Salmon Fishing in California Central Valley Rivers Closes

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Dan Bacher

The closure of the Sacramento and other Central Valley rivers to salmon fishing this year is now official.

The California Department of Fish and Game announced on July 2 that the 2008 recreational salmon fishing closures in the Central Valley would go into effect on Thursday, July 3, to protect the imperiled Sacramento River fall Chinook salmon.

The announcement was expected after the Fish and Game Commission voted to close all Central Valley rivers and streams to the retention of salmon with one exception on May 9. A federal regulatory body, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), in April closed all commercial and recreational salmon fishing on the California and Oregon coast for the first time in history. The ocean and river closures are the result of state and federal water policies that have resulted in the unprecedented collapse of Central Valley fall chinook salmon populations.

"No Chinook are allowed to be kept anywhere on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers or any of their tributaries, including the American and Feather rivers," according to the Department. "The only exception is from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 in the Sacramento River between the Red Bluff Diversion Dam and Knights Landing for a one-salmon bag and possession limit."

The Central Valley fall chinook population, the driver of West Coast salmon fisheries, has collapsed from over 800,000 fish in 2002 to less than 60,000 fish this year. A number of factors are believed to be responsible for the collapse, but none is more significant than massive increases in water exports out of the California Delta to subsidized agribusiness and southern California in recent years.

Other factors behind the collapse include poor ocean conditions, declining water quality in the California Delta resulting from agricultural waste water and municipal sewage discharges, and the absence of acclimation pens for hatchery salmon released into San Pablo Bay in 2005 and 2006.