Santa Cruz Sentinel: The Big Fish Story: Will salmon fishing be banned?

MOSS LANDING — The Klamath River is hundreds of miles away. It starts in southeastern Oregon and bottoms out in Northern California.

But its management could end up costing Central Coast commercial fishermen, and those whose livlihoods depend on that industry, thousands of dollars if salmon fishing is banned this season due to the river's dwindling run of fall chinook. Recreational salmon fishermen also might be limited on the number of salmon they can catch and the areas they can troll.

It also could mean fewer locally caught chinook — also known as king salmon, popular with consumers — in area fish markets.

The bottom line is that tighter restrictions, if not an all-out commercial ban, would deliver a devastating blow to many on the Central Coast.

Local fishermen, who claim an estimated one in 1,000 fall-run chinook salmon from the Klamath River are caught in the Monterey Bay, say the ban would be unfair. The majority of salmon caught here spawn in the Sacramento River.

"We're all booked up for the first day of the season right now. It's been a long and cold winter and we were looking forward to the season," said Mike Dummler, manager of Stagnaro Fishing Trips in Santa Cruz, which has plans to take out 40 anglers on opening day the first week of April.

"But it's really difficult to plan a season, get your equipment ready, buy the licenses, hooks and weights, then all of a sudden find out that the season might not be what we were expecting," Dummler said.

"That's like opening a restaurant, advertising it, getting ready for a bunch of customers, then shutting it down the week before it opens."

While the restrictions have yet to be detailed, or finalized, this much is clear: A series of options for the upcoming season will be laid out in a conference room in Seattle next week by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, an 18-member group that makes recommendations to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The council's decision revolves around one question: Are there fewer chinook returning and spawning in the Klamath River?

Counts by the Department of Fish and Game and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimate the number at fewer than 35,000, the minimum for conservation, said Allen Grover, a senior fisheries biologist for the state agency in Santa Rosa.

"At this point, the Klamath River and its tributaries just don't have enough fish, and the river is where they spawn, it's where they live before they head out to sea," Grover said. "We just don't have a surplus that can be harvested, and that means certain areas are just going to have to be off-limits in the ocean if we want to get the numbers back up."

What's causing the decline in the number of fall chinook has been the subject of debate for decades.

There are those who say too much water is diverted from the river in the fall, which kills the salmon because there's not enough oxygen in the water.

But what commercial fishermen and sports anglers here don't understand is how a river so far away can have such an impact on the Central Coast.

"Why do they always come right to us and tell us we can't fish Point Reyes, Año Nuevo, Farallone Islands, Monterey Bay and Point Sur?" said a frustrated Irby Elliston, a Moss Landing resident and commercial fisherman who derives 20 percent of his income comes from salmon fishing.

"They love to say, 'Gee, Irby, we don't want to send your children to school in bare feet, but hey, by the way, don't bother going out and fishing this season because the numbers are down and there aren't enough to go around."

If the ban becomes a reality, Elliston stands to lose $20,000 for the commercial season, which generally runs from May to the end the September.

That's nothing compared to what Joey Jones, who says he stands to lose at least 90 percent of his business, or $200,000, if there is no one to buy his bait at the Moss Landing-based Lethal Weapon Bait Co.

"It's going to be a tragedy," said Jones. "It's going to devastate the entire area, not just me. You watch and see. If they go through with it, and start putting up restrictions, everybody loses."

Although Elliston and Jones and boatloads of fishing buddies concede that Klamath chinook can swim this far south, they point out to fish counts showing they rarely catch a fall chinook in the Monterey Bay.

Even the Department of Fish and Game backs them up, saying fewer than 1 fish per 1,000 caught in the bay come from the river, based on distinguishing small micro tags implanted in the heads of fish raised in hatcheries, according to Elliston.

Larry Wolfe, a member of the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project in Davenport, said even if the entire Pacific Ocean is off limits to salmon fishing, that doesn't necessarily mean the salmon run is going to be restored in the Klamath.

"It doesn't matter how many return," he said. "If water conditions are still the same, they're going to die."

Meanwhile, people like Richard Woodward, Phil Parish, Dennis Long and Jones, the guys whose livelihood rely on selling bait and equipment to fishermen, are staring at their empty shelves in Moss Landing.

The "snubbers" that create slack in the line, the wires used for trolling, the oil and air filters for boat engines are far and few between these days.

"We just don't know how much to order because we don't know what to expect," says Parish. "The other day a guy called in and canceled his $700 order of filters, said he wasn't going to start putting out money for a season that might not happen. All this ain't good for business."

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