Heading into last weekend’s long-awaited chinook salmon fishing opener, Willy Vogler was ready for chaos. After a two-year shutdown, anglers across the California coast were eager for the return of recreational fishing—though only for two tightly regulated days.
“Everybody was worried the launch ramps would be a total madhouse,” said Mr. Vogler, who runs the campground at Lawson’s Landing in Dillon Beach and writes a popular fishing blog. “And it was busy, no doubt, but not insane.”
Coastal salmon fishing was banned in 2023 and 2024 to help the population recover after years of declines. While commercial fishing remains canceled, regulators allowed a limited recreational season on certain dates and with firm quotas.
Roughly 25 boats launched from Lawson’s Landing over the course of the weekend. “A lot of people have either aged out or just given up and sold their boats,” Mr. Vogler said.
On Sunday, he spent a few hours trolling near Bodega Head, where he counted over 100 vessels in just a few square miles. He released three undersized fish while his son, Gage, managed to catch one keeper. Under state regulations, anglers can keep two chinook a day, provided they are at least 20 inches long.
The California Fish and Game Commission split the season into two narrow windows, allowing for a statewide harvest of 7,000 fish in June and another 7,500 in the fall. If the quota wasn’t met last weekend, the season could reopen on a handful of dates in July and August. While officials are still tallying catch totals, based on early reports, Mr. Vogler suspects anglers came close enough to the limit to preclude another summer weekend.
By 9:45 a.m. on Saturday, two charter boats operated by California Dawn Sportfishing had landed 118 fish. Farther south, off the coast of Bolinas, commercial fisherman Josh Churchman counted more than 100 vessels crowding the waters between Muir Beach and Duxbury Reef.
“There’s definitely salmon fever,” Mr. Churchman said. “Everybody and their brother was out there.”
He caught two fish on Sunday, and later that night, he prepared one simply, with lemon and butter. His preferred method is more elaborate: grilled over moderate heat, the pink flesh brushed in oil, hoisin sauce and chopped garlic. As the sauce drips into the flames, he covers the grill to trap the smoke. “Just before it’s done, I add a pat of butter,” he said. “I’m salivating right now just thinking about it.”
Though Mr. Churchman found luck near shore in his 17-foot Boston Whaler, he said the real action was farther out, near the Farallones.
Don Murch, a lifelong fisherman, made the hour-long run to the South Islands. The water was glassy, the sky a radiant cerulean. And the mood, he said, was one rarely felt by fishermen in recent years: hopeful. The sea was thick with krill, and murres and auklets dove in synchronized spirals. He counted about 40 humpback whales breaching nearby. “The ocean was alive,” he said.
His boat of four hit their limit within an hour. “My son and I were just reminiscing,” he said. “There was a time when catching eight salmon in a day wasn’t unusual. We hadn’t done that in 15, maybe 20 years.”
The reopening of sport salmon fishing offered little solace to commercial fishermen, many of whom have gone three years without income from the state’s most prized catch. Chinook—also called king salmon for their high fat content and buttery taste—command the highest price of any Pacific salmon.
In 1980, California’s salmon fleet numbered close to 4,800 boats. By 2022, only 464 remained. Today, that number is even smaller.
Fall-run chinook are the most robust of the state’s remaining salmon runs, but even their numbers have collapsed. In 2022, fewer than 70,000 returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries—among the lowest counts on record. Last year, the number barely topped 99,000.
The limited season is an attempt to strike a balance, said Emma Keller, an environmental scientist with Fish and Wildlife. “We still wanted to provide some opportunity,” she said. “There’s enough wiggle room to allocate 7,000 chinook now and 7,500 in the fall.”
Salmon are anadromous. Born in freshwater, the juveniles, called smolt, migrate hundreds of miles downstream and out to sea before returning three years later to lay eggs in the gravel beds of their natal inland rivers. After spawning, they die where they were born.
For decades, government-run hatcheries in the Central Valley have reared and released millions of juvenile salmon each year to help boost numbers.
“If it wasn’t for the hatcheries, we wouldn’t have any salmon,” Mr. Churchman said. “But it’s a shadow of what it was like before.”
Biologists say populations have declined due to a confluence of factors, including heavily engineered waterways and the supercharged heat and prolonged drought that come with climate change. Though recent winters have been wet, the salmon now in the ocean were born in 2022—a year that capped the driest three-year period in state history.
Mr. Churchman retired from commercial fishing in 2020, selling his permit to Willie Norton, a 25-year-old fisherman from Bolinas. “It’s a younger man’s game,” Mr. Churchman said. “You’re out for five, six days straight, come in to unload, grab groceries, and go right back out. My days of doing that are over.”
Mr. Norton found some success early on, but with back-to-back closures, he’s now considering laying down his rod and reel for good. “Salmon fishing was my bread and butter,” Mr. Norton said.
Last year, Rep. Jared Huffman helped secure $20.6 million in federal aid for those impacted by the 2023 closure, but fishermen like Mr. Norton have yet to see those funds.
He believes the state’s ban on commercial salmon fishing is overly blunt. Small-scale rod-and-reel fishermen like himself face the same restrictions as large commercial trollers operating on an entirely different scale.
“Right now, there’s no distinction,” he said. “And that’s killing us.”