Sac River Salmon Fishing Forecast

SACRAMENTO — Nearly a million salmon are returning up the Sacramento River, luring eager fishermen as the fishing season began Saturday.
"It's a great river for salmon and this is supposed to be a record year," said Mike Cottrell of Marysville, fishing with his wife and another couple among a dozen boats near the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers Saturday morning. "We've seen a lot of guys taking them ... probably a dozen since we went out about daybreak."

Environmental groups hailed the record return as a conservation success story, while fisheries managers said high water and prime ocean conditions also contributed.

They all contrast it with the troubled Klamath River to the north. A small projected salmon return there is sharply limiting commercial salmon fishing in the ocean because fishermen can't distinguish between the plentiful Sacramento and the scarce Klamath salmon.

"We've taken a huge economic loss because of the (commercial ocean fisheries) closure. The fishermen aren't happy about it, but they understand. Because they can't take fish, (salmon) are coming back to the Sacramento by the carload," said Bill Kier, a private fisheries scientist who works closely with commercial fishermen.

"For the Sacramento River fishermen, it should be phenomenal," said Allen Grover, a California Department of Fish and Game senior fisheries biologist who manages ocean salmon fisheries.

An estimated 1.7 million fall run Sacramento River salmon are in the ocean, and more than 900,000 are projected to fight their way back up through San Francisco Bay over the next few months toward the spawning grounds they left four years ago.

The projections are double last year's returns, and more than 50 percent higher than any return in recent years. Returns have been strong over the last five years, but this should break modern records, Grover said.

They include both natural and hatchery raised fish. Indeed, one reason for the strong return is the large number of hatchery fish dumped into the Sacramento, as well as favorable ocean and river conditions, Grover said.

Spurred by a 1988 Endangered Species Act lawsuit, the federal government has poured more than $200 million into protecting the salmon and cleaning up the Sacramento River.

That

 
 
 
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includes an $80 million temperature control device on Shasta Dam, fish screens over irrigation intakes, cleaning up heavily polluting Iron Mountain Mine near Redding, and opening the Red Bluff irrigation diversion dam that blocked salmon migration.
Cold water out of Shasta Dam now nurtures the salmon, in contrast with the Klamath River that flows from south-central Oregon.

"The headwaters of the Sacramento isn't in a desert where the temperature gets to 110 degrees," Grover said.

Low flows on the Klamath constrict salmon returns there as fishermen fight farmers for scarce water, meaning warmer water and the potential for the spread of disease like that blamed for a record fish kill nearly three years ago.

Fishermen and the Pacific Legal Foundation, which defends private property rights, are suing in Oregon federal court over the chinook salmon restrictions, while timber, cattle and other business interests are suing California over the state's protections for coho salmon. Both suits say the salmon protections unfairly harm commercial interests.


Success with the Sacramento salmon comes as environmental groups complain Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endangered fish restoration programs with budget cuts this week.

He vetoed $3 million for trout hatcheries, money that would have helped ease a $9 million maintenance backlog. Though the trout hatcheries have the same $8.6 million state funding as last year, they're losing $1.2 million in federal sport fishing tax money that may force closures or realignment, said Fish and Game spokesman Mike Wintemute. A decision is expected next month, after a series of hearings on the hatcheries' future.

Schwarzenegger also cut in half an $8 million allocation for salmon and steelhead habitat restoration. But Wintemute said the remaining $4 million is enough to draw the entire available $12 million in federal matching money. The grants go to local groups that do the work.


Go get em,



Mike D