Interesting article in IJ

Alastair Bland’s Fish Wrap: Early halibut sightings could mean something’s amiss in ecosystem


POSTED: 03/12/15, 4:30 PM PDT | 0 COMMENTS


Last Wednesday, Jared Davis, deckhand of the Salty Lady party boat, was motoring the boat from its winter berth in Half Moon Bay to Sausalito when he came across the densest school of anchovies he had perhaps ever seen. The fish were seething at the surface, attacked from below by torpedoing murres and dive-bombed from above by pelicans. Davis joined in the fray, removing several scoops of anchovies from the water and filling his live bait wells as easily as if he was loading up at the Fisherman’s Wharf morning bait station.

Gifted with a surprise batch of live bait, Davis took a load of eight anglers fishing at Paradise, just off the shore from Larkspur, the next day. They were hoping for striped bass but got something better — eight halibut for six people. The next day he returned with 10 people and scored seven halibut and three striped bass. Fish topped out at about 12 pounds.

And so it seems that halibut are moving through the Golden Gate weeks earlier than we might expect. Halibut fishing usually begins to get good in April, and though the early showing could mean a good season in the weeks ahead, it also may indicate something amiss in the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem.

Davis speculates the halibut have entered the bay earlier than usual because the lack of freshwater flowing into the estuary has mimicked the water chemistry of spring and summer.

“So, in my humble opinion, it may not really be a great thing,” he said.

STRIPED BASS

On the striped bass front, no news is good news. That’s because the outstanding fishing of the past few weeks continues. The fishing remains the best Loch Lomond Bait Shop owner Keith Fraser has seen in 20 years — except, he points out as a big disclaimer, that the fish are much smaller now than in the 1990s.

“There are bass all over the place,” Fraser said. “They’re in our harbor, in the canal, across the bay — just everywhere. It’s very, very good fishing.”

He says trolling at the top of the tide is producing the most fish, though just one bass in four is a legal 18-inch-or-larger specimen.

“On the anchor, people are getting maybe one keeper in three fish, and, drift fishing, almost all the stripers are keepers,” Fraser said. The best action, he notes, is in the Pumphouse area, though the fish are scattered widely and it might pay to keep a lure behind the boat as you move from one spot to the next.





Salmon season opens on April 4, and updated abundance forecasts call for roughly the same number of fish in the sea as we had last year — and 2014 was a good year for many fishermen. That’s the good news. Now, the grim reality of the drought we’re facing is the bad news. With Nature’s faucet essentially turned off, the effects of the drought are starting to surface and will affect us all, and fish could be the first victims.

The California salmon fishery and the ecosystem that supports it are in crisis right now. In 2013 and 2014, salmon spawning in the Sacramento River system experienced hostile conditions of low, warm water that obliterated many or most fertilized eggs in the rivers’ gravel beds. Unless salmon produced in hatcheries and released into the bay experience exceptionally high survival, we can count on seeing gaping holes in the population beginning next year.

With the chances of a dry March increasing every day, the odds that the 2015 spawn will fail are looking high. Short of rain, perhaps the only action that can thwart a disaster is a conservative reservoir management approach by state and federal agencies that plans ahead for fishery abundance. This is not usually their priority in business, however.

What can you do about it? You could support groups like the Golden Gate Salmon Association and California Trout, which are collaborating with government agencies to restore and improve fish habitat in the Central Valley at a time when salmon and steelhead need assistance like never before.

Alastair Bland is a Bay Area fisherman. Send him stories, photos or video to [email protected] or call the IJ sports desk at 382-7206. Check out his blog at http://blogs.marinij.com/fishing_in_marin/

No rain, continued diversion and there's no fresh water running out the gate.  We've had years like this before where the halibut get slammed. 

I also remember there being a ton of short halibut (ping pong paddle size) throughout the season and the next few years were good fishing. 

It's a good thing there's a salmon and cod season this year to help relieve some of the pressure. 

Good read. And sad.

I've also been hearing that surf fishermen along the SF/San Mateo coastline are catching tons of 5-8" striped bass. This is VERY unusual. Those fish should be in the river/delta system.

Something is definitely up...