When the Upper Sacramento River was opened to year-round fishing (C&R only during the “off” season), a lot of people reacted badly.
The destruction of the fishery was predicted (at the hands of poachers, anglers wading on redds, overfishing, etc).
Expect to see fly fishers in conditions like this…
It hasn’t happened (yet), and now it’s clear Fish & Game moved so quickly on the Upper Sacramento rule changes because they had other winter seasons in mind.
So far, it looks like F&G has opened the Pit River (below Powerhouse 3) to winter fishing, parts of Hot Creek an the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra, and now some of the Truckee/Tahoe fisheries are getting a dose of the same.
I think’s a nod the realities of contemporary fly fishing, although the fact that I live on a river and generally drive the L&T Nancy crazy all winter long might be coloring my opinion.
Assuming no ill effects on these fisheries, expect more year-round regulations to appear in coming years.
Any you think should be opened?
[tags]fly fishing, california, regulations[/tags]
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Either Wayne walks on water, or the effects of global cooling are undeniable ..
Where is his auger?
-rriver
That is a marshmellow, that is not a “strike indicator.”
Go ahead, let’s here the protestations of innocence - and while you are so engaged, please ’splain the remnants on Mssr. Eng’s chest - left there from a midmorning snack.
Why didn’t you just run the picture of Wayne’s love embrace with a goat? It would have been less embarrassing.
“Why didn’t you just run the picture of Wayne’s love embrace with a goat? It would have been less embarrassing.”
Ahahahahahahahaha! That wasn’t a goat though. Tom slipped on ice while wearing a very woolly fleece jacket and hood. Wayne was just helping him up. I was there, saw the whole thing…
The Underground sure can take a turn for the ugly on Fridays…
Of course he needs a huge strike indicator! It takes a ton of lead just to get the fly to break the ice.
I would like to wade in, not the redds or the questionable attire, but the aspect of “No-Kill”. No-kill does not exist; inevitably there are fish killed, and 47% will be visibly injured. As well, fishing during spawning season means that, apart from one’s indecorous interruption of l’amour, the fish are being stressed at a critical time. Walking on the redds is a possibility; but a certainty is that fish caught during winter cold deplete far more of their stored resources than nature accounts for, at a time when it is difficult, due to low availability of food, to replenish those resources.
I know it is generally verboten to bring up the ethical considerations of “Catch and Release”; yet this diminishment of the sport of angling (though it may, or may not, improve the “fishing”) is, in the opinion of some (A.A. Luce, Howard Walden II, etc.) fatal to sportsmanship.
Warm regards,
overmywaders
Wow; here it comes, can you feel it?
Guess it was to good to last.
jeffh
Tom,
Rather than cause discord and disturb the atmosphere of cordial goodwill, I would ask you to delete my previous post. I am unaccustomed to this blog and its strictures but I have been given a sense that I crossed a line.
Great hat, BTW.
Cordially yours,
overmywaders
Well I could see opening the Lower McCloud to winter regs. I wouldn’t make it year-round like the Upper Sac though since there’s a big difference in the two systems. That being the Lower McCloud has a big spawning run of large browns that come from Shasta lake while the Upper Sac does not.
So a limited late fall/winter closure from Nov 15 to Jan 1 would make sense since the browns are finished spawning by then.
I don’t think the Lower McCloud will get a lot of angling pressure during the winter months anyway since access there is very limited during winter and it’s very much an “enter at your own risk deal”.
Brian
No worries about the “no kill” stuff. I think jeffh recognized the nightmarish depths plumbed by some message boards over this issue, but clearly, “no kill” is better phrased “no harvest” and it refers to a management strategy, not an absolution-providing non-reality.
What remains true of little-fished winter fisheries is that C&R mortality falls far below the baseline mortality rate, so–according to the biologists I’ve spoken with–winter fishing has a negligible affect on fish populations.
Heddon17; you’re right, the McCloud would suffer from poor/dangerous access during the depths of winter, but the Mighty Mac would continue to fish great until the first big storm of the year (typically around the Holidays).
Love to see an end-of-year closure, and the Upper McCloud probably wouldn’t suffer from a year-round season if we went to C&R in the offseason.
Awww Overthewader…….
Did you trade tree hugging for fish hugging? Check the research.
As the grebe deftly runs away across the water after that comment.
Dear theGtrbe,
You have me at a disadvantage; I am quite mono-lingual. Oh, I did try Latin in school, but I only feel confident in finding either an apartment or an island in Ancient Rome. What realtor should I seek when limited to “Ubi est insula?”
They did not offer Gibberish in school, nor did I think, until your short missive, that I would require it. I will however attempt to decipher it. Tree-hugging. Truly, I have never been known for tree-hugging (though quite a hand with a chain saw in my youth). Fish-hugging. I am quite averse to fish-hugging. (Who knows where that can lead? It’s bad enough to watch the oral contact with bass on the fishing shows — does it get kinkier? I ask you as a possible knowledgeable source.)
I do advocate taking a priest to a fish, but not a fish to a priest.
Should you decide to expand upon your comment, I’m not sure that this congenial site is the proper venue, but that is for Tom to decide.
Cordially yours,
overmywaders
Now now children, remember…sticks and stones. Anyway who is that nomadic Mongolian traversing the frozen river?
And here I thought last Fall’s bikini wars were as low as we could go… 8-)
You know, we might someday dig into the always lighthearted topic of C&R ethics, but I believe today is not that day.
I say we save it for a long winter’s day (next winter perhaps) when a good argument among opposing religious viewpoints is all the sport we have available…
overthewaders
nuff said….. sorry to invoke such ire,(:-)) especially sporting the garbled lead in title that dishonors such a marvelous bird of prey. Could the ire have have been the reason for teasin?
We Grebes do fish with tounge in beak, and often call out with humour in our hearts, while seldom if ever getting our feathers ruffled.
P.S how did the flavor saver you advocate get the name “Priest”?.
Respectivly
The Grebe
TheGrebe,
No ire here, I was confused by your words, but confusion is very much my normal state.
The “Priest”, typically a small wooden club, though Hardy sold a very pretty thing with a brass head on a hexagonal split-cane shaft (probably from a reject rod), was used to administer “the Last Rites”; usually the province of a Catholic priest. It was, in a whimsical way, a mark of respect to the quarry; dispatching it quickly, yet with dignity. Of course, the full rites of Extreme Unction (application of oil) and shriving (confession and absolution) are reserved for the dinner table; when you season the fish and then admit that you caught it, not on a fly, but a live grasshopper.
All very complicated.
Warmest regards,
overmywaders
No I don’t think the Upper McCloud would suffer from year-round regs either if it were made C&R in the offseason same as the Upper Sac.
Access would be an issue there too since most of the roads leading from Hwy 89 to the river are not plowed during the winter so one would likely need showshoes or cross-country skis to access the river during the winter months.
Brian
It sounds better and better all the time…