A&E

This has got to be the strangest Steelhead season I can ever remember. Back in the 70’s when the “D” word was a common topic at the dinner table I was only fishing in the salt water. My understanding was that the fishing was horrible. There was no hatchery program and the river was a dessert. Then in 1983 Warm Springs Dam was finished and along with it the Hatchery to provide angler mitigation for the loss of habitat and subsequent loss of fish. Since then, we have had rainfalls sufficient to fill the reservoirs and the hatchery has filled the rivers with Steelhead. Often our biggest problem was having too much rain and not having it rain long enough so the rivers would clear so we could fish.

At the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last Tuesday, I chaired a program on Food Addiction. The panel included doctors, clinicians, and scientists from all over the country and Canada. It was an incredible event and everyone learned so much; the physical elements of food addiction such as dopamine release, (ah, pleasure…) the correlation of fats/salt and sugar to food addiction, and certainly the psychology behind food addiction were so interesting. Then there are policy implications by acknowledging food addiction as ‘real’ –a program in itself.  

There is lots going on in the gardening world during March and April. So get ready! Find your gloves and sharpen up your shovels and trowels! March 20 not only features the first day of spring, but also our local California Native Plant Society’s March program! Eliza Shepard will discuss her work on a “Locally Rare Plant Project.” Folks may bring photos of plants they believe should be included as rare plants.

The number of degrees that separate planets form each other is

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.