A little salmon better than none at all?

<p>Regulators approved a brief salmon fishing season off the North Coast this summer, the first time in three years a commercial catch will be allowed out of Bodega Bay.</p><p>Fishing between Point Arena and Pigeon Point will be allowed for eight days in July, while fishing in Mendocino County will be allowed in August until 9,375 salmon are caught.</p><p>The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which was meeting this week in Portland, Ore., made the final decision Thursday.</p><p>The season is meant to protect the Sacramento River chinook salmon population, which last year was at an all-time low, but still allow a season that would be worthwhile for fishermen.</p><p>"It will be about 15 percent of what we would call an average season," said Dave Bitts of McKinleyville, a commercial fisherman and president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations. "It is as conservative as can be and still allows some fishing."</p><p>It is so short, however, that many fishermen question whether it is worth the effort.</p><p>Longtime Bodega Bay fisherman Dave Yarger said it costs $2,000 to repack equipment and for fuel and supplies just to go out fishing.</p><p>Yarger said he will go fishing and expects others to go as well, but reluctantly, for the small number of fish they could catch rather than send regulators the wrong message.</p><p>"If they are stupid enough to give us those fish, I will go catch them," Yarger said. "We'll all go out there. What if we said we wouldn't go. Does that mean we don't care, that we don't want them?"</p><p>Under the decision, the commercial season will be open for four days beginning July 1 and four more days beginning July 8 from Point Arena to Pigeon Point, which is 50 miles south of San Francisco.</p><p>In Mendocino County, from the Mattole River to Point Arena, the season will be open in August, but not September, as initially proposed.</p><p>By also opening it for August farther north, it will put fishermen on the water where they will be catching Klamath River chinook rather than Sacramento River chinook.</p><p>"This is a very different management approach, setting a quota has not been done before," said Bill Sydeman of the Farallon Institute for Ecological Research. "That has to give the fishing community some heartburn, but some fishing is better than no fishing."</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 of a healthy population and well below what state biologists had predicted.</p><p>Even though it missed the mark last year, the state using the same formula is predicting there will be 245,000 chinook in the Sacramento this year.</p><p>Since last year's estimates were so far off, fishermen were split on whether they want to fish this year at all and possibly hurt the Sacramento fishery.</p><p>"The most cautious approach, from a conservation perspective, would be no fishing at all," Sydeman said. "If the models are correct, it is cautious enough, but the models have been wrong recently. You have to question the numbers."</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com</p>