Good news, bad new

Crossed over from coastside:

Yesterday the PFMC decided to put in season adjustments for rockfish on the calendar for April. The California delegation went so far as to suggest unless something comes up that there will be an adjustment. This is exactly what we wanted to happen.

We are still a long way from getting something close to what we want, but it seems like the momentum is now going our way.

I want to thank the coalition and all the Coastsiders that sent letters this really helped, along with our Coastside rockfish survey by Dan Wolford.

Remember this was just the first battle, so we will keep working hard.

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Thanks for your club support. Our fishery is too important not to care.

Bob Franko


Probably in-season changes will add some time to the bottomfish season and/or change sizes, limits, ect, in a favorable direction, based on new catch estimates showing smaller catches than previous methods were showing.

BUT, at the same time, the klamath salmon fiasco may result in a salmon closure for a couple weeks in june down here.  If that happens to the a couple weeks when they're running in our stomping grounds, kayakers could seriously be screwed by this.  There's some monkey buisness going on with the in-river quotas in the klamath, and for every fish caught there, the ocean catch must be reduced by 600.

So the in season adjust currently proposed by coastside is adding a month to either end of the season. So for Norcal district that would make the season June-December.

They're appearantly asking for a range of changes, including maybe running the depth out to 180'.  That'd get alot of party boats, ect, off our turf. If they close salmon in june, they'd hopefully open bottomfish to compensate.

Close Salmon in June?.....No more Linda Mar....did not get going until July...

Ken Kickfish

I think if the salmon season is closed early that will have a pretty big impact on the groundfish season. If people can't fish for salmon they are going to hit groundfish pretty hard and heavy.  

Not that bad, they're looking at closing it for a couple WEEKS in june, not for the rest of the year after june.  Appearantly they think that the catch can be reduced by the 1-200k fish they need by closing during that period in the peak season.  (BTW, there isn't room up the sacramento for those 200k fish, so they're going to die and rot w/o spawning, less the 600-1000 that are supposed to make it to the klamath to be caught there.)

Even if the fish do only die and rot, they'll provide a lot of valuable nutrients to the river ecosystem. Just think-- what is washed by the rains out of the soil and downstream, is returned back upstream by salmon and steelhead. (There have been a lot of studies the last few years pointing out how valuable those nutrients are; even to the trees and plants along the streams. In Alaska scientists have discovered that the bears and other animals help distribute those nutrients by dragging fish far from the streams. A quarter mile from the stream, up to 50% of the nitrogen was traced to the fish.)

BTW-- my favorite hatch of the year (I usually fly fish in the river) is when the salmon spawn-- the native trout  really key into it.

Pisco is right-About 85% of the body mass of an age 0+ salmon is derived from the carcass of its parents.  Ever wonder why salmon die after spawning??? Mother nature is amazing.

Wasn't this supposed to be one of the best salmon years ever?

What would the reason for closure be?  Terminal Liberalism?

MolBasser

Ever wonder why salmon die after spawning??? Mother nature is amazing.

The male contributes essentially no mass to the young.  Death occurs mainly due to the physical rigors of getting to the spawning ground.

MolBasser

The reason for the partial closure is do to Klamath river stocks looking rather pitiful. While Delta/Sac stocks are at great levels a number of Klamath bound fish come through this area. The thinking is a partial closure will help some of that dwindling population make it further up the coast.

Thanks for that explanation.

MolBasser

No worries man, fishery management issues are my current addicition...

Cool,

So what are the current rules for rockfish?  When can I start to target reds and lings?  Did the ling length limit come down this year?

MolBasser

Current confirmed season for groundfish species (rock/cabezon/greenling aka RCG complex) is July-Nov. Minimum length for lings is now 24" with a 2 fish limit

Due to some great science and political pressure it looks like there is a good chance to get that extended to June-December. There is also a bunch of other proposed changes including moving depth restrictions out to 180 feet. The season change is on the docet for April so more will be known then.

Here is the link to the DFG Regs:

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/bfregs2005.html

We are in the "North-Central Management Area"