| Huge turnout needed at Commission meeting!
by Dan Bacher
Under intense pressure from northern California anglers and Delta advocates, the California Fish and Game Commission decided on November 16 to postpone consideration of a controversial proposed striped bass regulation change proposal to their February 1-2, 2012 meeting in Sacramento.
Consideration of the proposed regulations - a proposal that many anglers say amounts to a striped bass "eradication plan" - was originally scheduled to take place at the Commission meeting in San Diego in December.
This decision came after Department of Fish and Game (DFG) Director Charlton H. Bonham requested the change in order to allow interested members of the public residing near the Delta the opportunity to voice their opinions to the Commission.
"After the DFG public meeting in the Delta last week, we learned there are many passionate anglers who would like the opportunity to share their views on the draft proposal," Bonham said. "I think it's important to hear these views. The discussion is welcome. Moving the public discussion to Sacramento from San Diego will allow these constituents to attend the meeting. It's the right thing to do."
Dick Pool, administrator of Water for Fish and Secretary Treasurer of the Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA), applauded Bonham's decision to postpone discussion of the striped bass proposal to the Commission meeting in February.
"Postponing the hearing is the only fair thing to do," said. "There are thousands of striped bass fishermen and others that are deeply concerned about this issue. They need to have a chance to have their voices heard."
More than 350 anglers and members of the public who showed up at a DFG "public workshop" in Rio Vista Tuesday, November 8 voiced unanimous opposition to the new regulations to dramatically increase size and bag limits for anadromous striped bass (http://www.fishsniffer.com/content/1500-public-voices-100-percent-opposition-striped-bass-reduction-plan.html).
Bob Boucke, owner of Johnson's Bait and Tackle in Yuba City, echoed the feelings of hundreds in the room when he urged the DFG, rather than trying to eradicate stripers, to instead focus on the real problem - curbing the massive Delta water exports that have spurred the collapse of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and striped bass themselves.
"The stripers have been here 130 years and they have gotten along with the Delta smelt and the salmon all of that time until they started pumping all this water down there," said Boucke. "That's when the whole problem started. And yet Fish and Game doesn't want to do anything about the water problem, but they want to ruin our striper fishing. There is nothing wrong with the stripers the way they are."
The proposal is the result of a court settlement of a lawsuit between the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, an agribusiness "Astroturf" group representing San Joaquin Valley corporate growers, and the DFG. This group is housed in Stewart Resnick's headquarters for Paramount Farms in Kern County. Resnick, a politically connected Beverly Hills billionaire and the largest tree fruit grower in the world, has made tens of millions of dollars annually from buying and reselling water back to the state for a big profit and is a big advocate of state and federal plans to export more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Dleta.
We need a huge turnout of anglers at the meeting to stop the striped bass eradication plan from being approved by the Commission! The meeting is scheduled for February 1-2, 2012, Wednesday-Thursday, at the Resources Building Auditorium, 1416 Ninth Street, Sacramento, CA. The agenda is not available yet; for more information, go to: http://www.fgc.ca.gov/meetings...
Please also write a letter to the Commission opposing the proposal. You can copy and paste a sample letter from: http://water4fish.org/write-le... and mail it to: Jim Kellogg, President, California Fish and Game Commission, P.O. Box 944209, Sacramento, CA 94244-2980. Submit comments on the proposal via email to: fgc [at] fgc.ca.gov.
The http://www.water4fish.org website will soon feature an easy to use on-line letter writing campaign to oppose the striper proposal soon. I will send out an action alert when the on-line campaign is ready to go.
I also strongly encourage you to watch this video by Cal Kellogg, Fish Sniffer Magazine Editor, covering the DFG workshop in Rio Vista: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... . Please join two organizations, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (http://www.calsport.org) and California Striped Bass Asssociation (http://www.striper-csba.com), listed at the end.
The striped bass proposal has been developed at a time when the state and federal governments are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal. Delta residents, fishermen, Indian Tribes, family farmers, business owners, conservationists and environmental justice advocates are opposing the peripheral canal's construction because it would lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations.
DFG Striped Bass Proposal
The basic proposed changes to the striper regulations are as follows:
Raising the daily bag limit for striped bass from two to six fish.
Raising the possession limit for striped bass from two to 12 fish.
Lowering the minimum size for striped bass from 18 to 12 inches.
Establishing a "hot spot" for striped bass fishing at Clifton Court Forebay and specified adjacent waterways at which the daily bag limit will be 20 fish, the possession limit will be 40 fish and there will be no size limit. Anglers fishing at the hot spot would be required to fill out a report card and deposit it in an iron ranger or similar receptacle.
Changes to the sport fishing regulations for the Carmel, Pajaro and Salinas Rivers to allow harvest of striped bass when the fishery would otherwise be closed.
DFG is also recommending an adaptive management plan that will help assess how the new regulations influence the fishery.
The Commissioners will decide whether to pursue the proposed regulations at their February meeting in Sacramento. If they choose to pursue the proposal it begins a process that includes at least three public hearings and the completion of an environmental document. A final decision is not expected until later in 2012.
The draft language is now available at: https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/F... |
