GOLDEN GATE


 

July 16, 2010    Headlines

Wishin & Waiting for Salmon
Rockfish Limits


Other than rumors of a couple of salmon landed by private boats fishing the middle Marin Coast all is eerily quiet on the salmon front. We will see pockets of fish cruising towards the Golden Gate through seasons end on September 6th and the next six weeks will provided anglers their best (though limited) bets in this season that never should have been. Rockfishing remains great with easy limits of quality fish out at the Islands. The C Gull II out of Emeryville put in 30 limits of rockfish and 6 lings to 10-pounds with the New Seeker landing 15 limits of rockfish, 4 lings to 8-pounds, and 4 halibut to 24-pounds on Thursday 7-15 with both boat traveling to the Farallons.

James Smith on the California Dawn reported they ran offshore today and landed 23 limits of fat rockfish and two lings at Fanny Shoals. James will be turning his attention back to the bays over the weekend with the excellent tides for both halibut and striped bass.

On Wednesday 7-15, the New Seeker put in another 15 limits of rockfish, 7 lings to 10-pounds, one 22-pound striper, and 2 halibut to 13-pounds at the Farallons with a few drifts along the coast and in the bay on the ride home. The New Huck Finn landed halibut to 22-pounds, 200 rockfish, and 5 lings to 15-pounds on a live bait/potluck trip on Wednesday for 20 fishermen. The Emeryville Sport Center is scheduling rockfish/ling cod trips throughout the weekend with salmon trips scheduled as often as interest allows.


It's that time of year that we stow the keyboard and get serious about fishing. We are packing up the kids, extended family and friends and headed north to our vacation home on the Kenai peninsula for the next two weeks. This is our annual family trip that we look forward to all year in a place where they still value salmon and manage their fisheries for sustainability. (Cal fisheries managers could learn a lot by visiting) We will be targeting sockeye and kings in the local rivers, chasing halibut and lings in the salt, clamming along the local beaches and not typing reports (we have a no computer rule when in Alaska). We still have one week available in the cabin this season, August 22-29th and we are taking bookings for 2011.
Reports and updates will resume here on July 31st. In the time being please contact our sponsors or visit their websites for current reports, information and bookings. Many of them do have updated fishing reports.
Until then... good fishing!
Mike Aughney


There are a few optimists still looking for salmon, but the fish haven’t been found but there have been a few good reports from both Monterey bay and Shelter Cove. Eventually these fish (if headed back to the Sac valley) have to get through the Golden Gate fleet. The C Gull II out of Emeryville went on a salmon trolling trip on Monday 7-12, and they changed plans after striking out with no fish, working the beaches and returning to the bay for 10 halibut to 16-pounds and a 25-pound striped bass, Rockfishing remains good with the New Huck Finn putting in 15 limits of rockfish and 3 lings at the Farallons before working the small coastal beaches for 10 halibut to 15-pounds and 1 striper at 20-pounds on Monday. Also out on Monday the New Huck Finn went down the San Mateo coast for 68 rockfish, 17 halibut to 15-pound and 4 lings to 8-pounds.  The New Seeker also had 12 limits of rockfish and 6 lings to 12-pounds on Monday at the Farallon Islands with the Tigerfish boating 16 halibut to 13-pounds and a 21-pound striper on the coast.


Rockfishing remains steady at the Farallon Islands with seven boats out of Emeryville putting in 112 limits of rockfish and 13 ling cod to 11-pounds on Sunday 7-11 to go with 78 limits on Saturday and 7 lings to 10-pounds on Saturday. The East Bay Boys always do put out some impressive counts! They also picked up 13 halibut to 18-pounds today and 6 flatties to 22-pounds on Saturday. The majority of party and 6-packs out of Emeryville left the confines of the bay on Saturday to avoid the large tides, focusing upon rockfish at the Farallons or along the Marin coast or halibut fishing on the beaches.

In response to the large tides and great weather conditions outside the Gate, several party boats and private skiffs went outside looking for clearer water. Jim Smith on the Happy Hooker went down the San Mateo coast checking things out on Saturday for ½ limits of big rockfish with several quality ling cod on Saturday. He was keeping an eye out for bait and bass, but following with current trends, neither was to be found in this section of the coast. Smith went outside the Gate again today searching the north bar, Marin county beaches and Seal Rocks for a group that strictly wanted halibut. The tides were screaming at Seal Rocks today, making the drifts near impossible. The fish weren’t there for Smith today, and he returned to the bay to pick up a few halibut off of Angel Island very late in the afternoon.

Sheryl Jimno at the Rusty Hook in Pacifica reported a “few” stripers have been landed on white or chartreuse hair raisers at Linda Mar and Rockaway Beaches. The pier is good for kingfish or jack smelt with Sabiki Rigs, and surf perch are moving up and down the coast with the best action currently near Pescadero.


The long decline of our salmon fisheries have been attributed to increases in water diversion out of the delta. We believe that the public and anglers alike must understand the root causes of the destruction of our fisheries and the players behind the scenes. The increased exports from the Delta estuary have wreaked havoc on all Delta fisheries, especially salmon. Salmon fisheries can NOT return to health until the Delta recovers and the Delta can't recover until water exports return to pre 2000 levels.


The Monterey Plus Amendments
Overturning the Monterey Plus Amendments to Protect California’s Freshwater Ecosystems and Freshwater Supplies

In 1994, after negotiating for several months in secret at a resort in Monterey, the California Department of Water Resources and five State Water Project contractors executed the Monterey Agreement, which significantly modified the contracts of the State Water Project. Subsequently, the Department transferred public ownership of the Kern Water Bank, a 1-million acre-foot underground storage facility, to the agribusiness-dominated Kern County Water Agency, which in turn deeded the water bank to the Kern Water Bank Authority, a privately controlled joint powers authority.

(Pictured left: the Delta Pumps In 2009, 3.5 million acre-feet of water were pumped from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley farms and urban users in the Bay Area and Southern California. The draw of the pumps, including the State Water Project's Harvey Banks Pumping Plant near Tracy, is powerful enough to trap fish and alter the currents through the Delta.
In 1951, 220,000 acre-feet of water went south from the Delta. (The acre-foot, enough to cover one acre one foot deep, is the basic coin of the water economy.) In 1985, the total of both projects passed five million acre-feet, approximately the volume of San Francisco Bay. In 2000, the six-million acre-foot mark was reached. Combined with other withdrawals from the Delta watershed, this pumping reduced the outflow from the Delta by something between one quarter and two thirds, depending mainly on the wetness of the year.)

After years of litigation and delay, the California Department of Water Resources has recently given final approval to the agreement, now called the Monterey Plus Amendments. These amendments fundamentally alter the State Water Project by:

• Eliminating the “urban preference,” which prioritized water deliveries to municipal customers during drought. This change results in widespread urban water shortages and higher utility rates for Southern California ratepayers.

• Illegally transferring state property in the Kern Water Bank to private entities and undermining the California Water Code by masking the purpose and place of water use.

• Increasing water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, thus worsening water-quality problems and triggering the collapse of the Delta’s ecosystem and fisheries.

• Authorizing a new, deregulated market for buying and selling “paper water” — water promised by contract that can never realistically be delivered.

• Opening the door to privatizing the publicly financed State Water Project.

For the first time in State Water Project history, publicly owned water rights and facilities are in essence privatized and placed under the control of for-profit corporations. A number of privately financed “water banks” have come into existence, allowing, in some cases, more money to be made by selling water than by farming.

The Monterey Plus Amendments are the California Department of Water Resources’ second attempt at amending the long term water contracts. In 1995, three organizations successfully sued the Department and the Central Coast Water Authority over the inadequacy of the environmental impact report for the first attempt, called the Monterey Amendments. The courts agreed that, given the statewide implications of the first Monterey Amendments, environmental documents should have been prepared by the Department — not a local agency, the Central Coast Water Authority.

The Department issued a draft environmental impact report on the Monterey Plus Amendments in 2007 and released a final document in 2010. In June 2010, the Center for Biological Diversity, the California Water Impact Network, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and the South and Central Delta Water Agencies filed suit to overturn the Monterey Plus Amendments and force the return of the Kern Water Bank to state ownership and the return of all illegally secured profits.

The lawsuit, filed under the California Environmental Quality Act, alleges that the environmental impact report was deficient and failed to provide (1) an adequate project description, (2) adequate disclosure of project impacts, (3) an accurate description of the environmental baseline without the Monterey Plus Amendments, (4) evaluation of feasible alternatives, (5) meaningful mitigation to lessen project impacts on the environment, (6) an acceptable response to comments, and (7) substantial evidence to support conclusions of no significant environmental or ratepayer impacts.   

The lawsuit asks the court to vacate and set aside approval of the Monterey Plus Amendments and the environmental impact report and suspend all activities pursuant to the project until the Department has complied with all requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act and other applicable laws. It further asks the court to void the Kern Water Bank Exchange Agreement as an unconstitutional gift of a public asset and seeks a return to state ownership of the Kern Water Bank, a return of all of the ill-gotten gains from private use of the Kern Water Bank, and a prohibition of the Kern Water Bank Authority’s use of the Kern Water Bank.

Specifically, the Center's lawsuit seeks to vacate:

1. Article 18(a) of the Monterey Plus Amendments.

The original Article 18(a) required that, in times of drought, deliveries to agricultural users would be reduced before deliveries to urban users would be cut. This was known as the “urban preference.” As a matter of state policy and the California Water Code, during shortages, drinking water for people and water supplies for most of California’s industrial economy was superior to water used to grow surplus nonfood crops in the desert. The Monterey Plus Amendments change that to ensure that agricultural contractors, representing a small fraction of the California economy, would receive as much water during droughts as the South Coast, which comprises more than half of the state’s population and economy.

For urban Southern California, this change results in serious water shortages and increased water rates. Our lawsuit seeks to vacate the revised Article 18(a) and to reestablish the urban preference to protect people and California’s economy during our recurring droughts.

2. Article 18(b) of the Monterey Plus Amendments.

The State Water Project was planned to deliver supplies of as many as 4.23 million acre-feet of water, much of it imported from North Coast streams (the Eel, Van Duzen, Klamath, and Smith rivers). These rivers were declared wild and scenic in the 1970s and off limits to the State Water Project. As a result, the State Water Project was only partially built and has only been able to reliably deliver less than half the originally promised, contracted amounts of water. The original Article 18(b) provided for a permanent reduction in water deliveries in the event the entire State Water Project was not fully built out. Even though the Project has never been completed, the Monterey Plus Amendments eliminate this provision, thus allowing water contractors to continue to include and rely upon “paper water” in their contracts.

This change results in a reliance on interruptible paper water for permanent crops and urban expansion. Our suit seeks to reverse the modified Article 18(b) in order to preserve the state’s ability to bring unrealistic promises of water into balance with reliable water yields.

3. Article 21 of the Monterey Plus Amendments.

The original Article 21 addressed the sale of “surplus” water and prohibited the delivery of such water for purposes that would require a reliable and sustained delivery of water such as to homes, factories, businesses, and permanent crops. The Monterey Plus Amendments eliminate these restrictions and have made available the delivery of “interruptible water” to permanent development whenever the normal supplies had been made. This not only eliminates the safeguard against establishing economies based on unreliable water supplies — it also allows the massive increase in State Water Project Delta export pumping after 2000, triggering the collapse of Delta fisheries. For example, State Water Project exports increased from an average of 993,686 acre-feet in the 1970s to 1,925,758 acre-feet in the 1980s to 2,011,369 acre-feet in the 1990s to a whopping 3,078,838 between 2000 and 2006.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the water supplier to agencies throughout the South Coast, gambled when it gave up its “urban preference” in hopes of securing even larger amounts of “surplus” water. In wetter years, the District was successful, but it never received more than 200,000 acre-feet from Article 21 in a single year, whereas in 2005, agricultural contractors received 531,000 acre-feet through Article 21. These deliveries of “surplus” water triggered Delta fisheries declines. Subsequent federal biological opinions under the Endangered Species Act to protect salmon, steelhead and Delta smelt, as well as court rulings on those biological opinions slammed the door on this gambit. Consequently, during the last drought, the District and its customer agencies were faced with water shortages and had to increase rates for water it delivered, which were in turn passed on to consumers and rate payers.

These increased exports from the Delta estuary during critical periods wreaked havoc on endangered fish species and California’s commercially valuable fall Chinook salmon runs. They also increased dependence upon interruptible water supplies. The lawsuit seeks to void the revised Article 21 and limit the use of interruptible sources of water to purposes that can withstand inevitable water shortages.

4. Transfer of the Kern Water Bank.

In 1987, the District established the Kern Water Bank as a “State Water Project conservation facility” that was integrated into the overall State Water Project operations as part of the State Water Resource Development System. In 1995, the California Department of Water Resources transferred ownership — on an interim basis, pending final approval of the first Monterey Amendments — of the Kern Water Bank to agricultural contractors, including the Kern County Water Agency, in exchange for 45,000 acre-feet of paper water — i.e., water that the Kern County Water Agency had never received and for which the agency was required to pay as part of State Water Project construction. In other words, the Kern County Water Agency received property worth many millions of dollars in exchange for something it had never received and which reduced the agency’s payments to the State Water Project at the same time. The very next day, The Kern County Water Agency transferred ownership in the water bank to the Kern Water Bank Authority, a privately controlled joint powers authority. Although still operated by the Kern Water Bank Authority, this transfer is subject to final approval of the Monterey Plus Amendments.  

The transfer of the Kern Water Bank to private parties violated the California Constitution and Water Code, among other provisions that prohibit the gift of state assets to private parties. The Center’s lawsuit seeks to void the transfer and recover all ill-gotten profits from the private use of public assets.  See http://www.c-win.org/monterey-plus-agreement.html and http://www.c-win.org/monterey-amendments-state-water-project-contracts.html


Reminder: Salmon Fishing is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the remainder of the season, and the size limit for salmon is 24-inches.
New regulations for the MLPAs are now in effect from Pt Arena to Pigeon Point. Anglers need to know which areas are affected and the regulations and the boundaries of the different zones. Please use this link and be sure to print a map for these areas to carry with you.

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Party boat contacts:
The Emeryville Sportfishing Center is currently booking potluck and sturgeon trips. They have a great promotion that when you take six trips your "lucky" seventh trip is free. This is good on any of their boats. Reservations can be made at 510 654-6040.

The California Dawn / Berkeley 510 773-5511
 

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5-day plot - Wind Speed at 46026

5-day plot - Wave Height at 46026

 

 

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