Spawning fish in the state’s most economically valuable salmon run last year met, barely, a key target for the first time since 2006. The number of salmon in rivers reached its highest point since 2004, a sign that the adult fish set to return from the ocean this year may have rebounded markedly.
Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, said that it looks like this is going to be probably not in a normal season but back to closer to normal. He added that there is a reason to be cautiously optimistic.
Tracy said that the number of adolescent fish was encouraging but regulators have yet to determine whether restrictions will be needed to protect salmon expected to spawn in the Klamath River this year. Last year, the industry was allowed to fish for eight days. The story was essentially the same for recreational anglers –a full closures in 2008 and 2009, and very limited fishing in 2010, though they were allowed to go after another, smaller run in the late fall.
The council, which sets fishing regulations in the ocean, has a goal of 122,000 to 180,000 fall-run salmon returning to spawn each year. Last year, it expected about 180,000 fish to return to the Sacramento River and its tributaries. Last year’s spawning fish faced almost no pressure from anglers, and they were a generation that benefited from swimming out of San Francisco Bay as babies in 2008, a year in which temperature and food conditions in the ocean have been described as the best in decades.
Gorelnik and Grader said this year’s fish also were helped by new regulations on state water managers and the increased acclimating baby fish trucked to San Francisco Bay from hatcheries.
