Representatives from the Pacific Fisheries Management Council and various state agencies were in Eureka last week to hear North Coast fishermen lobby for the ocean salmon fishing season options they favor.
The council is considering various alternatives for sport and commercial fishing seasons, including the seasons for the Horse Mountain to Point Arena section, which includes Shelter Cove.
The three commercial fishing season alternatives for that section have a range of start dates in May and extend to the end of September, with periodic closures. Sport fishing options all have April 6 start dates and various end dates in September.
In the Klamath Management Zone (KMZ) from Horse Mountain to the Oregon border, commercial fishermen are backing the alternative that will allow fishing from May to September for the first time in years, with monthly quotas ranging from 1,500 to 6,000 fish.
Two additional KMZ commercial season options are for September only. Late season fishing isn’t preferred by fishermen and representatives from the Humboldt Fishermen’s Marketing Association and the Del Norte Fishermen’s Marketing Association joined others in asking for approval of the option that allows fishing throughout the summer.
In an interview after the hearing at Eureka’s Red Lion Inn hotel, Aaron Newman, the president of the Humboldt Fishermen’s Marketing Association and the Northern California trollers’ rep on the council’s Salmon Advisory Subpanel, said the subpanel worked to “develop three options that are very good in comparison to the previous years.”
Newman said what’s approved for each section won’t necessarily be what’s outlined in each of the options. In balancing the seasons for each area, the council and its advisory panels may combine aspects of all of them to meet overall criteria.
The factors that constrain fishing harvests are the winter Chinook salmon run on the Sacramento River, which was less than robust this year, and a 16 percent harvest rate cap on four-year-old Klamath fall Chinook, which are used as a surrogate for difficult-to-survey California Coastal Chinook.
The forecast numbers for this year’s fall Chinook runs are 834,000 fish for the Sacramento River, slightly higher than last year’s, and 727,000 for the Klamath run, less than half of last year’s famous 1.6 million forecast but still significantly surpassing the scant runs of previous years.
The council meets in Portland from April 5 to April 11 to make the final calls on season spans and quotas.
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