Has the king really returned?
A look at the big line of sport fishing boats lined up a few hundred feet offshore from Albion to Westport would indicate a banner season of catching king (Chinook) salmon is underway. Stopping at the docks in Noyo Harbor gives mostly the same impression. Fisherman Ken Fennell says this is the best year he has seen for the king.
“Not just in the number of fish but the size of the fish. We are getting much bigger fish this year,” said Fennell.
Rowin Breaux went fishing for the first time this year. Each trip he caught a salmon, a bigger fish each of three times. Similar happy reports have been found during much of July.
Among those watching the fish coming in was Joe Caito, who has seen decades of disappointed and delighted fishermen. Caito said choppy weather during open seasons to the south made fishing difficult and may have resulted in more boats in Fort Bragg this July. Yes, the fishing is good this year. Yes, there are more sport boats than ever out there.
“I think there may have been more fish last year,” Caito said.
King rules
The silver (Coho) salmon helped power a Noyo Harbor-based economy for most of the 20th century. From the 1980s on, the Coho vanished to the point of becoming a threatened/endangered species while the king salmon became the staple of fishing. A slow decline in king salmon numbers began in the 1980s. From 2005-2009 king salmon numbers in first the Klamath and then the Sacramento River system suffered unexpected catastrophic crashes.
The king salmon is the biggest of all salmon. It migrates primarily up big rivers, like the Sacramento and Columbia. The silver salmon migrates up smaller rivers, like Pudding Creek, the Noyo and even Big River. Both kinds of salmon are found to some degree on most all Northern California streams and rivers.
What does the science say about the often-heralded return of happy salmon fishing days? The official science over the past decade has often been less accurate than anecdotal information from happy fishermen. Science failed to predict or explain the big crashes of the 2008 timeframe on the Sacramento.
Numbers often wrong
Over the past decade the numbers of fall run Sacramento River Chinook salmon predicted to return by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) have been overestimated, sometimes wildly so. Those numbers are used to determine the timing of fishing seasons and how many fish commercial and sports fishers are allowed to take.
The PFMC Salmon Technical Team has created an index to estimate the abundance of Sacramento River fall-run Chinook salmon, which is the sum of 1) the estimated ocean fishery harvest south of the Oregon border, 2) the recreational harvest in Central Valley rivers, and 3) the estimated adult spawner escapement from three years prior.
That scientific formula has been striking out as predictably Casey at the Bat.
Since 2003 the actual salmon returns have been far lower than the forecast almost every year. In 2010 the preseason forecast was over one and a half times the actual post-season value, and in 2009 the preseason forecast was over three times the actual post-season value.
“Prior to 2013, the [preseason official forecast] had been frequently over-estimated, prompting an investigation into alternative models and data that could be used to improve forecast accuracy. The analysis evaluated the forecast performance of a wide range of models and data sources and compared performance of these alternative approaches to the conventional forecast model. The results suggested that there was scope for modest improvements in salmon forecast performance, leading the PFMC to recommend a new forecasting approach for use ? for 2014 and beyond,” PFMC documents from this year state.
The PFMC has added a logarithm to its method of estimating salmon returns based on the number of early returners (called jacks) the year before.
“The new approach continues to use jack escapement estimates to predict the returns, but uses a wider range of data and accounts for autocorrelation in model errors. ? This means that if the previous year prediction was larger than the [actual estimated returns], the next forecast is adjusted downward to account for that error,” PCFMC documents state.
The downward adjusted forecast this year is for 634,650 fall-run chinook salmon to return to the Sacramento River. If the prediction does indeed come true, it would be a recent record.
Plummeting salmon numbers, first on the Klamath River and then on the Sacramento River, caused salmon fishing seaons to be greatly curtailed or canceled between 2006-2009.
Numbers improving
Returns have been getting bigger every year since the great salmon crashes of the first decade of the 2000s.
While the return of Sacramento River salmon from near oblivion is often credited to a program where fish are trucked from the hatchery around the too warm, polluted and now dangerous river directly to the Delta, fish numbers are up everywhere.
“The news is generally good for ocean salmon seasons this year,” said Council Chair Dorothy Lowman. “Most of the key salmon stocks are strong up and down the coast.”
Two strong seasons in a row don”t yet equal the numbers from the early 1980s and before, but hopes are that the Chinook (king) salmon will at least stay stable and that the Coho (silver) salmon will recover enough to come off the endangered species list. Coho salmon returns for California aren”t estimated because no fishing season is possible while the fish is listed as a threatened or endangered species.
Unfortunately for the good news theory, the drought in California this year is expected to be bad news for salmon when the fish now migrating to sea come back in three years.
“While we have heard a lot about the negative effects of the drought in California on juvenile salmon migrating to the ocean, the older salmon that have been in ocean for the past few years seem to be enjoying excellent growing conditions,” said Council Executive Director Donald McIsaac.
Fishing seasons
• Fort Bragg area sport fishing season is April 5 to Nov. 9, 2014. Daily bag limit: 2 salmon of any species except coho. Minimum size limit: 20 inches total length. The Fort Bragg fishing area runs from Point Arena north to a place on Cape Mendocino called Horse Mountain.
• Fort Bragg area commercial fishing season: June 19-30; July 15 – Aug. 29; Sept. 1-30; Minimum size limit: 27 inches total length. During September, all fish caught in the area must be landed north of Point Arena. When quotas are in effect, all fish caught in the area must be landed south of Horse Mountain.
