🔴ROAD CLOSURE: U.S. 101 (pm 70-77) is fully CLOSED at Rattlesnake Summit, north of Laytonville in Mendocino County due to snow. There is currently no estimated time of reopening.
— Caltrans District 1 (@CaltransDist1) March 28, 2023
Please check https://t.co/faudYOtp7p or the QuickMap app for the latest road conditions. pic.twitter.com/XW2JksOZf8
FERNBRIDGE FULL CLOSURE THIS WEEKEND: The bridge between U.S. 101 and Ferndale will be fully closed from 10pm Friday, March 17, to 5am Monday, March 20. Motorists — including emergency vehicles — will need to use an alternate route.#Fernbridge #Route211 #HumboldtCounty pic.twitter.com/SxJmZkRdBj
— Caltrans District 1 (@CaltransDist1) March 15, 2023
“Drop ‘em down!” Davis calls out the window. “Thirty to 40 feet!”
When the bite is steady, the Salty Lady may have 20 customers on board, each spending $200 for the chance to catch salmon. On the best days, fishing rods bend double the moment the lines go down, and a frenzy of action ensues, often amid a hundred or more other boats. Hooked Chinook thrash at the surface, and the deck becomes strewn with flopping fish.
Last year, California’s commercial and recreational fishing fleet, from the Central Coast to the Oregon border, landed about 300,000 salmon.
But this year, Davis and other salmon anglers won’t be fishing for salmon at all.
In response to crashing Chinook populations, a council of West Coast fishery managers plans to cancel this year’s salmon season in California, which will put hundreds of commercial fishermen and women out of work in Northern California and turn the summer into a bummer for thousands of recreational anglers.
Last year, the industry’s economic value was an estimated $460 million for fish sales and related businesses, including restaurants, tackle shops, private fishing guides, campgrounds and other services. Salmon season usually runs from May through October.
The closure, Davis said, “is going to be devastating to my business.” He said he will “try to scrape together a season” by targeting other species, like rockfish, lingcod, halibut and striped bass, but generating interest in catching these fish will be a challenge.
“Our customers want salmon,” he said, adding that last year, his customers caught roughly 2,000 Chinook.
Davis, 53, who has fished all his life, said the thrill of salmon fishing never grows old. “There’s nothing else like a wide-open salmon bite,” he said.
Only in two previous years — 2008 and 2009 — has California’s salmon season been shut down completely. That closure came as the numbers of spawning fish returning to the Sacramento River, the state’s main salmon producer, crashed to record lows.
Now California’s Chinook runs have collapsed again.