April 3, 2023 — State officials were supposed to take a conservative approach to approving salmon fishing season this year—and they did.

California’s fishing season had been scheduled to open April 1. Instead, as a result of low salmon projections, the season has been canceled.

Salmon provides more to the state than meets the eye.

“People don’t realize how much California’s a salmon state,” said Micheal Milstein, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokesman. “The Sacramento River is one of the big salmon rivers off the West Coast.”

As commercial and sport fishing comes to a pause this year, here’s what to know

Read the full article at PHYS.org

March 20, 2023 — Most summer mornings at first light, Jared Davis is a few miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, motoring his charter fishing boat Salty Lady over the Pacific Ocean. His eyes sweep the horizon, looking for diving birds, but mostly he watches the screen of his dashboard fish-finder for schools of anchovies — a sure sign that salmon are near. When the signs look good, he throttles down to trolling speed and tells his customers to let out their lines.

“Drop ‘em down!” Davis calls out the window. “Thirty to 40 feet!”

When the bite is steady, the Salty Lady may have 20 customers on board, each spending $200 for the chance to catch salmon. On the best days, fishing rods bend double the moment the lines go down, and a frenzy of action ensues, often amid a hundred or more other boats. Hooked Chinook thrash at the surface, and the deck becomes strewn with flopping fish.

Last year, California’s commercial and recreational fishing fleet, from the Central Coast to the Oregon border, landed about 300,000 salmon.

But this year, Davis and other salmon anglers won’t be fishing for salmon at all.

Read the full article at Times of San Diego

March 19, 2023 — Salmon season is closed for all of 2023. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife says the drought from recent years limited salmon’s ability to breed, and now there aren’t enough to open the commercial season. Salmon fishers say it is a massive financial burden.

“We have crews that depend on us, we have families to feed,” said Sarah Bates, a salmon fisher based in San Francisco. “I am not exactly sure what we are going to do this summer. It makes me nervous.”

Read the full article at ABC 7