Fishing feels good after three years

It's 5:30 a.m. and darkness blankets the Feather River with a chilled calm.

Tiny beacons of light twinkle along the bank as fishermen wait for bites they have longed three years to feel on the end of their lines. Only a week remains in the monthlong local salmon season, and many residents and out-of-towners are more than eager to spend their mornings in nipping cold with hopes of reeling in the big one.

Because even if they don't, it's OK, they say.

"It's just nice to be back on the water," said Jim Zanocco, who's been fishing and guiding anglers on area rivers for more than 38 years.

This May marked the first time since 2007 that California waterways were open to salmon fishermen, after the Pacific Fishery Management Council prohibited all commercial and recreational fishing in this state and in most of the Oregon coast in an attempt to save the vanishing Chinook salmon.

The Yuba River remains closed, but the council approved shortened seasons for the Sacramento, American, Klamath, Trinity and Feather Rivers.

The fish this year are smaller — in size and number — but any fish are better than no fish at all, Zanocco said.

On the water

After asking "permission to come aboard," Bay Area residents Byron Bailey and Bob Tolman boarded Zanocco's boat on Thursday, secured their rods and ice chests and set out into the darkness.

"We're just gonna cruise and see what we can find," the Yuba City guide said.

His boat floated almost silently along the river, past the slice of eastern bank where fisherman capitalize on the confluence with the cool Yuba River, alongside anglers clustered under "the yellow ball" on the powerlines that seems to magically attract fish and just beyond the Jesus Hole, named for a carving in the clay bank.

Zanocco heads for the rapids at Shanghai Bend. That's where he finds fisherman Bob Boucke and several other anglers who had cast their lines and were waiting patiently for bites before the sun even started to peek out.

"We just wait for the fish to come to us," he said.

And wait they will.

The men are in their spot for more than four hours before Tolman gets what he's been waiting for. He tried all his tricks — his home-cured bait, turning his back on the rod, even cracking open a beer — all begging for a fish to nibble.

But it's busting out some smoked salmon that does the trick.

As everyone in the boat enjoys a bite, his rod snaps into action, arcing toward the water as something pulls fiercely on the other end. "Fish on!" Tolman cries.

Everyone hustles to work, reeling their own lines out of the way, grabbing a net to drop the fish into and stashing other gear. Tolman hangs on tight, reeling slowing and patiently and letting the fish fight all its resistance out.

"Oh man!" he shouts. "It's been a long time since I've felt what this feels like."

When the moment finally comes, Tolman holds up the 25-pound hen — a Feather River native — for a picture. It hangs from his shoulders to his waist.

"You can't get an adrenaline rush like that," he said, after the fish is stored away. "They don't make a drug that can give you that kind of boost."

Hit to the pocket

Fisherman estimated earlier this year that two years of canceled salmon seasons cost California $2.8 billion in revenue and more than 23,000 jobs. The trickle-down effect from not being able to fish for Chinook is felt not only by fisherman, but harbors, restaurants, bait shops, marine equipment retailers and manufacturers and fishing guides like Zanocco.

He describes the closure with two words — ugly and traumatic.

It cut his income down to a third, pushing him to the brink of bankruptcy as he ran up credit cards and depleted his savings.

"It's been real hard to make a living when they take two-thirds of the season and don't let you work," he said. "They are going to have to subsidize us some more if they want us to survive."

Congress allocated $170 million in disaster relief to fishing communities in California, Oregon and Washington who were hurt by the closures, but the subsidies were a pittance compared to the losses, Zanocco said.

Zanocco has been on the river about a dozen times since the season opened July 31. He estimates this year he'll only make about one-tenth what he'd normally earn in a salmon season.

"It's hard to sell it if the fishing is not red hot," he said.

Boucke, of Johnson's Bait and Tackle in Yuba City, said the canceled seasons cost him $600,000, and he had to lay off several of his employees.

"If we hadn't opened it up, we'd be dying right now," he said.

The hit from the closure affects more than those in the fishing industry, Boucke said. Restaurants, hotels, gas stations and many other businesses also suffer.

Maggie Hennessy Taylor, co-owner of Jetstream Concepts in Yuba City, said until the closure, a significant number of fishing guides always came to get their boats serviced, upgraded and maintained.

"Then, boom, it just dried up," she said.

With fingers crossed, she tracked discussions about lifting the ban, then rejoiced when the prohibition ended. In June, customers started returning, some even looking to purchase the consignment boats Jetstream is now offering.

"If there is an incentive to go out and fish beyond the normal striper or sturgeon season, it definitely trickles down to us," she said.

An ongoing battle

Millions of salmon a year once swam from the ocean into the delta and up connecting rivers and streams like the Sacramento, Yuba and Feather. But in 2002, those swarms dropped to 800,000 fish; and in 2009 only 39,000 made the upstream trip to spawn.

Federal biologists predicted 245,000 fall-run Chinook salmon will return this year. It's too early to tell if the forecast is accurate, but the opening of fishing season, however restrained, was a good sign, Boucke said.

"We have fish again — great!" he said. "We wanted to know there was going to be fish before they opened it."

No one wants to save the struggling fish more than fisherman and other people whose livelihoods depend on salmon, Boucke said. But the debate is ongoing about who and what is to blame for the salmon's demise.

He, like many sport fisherman, says California's water management is the culprit. The fish are getting sucked into pumps, lost in canals and dying in the warm waters reserved for farmers.

The spawning beds are silted in so there is no place for the natives to naturally lay eggs. Sea lions are invading in increasing numbers and eating their way through the salmon population.

In addition to fighting for their salmon, fisherman are now also battling to protect stripers, a fish some say is killing off salmon even though the two species have coexisted in California waterways for more than 130 years, Boucke said.

Hatcheries are another problem, he said. Production limits result in killing of fish and the destruction of viable eggs and the loss of carcasses in the river to feed the new smolt.

"We need the water people to work with us, not against us, and we need to work with them," Boucke said. "There are some people who hate them so bad they won't even talk to them, and they hate us so much they won't talk to us."

The declining salmon population should be important to more than fisherman, those in the industry and people who like to eat the pink-meat fish, Zanocco said.

"The reason you have to care is it means our ecosystem is not in good shape if the king salmon aren't here," he said.

Future of fishing

What was once world-class fishing has dwindled to almost nothing.

"This makes it Oh-for-10," a fisherman said to Zanocco last week as he pulled up anchor.

The man, like many other anglers, is a diehard, longing for salmon so badly he'll return every day to try his luck again, Zanocco said. "That ain't right," he said. "You are supposed to have a little reward on occasion."

August is not the best time of year to fish for salmon in the Feather River. In fact, Zanocco said, it's the lull between spring run and fall run fish.

"They're gonna make sure we don't hurt 'em bad," he said.

The season's timing makes fishing more challenging, but it prevents overfishing while providing a greater stimulus to the economy, Boucke said.

Salmon that the fishermen are catching are small, most only 3 years old, because they haven't had time to grow. But he's spotted hope in the Feather River's green waters this year.

"I haven't seen this many jacks in 20 years," he said, referring to the 2-year-old salmon used as indicators for next year's population. "It's not a good science, but it's the only one we have."

Ocean indicators are not as strong, but that can be attributed to bad weather and a lack of bait fish driving the salmon into deeper waters, Boucke said.

"We really won't know anything until we get to count the carcasses," he said.

The opening of the Sacramento River between Knights Landing and Red Bluff on Oct. 9 will be another good indicator, as it happens during the peak of the fall run.

State Department of Fish and Game Warden Sean Pirtle said the fish appear to be surging back.

"I see salmon boiling all the time, rolling in the river," he said. "I haven't seen that in two years."

He estimated he's written 20 tickets for illegal gear, snagged salmon or illegally hooked salmon, and a few teenagers were cited for poaching near Daguerre Dam on the Yuba the other day. But for the most part, the fisherman have returned with respect. "People understood that if there are no fish, you can't be taking the fish there is," he said.

When it comes to being back on the river, the normally chatty anglers become men of few words.

"Fantastic." "Wonderful." "Amazing." There's no other way to describe it, they say.

"I don't want to live in a world without salmon," Zanocco said. "We should be fighting for this."

CONTACT Ashley Gebb at 749-4724 or agebb@appeal democrat.com