For most of us those reports might as well be in Ancient Greek so translation into plain speak is helpful

One q I have is how much of this is about the water being sent south - significant amount of which is for sake of big corp farms(40%?) and bottlers vs what goes to the little family farms, drinking water and swimming pools etc

I’m a lifelong salmon guy and at this point feel pretty confident most of the wild runs will be killed off on our watch

Money being the big factor

eiboh that is likely the same guy, initials were B.B. out of Philo and had a place on the Mattole

The last time I talked with his son he was still alive but that’s a while back. One guy with a-frame kept a bunch of guys running boxes

Usal

Wolf Creek

Last time I went up with my bro it still required 4 wheel or you could get in there with a vw bug but was an interesting trek

About waders the same guy fishing the mouth of one of the rivers watched his friend get swept out either the Mattole or Klamath I forget which

After which I switched to wearing my wetsuit farmer johns and got the nickname rubberlegs

My friend’s dad had probably the last shore-based commercial fishing permit catching smelt up your way. He supplied all the west coast aquariums with food for their captive creatures. He had a fish camp on a remote beach up there in the 60-80s

There’s definitely an art to it

He did mostly night smelt runs and would watch the surf til he spotted them and shout the crew out of bed. One guy with an a-frame kept a bunch of young men running full fish boxes up the beach

I still have a throw net I need to put to use

Maybe down at Santa Cruz

Quote from: Sea-bree

Loleta Eric may chime in and remind us that having redundant radios and navigation instruments is a good practice as well.

 

I think having a whistle or other noisemaking device is a USCG regulation, isn't it?

Whistles are good

Just a smart thing to carry something loud

The point of the thread is more about how loud you need to be - the whistle I tossed in the trash was likely cg approved but in the situation at dux it was useless

Aside from motor noise the ocean itself can be pretty loud. Surfing/swimming Santa Cruz a few years back I kept thinking I heard screaming and finally swam toward it - turned out to be a guy with his arm dislocated floundering in the chaos on the inside. Only reason I probably heard it was I where I was swimming was inside and down a little from the lineup

The near miss I had at HMB I was shouting at the boat the whole time it was coming at me - I was paddling hard to get out of its way and it just kept turning toward me. If I hadn’t turned the tarpon parallel last second it would’ve clipped the back end and maybe sucked me under. Instead it ejected me and the kayak out to the side

I will hit up west marine and see what noisemakers they have

I dont carry any electronics and dont entirely agree about having a boatload of extra safety gear. Not saying any of it is bad but I went without any of it from ~ 1972 to sometime in the early 2000s

Thanks Clayman for that

Long view

Early 90s i was under the maybe mistaken impression the numbers were way down and backed off on what i took and cut my delivery list to a few close friends Reality was they were probably just hanging offshore

There have been some decent years since but nothing like the 70-80s when limits were 3 fish and maybe even 4

My impression since is it's a severely depleted situation and w the water management situation what it is what's your opinion about the season being opened?

Should just be illegal to keep any unclipped fish on assumption it’s wild

And disallow use of electronics

Will be mayhem if they do this

It’ll be a good day to beach launch for sure

The young person we worked with took a lot of damage