MOSS LANDING — This summer, California salmon fishermen just can't seem to fill their coolers with the fat shining salmon of yesteryear.

"We're fishing but not catching," said Mike Ricketts, a commercial salmon fisherman out of Monterey.

A short season and restricted harvest areas have kept fishermen far away from the fish and chaffing under policies that amount to "look but don't touch." The season first opened for the month of May, yielding a bleak catch for Central Coast fishermen. The second opening, on July 26, has, so far, proved no better.

"I've only gone out four times since the second opening, and I haven't caught a keeper salmon yet," said fisherman Larry Grace, who runs the 27-foot commercial salmon boat, Willy Dee II, out of Moss Landing.

The slim season has some looking for solutions.

John Carlos Garza, a scientist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Santa Cruz, thinks genetic data could dispel the woes of both salmon and fishermen.

The problem isn't an overall shortage of fish. Sacramento river chinook salmon — the mainstay of the California fishery — are as plentiful as ever. But Klamath River salmon are suffering, and fishermen who can't direct their hooks to Sacramento salmon alone are paying the price.

Garza says genetic data could tell fishery managers where the Klamath fish are feeding and help fishermen avoid them without curtailing the catch of other salmon.

That could be a boon for fishermen, who are facing a commercial salmon season this year that is a full two months shorter than usual. More than 400 miles of the most fruitful fishing coast are off-limits because Klamath salmon may be lurking there. Where they can put out their lines, fishermen are limited to catching 75 fish per week, less than half of a good week's catch in prior years.

"Generally the openings have been where the fish aren't," explained Zeke Grader, the director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

California and Oregon governors estimate that coastal communities will lose more than $80 million in fishing-related business. Worse still, fishermen worry that they'll lose the infrastructure of fish markets and tackle stores that support their way of life.

"Pretty soon you'll have a ghost town on the wharf," Ricketts said. "You'll have new restaurants, but what will they be serving?"

Salmon breed in fresh-water rivers, making them susceptible to water diversions, dams and drought. After a few months, the young fish make their way out to the ocean and mingle with salmon from other streams as they follow rich ocean currents in pursuit of food. Three to five years later, the salmon return to their native streams to spawn and die.

Since September 2002 when the Bush administration diverted water from the Klamath River to nearby farms, killing more than 30,000 Klamath River salmon, the number of returning salmon has been dismally low.

This year, the paltry number of salmon hatched after 2002 will be 3 years old, most of them big enough to meet size limits and end up in fishermen's coolers. Managers can't risk losing the few remaining Klamath salmon before they return to the river to breed, so they've put a damper on salmon fishing from California to Oregon.

"We expect that the situation of dire straits will continue for the next couple of years," said Scott Barrow, a senior biologist at the Department of Fish and Game. "Rather than allowing fishermen to all go broke this year, we decided to allow some limited fishing activity."

But the limited fishing may not be enough to keep salmon fishermen in business. According to data from the National Marine Fisheries Service, fishermen have landed just 6 percent of their normal catch so far this year, not nearly enough to pay the bills.

"We're never going to be able to make up for what we lost," fisherman Ricketts said. "Young people who are trying to raise a family and make boat payments are going to have a hard time."

In mid-July, the federal government approved $10 million in aid to help fishing communities get through the lean times. Some fishermen remain skeptical, insisting the aid is just "window dressing."

"The federal government is offering us loans at 4 percent interest, but they're the ones telling us we can't fish," Grace said. "If we can't fish, how can we pay back our loans?"

Contact Emily Saarman at esaarman@santacruzsentinel.com