Fishery officials considering a short commercial salmon season

<p>Allowing a short commercial salmon season for North Coast fishermen that is concentrated in the waters off of Fort Bragg is being considered today by the Pacific Fishery Management Council.</p><p>It would allow eight days of fishing in July from Point Arena to Pigeon Point, but also open the season in the months of August and September from Point Arena north to the Mattole River.</p><p>The proposal was adopted Sunday by the council's Salmon Advisory Subcommittee, which is made up of fishermen. The council, which is meeting this week in Portland, Ore., will make a final decision on Thursday.</p><p>The proposal is meant to protect the Sacramento River chinook salmon population, which last year was at an all-time low, but still set a season that would be worthwhile for fishermen to go out, said David Bitts of McKinleyville, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.</p><p>“The tension this year that this proposed option hopes to resolve is to fish and not to harm the escapement goal and to have a season worth showing up for,” Bitts said. “The option is a good resolution of those tensions.”</p><p>Under the proposal, the commercial season would be open for four days beginning July 1 and July 8 from Point Arena to Pigeon Point.</p><p>By opening it for August and September farther north, it would put fishermen on the water where they would be catching Klamath chinook and not Sacramento River chinook, Bitts said.</p><p>In 2009, there were 39,500 chinook counted in the Sacramento River and its tributaries, the lowest count on record, well below the 180,000 fish that the state Department of Fish and Game considers the threshold and well below what state biologists had predicted.</p><p>Even though it missed the mark this year, the state using the same formula is predicting that there will be 245,000 chinook salmon in the Sacramento this year.</p><p>Since last year's estimates were so far off, fishermen are split on whether they want to fish this year at all and possibly hurt the Sacramento fishery.</p><p>“What I see going on is the fishermen in the north are anxious to fish, but quite a few fishermen in Fort Bragg and the fishermen in the south are nervous about the numbers,” said Barbara Emely of San Francisco, a federation member. “They are fearful about their future and they don't mind the truncated season.”</p><p>Chris Lawson, president of the Bodega Bay Fishermen's Marketing Association, said an eight-day season is too short.</p><p>Even adding two months to the season off of Fort Bragg is not adequate because it would put too many boats in too small of an area, Lawson said.</p><p>“Generally you get three days on a school of fish, then they tend to scatter and go off the bite,” Lawson said. “It's like putting too many fishermen on a small pond. They get tired of the wheel noise and the wire being drug through the water.”</p><p>The Bodega Bay association met Saturday, but Lawson said there was no consensus on whether there should be a season this year.</p>