One month in, commercial salmon catch spotty on North Coast

Experts said three months ago there were more than 650,000 king salmon waiting to be caught this year off the North Coast.

But the allegedly abundant fish, one of the region’s prized natural delicacies, have proved elusive since commercial anglers started dropping their lines in the ocean May 1.

“It’s slow everywhere,” said veteran Bodega Bay angler Chris Lawson. “Can’t get any worse.”

Strong winds have kept most of the 60-boat salmon fleet tied up in Bodega Bay for parts of the month, and the catch on forays as far south as the Farallon Islands and north to Shelter Cove off Humboldt County has been spotty.

“Everybody’s been scratching their heads wondering where the fish are,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.. “It’s just kind of a mystery.”

Anglers and scientists agree that the salmon are likely swimming far and wide in search of food, which is in unusually short supply this year on the North Coast because of warmer water that has affected the base of the food chain, including some of the favored feed for salmon.

Seabirds that have delayed breeding on the remote Farallon Islands, 30 miles west of San Francisco, have been affected by the same “poor productivity” in surrounding waters, said Russ Bradley, manager of Petaluma-based Point Blue Conservation Science’s Farallon program.

Both salmon and seabirds feed on the small crustaceans called krill and on juvenile rock fish. So “it makes sense that the fish would be widely distributed,” Bradley said.

For humans who fancy fresh, local salmon at home, however, the outlook is not so bleak. There is king salmon on ice at local markets, and prices have come down as the catch is picking up a bit.

Wholesaler Michael Lucas of North Coast Fisheries in Santa Rosa said most of the salmon he’s getting was landed at Fort Bragg, where the luckiest anglers this week were coming in with up to 100 fish, weighing a total of about 1,000 pounds.

The current price at dockside, $5 a pound, translates to a decent payday for fishermen, Lucas said. But some boats are coming in with only 10 to 15 fish, he said.

At Whole Foods Market at Coddingtown Mall, salmon were selling for $24.99 and set to go on sale for less this weekend, said Wes Walston, store team manager. The price point is a bit high, due to the short supply, but it already had dropped by about $5 a pound since earlier this month, he said.

“Getting local king salmon is huge around here,” said Walston, a Santa Rosa native who remembers when salmon sold for $1.99 a pound in the 1980s.

Jennifer Simon, an environmental scientist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, confirmed reports of the “sporadic” salmon catch so far this season, with most fish caught between Point Arena in Mendocino County and Horse Mountain, just north of Shelter Cove.

The agency’s estimate of 652,000 salmon refers to the number of Sacramento River fall run king salmon in the ocean on Sept. 1, 2014, prior to any fishing. Its accuracy can’t be assessed until the 2015 fall spawning run in the Sacramento basin, which is expected to number 341,000 fish, Simon said.

Salmon fishing seasons have started slowly before, Simon said, adding that it is “a bit too early to be alarmed at this point.”

Chuck Cappotto, past president of the Fishermen’s Marketing Association of Bodega Bay, said he expects that 2015 will turn into “a halfway decent year.”

“Fish go where the feed is,” and a fisherman’s job is “go where the fish are,” Cappotto said.

The livelihoods of about 150 men and women who work in the Bodega Bay fishing fleet are at stake, Cappotto said. Last year, commercial anglers landed 428,411 pounds of salmon at Bodega Bay, valued at $2.5 million. In 2013, the catch was worth $3.8 million.

Lawson said he planned to go fishing this weekend, without a firm idea of where to hook a salmon. “I don’t know where the heck we’re going,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.