North Bay Bohemian

Page 9

“Official Newspaper of West California�

news for Sonoma, Marin & Napa Counties

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F0;: >= F0C4A. Back in the early aughts, it was well-nigh possible. My, what a difference seven short years have made!

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Chinook fishing to be allowed as the fish prepare to breed. Who thinks this stuff up? By Alastair Bland

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s the state’s commercial fishermen and sport anglers look at another cancelled season for Chinook salmon, the California Fish and Game Commission has greenlighted a short recreational season in the Sacramento River. Scheduled to begin in mid-November, the season will allow anglers one Chinook salmon per day between the Red Bluff Diversion Dam and Knights Landing, just miles from their spawning grounds. As might be expected, not all ocean fishermen are pleased with the decision, though Department of Fish and Game (DFG) biologists assure that no more than 2,000 late-fall run Chinooks, a healthy race of salmon, will be harvested during the six-

week season, which will last from Nov. 16 to Dec. 31. The season, explains DFG biologist Scott Barrow, has been carefully slotted to preclude any capture of individuals from struggling salmon runs, namely the winterrun Chinook, an endangered species that spawn in the Sacramento between January and March, and the fall-run Chinook, which spawn from August through October. The fall-run Sacramento Chinook was until recently the mainstay of the West Coast’s ocean fishery but is now teetering at roughly 10 percent of its population level in 2002, when more than 800,000 fallrun fish returned to spawn. Last year, only 66,000 made the migration up the Sac, and officials estimate that just over 122,000 will return this fall. The late-fall-run Chinook, by contrast, has numbered between

10,000 and 20,000 fish for decades and is considered stable.

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n late 2008, the state allowed a similar Sacramento River salmon season. From Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, anglers caught 1,732 Chinook, according to DFG biologists who carefully monitored the fishing. The catch included several dozen individuals that might have been fall-run fish, according to Barrow. This year, the season will be delayed two weeks with the hope that all fall-run Chinook will have spawned and died before the opening day. “Delaying the season should alleviate that incidental fall run catch,� predicts Dan Wolford, who nonetheless opposes the inriver season. Wolford is the science director of the Coastside Fishing Club & '

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THE BOHEMIAN

06.03.09-06.09.09

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