A&E

The Pacific Coast Management Council has totaled up the Central valley returning salmon and the findings are somewhat conflicting. Returning adults totaled just 122,000 fish. This was far less that the projected escapement numbers of 377,000. However the Jack Salmon return was off the charts with an amazing (unbelievable) 70,000 2 year olds that made their way back to Central Valley Rivers. If the PFMC uses the previous model to project out the total number of salmon available for harvest, that number would be over 2 million fish available to catch and an all-time record. But before you get too giddy and go out and buy a new boat for the upcoming salmon season, I would caution you that the PFMC has been wildly in accurate as to their projections in the past. Also one of the problems believing these numbers is that last fall we didn't see any of those fish in our salmon sport catch. If there were truly millions of 1-2 year old fish swimming around one would certainly surmise that we would have caught a whole bunch of Shakers in August and September. But that didn't come to pass. There are many reasons to believe that the increased Jack count is a result of the trucking that was done last year to avoid the pumps and predators abut that has been ceased. I would be cautiously optimistic about our Ocean salmon season and hold off on buying that new boat just yet.

Caroline Casey, the host of KPFA's "Visionary Activist" show,

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