“Here, when we get fishermen visiting, often the wife will stay and shop while he goes out fishing. It”s not just me but the whole town that benefits,” said Gebers.
There is some science to indicate the best salmon run in the past four years is headed this way, perhaps the best of the new millennium. One of those indicators was a healthy crop of “jacks” that returned in 2010.
Every class of salmon hatchlings returns in bulk after three years of ocean adventures. But there are some precocious class members, like the rare kid who graduates high school in the tenth grade, that come back early. In 2010 a whopping 27,500 of these jacks returned, creating big hopes for 2011.
Those returns are seen as a scientific precursor to what the “senior” class will look like and the numbers are good.
“We will have a good year, but not one like the great fishing years of the 1990s,” said Martin.
Headlines this week about king salmon have declared both doom and revival of the species that Fort Bragg fishermen once depended on.
On one hand, the hopeful are pointing toward the best fishing season of the millennium. On the other, a new report declares that problems in the Bay and Delta may be so bad that salmon can”t be saved in the long term.
“The Delta gets worse and worse every year,” said Innes, who worked in and around the Delta for decades before retiring to the Coast.
“That”s a big part of the problem.”
Last year, the California commercial salmon industry got a Chinook salmon season that lasted eight days, which was better than the no-season of the previous two years.
Spawning fish in the Sacramento River last year barely met a key federal target for fishery health, the first time since 2006.
Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), which sets fishing regulations in the ocean, has a goal of 122,000 to 180,000 fall-run salmon returning to spawn each year.
Last year, it expected about 180,000 fish to return to the Sacramento River and its tributaries, which would have meant a great fishing season locally. Instead, the season was rated poor to fair. Only 125,300 adults fall Chinook returned, along with the 27,500 jacks. But it was much better than 2009, when the fall run was a paltry 39,500 and all fishing was closed.
The Sacramento River Chinook had fed California”s commercial salmon industry since the 1960s, until the run, long thought to be invulnerable nearly disappeared in years 2007-2009, surprising and sobering environmentalists, fishermen and even farm groups.
In the first half of the 20th century, Fort Bragg fishermen thrived on coho salmon, whose decline to endangered species status has largely been blamed on logging-caused erosion in coastal rivers. Nobody is now predicting the return of a coho fishery at any point.
A Department of Fish and Game March 1 meeting in Santa Rosa will lay out the latest numbers and prospects for the 2011-fishing season when public comments will be taken.
The Santa Rosa meeting is scheduled to be from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Sonoma County Water Agency, 404 Aviation Blvd. Input from that meeting will be presented to the quasi-federal PFMC, which will meet March 5-10 to consider the science and perhaps set the seasons.
Martin said California”s DFG may ask for an April 2 emergency opener of the recreational fishing season. Normally, the seasons have opened automatically on Feb. 15 in Fort Bragg, even during the first two bad years. But that practice was changed as the Sacramento system decline continued to worsen, Martin said.
The PFMC will host a series of meetings in Washington, Oregon and California before settling on tentative fishing regulations for the year April 12 in San Mateo.
At the same time, a new plan for fixing the Bay-Delta system is being called an obituary for salmon and salmon fishing.
“Damage to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is so extensive that billions of dollars in restoration efforts may not save smelt and salmon from extinction, according to the first draft of a long-range plan to manage the West Coast”s most important estuary,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The 52-page report never actually condemns salmon to extinction, but is pessimistic to the point of hyperbole that the Delta”s extensive problems and their often contradictory solutions can be resolved in a political environment where unlimited growth, more levees, safer levees, flood control and environmental protection can all be accomplished painlessly.
“California state government cannot guarantee adequate rain or snow every year to provide reliable Delta watershed water supplies to meet all existing and projected water demands at affordable prices.” the report states.
Big, dramatic efforts to fix the Delta have been going on since 1990, when then President Clinton and Gov. Pete Wilson administrations announced. “the water wars were over” in a dramatic press conference covered by the national television media.
This latest series of meetings on fixing the delta is planned for spring, summer and fall 2011 with a final action plan due in January 2012.
Step one is the 52-page study released this week, the first of seven drafts due this year from a seven-member panel by next January. The draft report worries that unless the state can change course, not only are salmon imperiled but also Bay Area drinking water crises and earthquake-flooding catastrophes loom if the status quo continues.
The council encourages written public comments to be submitted to deltaplancomment@deltacouncil.ca.gov. All council meetings are public and simulcast on the council website at www.deltacouncil.ca.gov.
Salmon estimates for 2011 are expected to be posted next week, but the PFMC website has an entire history of salmon seasons and the recent problems at;
http://www.pcouncil.org/resources/archives/salmon/
Email Frank Hartzell at frankhartzell@gmail.com.
