Last year the Center for Biological Diversity and the Pacific Rivers Council sued the California Department of Fish and Game to force them to stop stocking California waters saying that these fish destroy other aquatic species including some that are endangered. Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette said:

….the state’s trout stocking program fails to meet environmental laws designed to protect threatened and endangered species, although he declined to temporarily shut it down.

“The fish stocking program has been in existence for over a century and, it appears, already has caused significant environmental impacts,” Marlette wrote in a five-page opinion. “Where impacts are significant but not final or irreversible, stopping the program now will not change that.”

The judge has ordered the CDFG to undertake an environmental impact study in order for him to decide what if any action should be taken.

The two environmental groups consider this ruling a victory of sorts.

The decision was a partial victory for environmental groups who have long complained that trout stocking has led to a population drop in sensitive species, including the mountain yellow-legged frog, Cascades frog, California golden trout, McCloud River redband trout and Santa Ana sucker.

Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said an environmental review could reduce how many trout are placed in the state’s rivers and lakes each year.

“Trout is a predator and it has a cascading effect on everything trout eat,” said Greenwald, whose organization along with the Pacific Rivers Council sued the state last October.

The CDFG says that when they took over the stocking program in 1945, stocking had been ongoing many years prior to that and should be considered exempt from environmental review because it was in place years before environmental laws were put in place to protect other species.

CDFG said they had started an impact study last year and they are working on completing it.

Tom Remington

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials, along with the U.S. Forest Service and California Fish and Game personnel, want to save the endangered Paiute cutthroat trout. To do this, they are, for the fifth year, proposing to kill off all non-native fish in a remote area of the Sierra Mountains south of Lake Tahoe.

Each year the officials have tried to do this, opponents have been successful in putting a stop to it. The opposition says using chemicals to remove the other species of fish harms the environment and kills other aquatic wildlife. Last year in a last minute ruling, the effort was called off.

This year officials say they are better prepared after spending a mere $125,000 to prepare an environmental impact study showing that the proceedures they are attempting are safe.

For more on the fish and where the event will occur, go here.

Tom Remington

California fishermen have gone mad for sturgeon, as this one report tells. The spring run-off has forced the fish into the bays and they’re hungry. Sturgeon are jumping into boats, they’re so hungry…….well not really.

Sturgeon are loaded with mercury as reports go because they are bottom feeders and well, you know how the story goes. Sturgeon is good eating.

Let’s crank our clocks, no let’s make that our calendars, back a few years to 1973. I was stationed at Mare Island Naval Base in Vallejo, California. My next door neighbor existed for one reason and only one reason – to fish. I think he believed that God created fish just for him. He also had a passion for sturgeon. I remember him saying he would pass up the thickest, juiciest, filet mignon for a sturgeon steak…….whatever!

Loving to fish was an understatement and he knew that I got home from school around 3 in the afternoon. Shortly thereafter, a knock would come on my back door and soon we where headed for the back bay – San Francisco bay actually, to catch stripers.

I would always laugh because we stopped at the local bait shop and usually we would pick up a pound or two of fresh shrimp from Wiscasset, Maine (Maine was my home state).
I’ve never laid eyes on a sturgeon before but I was in for a treat this day. We geared up for striped bass fishing and was having a good time when my neighbor hooked onto a sturgeon. He was as surprised as I was. All the while he was fighting the fish, he kept saying to me, “You’re going to have to help me! You’re going to have to help me!”

I said, “Sure, thing! I’ll grab the net.”

Nets aren’t much good for landing a sturgeon. Little did I know, actually, nothing did I know. He told me when he got the fish in close to shore, he would hand me the rod and tell me what to do as he attempted to land the beast.

As I said before, I’d never seen one of these creatures and was I in for a treat or surprise. The fish has little rigid hook-like barbs covering much of the back. Usually fishing for sturgeon is done with steel leader so the barbs won’t cut the line.

He kept telling me he’d never get the fish in because it would cut the line. Oh, and did I mention you need a gaff hook to land these things?

I took his rod and followed his instructions and as quik as a wink, he jumped into the bay trying to log roll this fish onto shore without getting cut. Somehow he succeeded and came out looking like he had been attacked by razor wire. His love of the fish overwhelmed any common sense. This is when I realized that there are fishermen and then there are people like him.

Below is a pic of a couple of young sturgeon.

Tom Remington

There has always been debate about the pros and cons of stocking fish. There are those who believe cross breeding of native fish with stock fish will weaken the genes and make for a fish with less natural ability to survive in the wild. Some think stocking of fish in waters reduces the natural occurance of spawning.

Whatever your beliefs about fish stocking, the driving force behind it is really economics. Fishermen buy licenses. That money goes toward managing the species and to get people to buy a fishing license, they need to be able to catch fish. But how far do we go?

Out in California, in Nevada County to be exact, there is talk about stocking some of the waters there with hatchery-raised Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, a species of trout the grows up to 20-30 lbs, is a protected species and is know to carry a deadly bacterial kidney disease.

The idea behind the stocking is to re-introduce the species back into the wild in hopes that it will survive and provide anglers more fishing opportunities. If this were done and the fish infected the other species, it could wipe out several popular game fish like lake, brook and rainbow trout and Kokanee salmon.

A decision should be reached soon as to whether this will happen but it won’t come without some vocal opposition from many who are against this idea.

Tom Remington