Last week, California’s ocean recreational salmon fishing season closed for 2025. The recreational season lasted six days — after two fully closed seasons. California’s commercial fishing fleet has been unable to fish for three years.
Our state’s traditional treasured salmon fishing, stretching from Morro Bay to the Oregon border, is in danger as never before. It’s time for decisionmakers to change course.
Closed salmon runs mean closed tackle shops, and struggling motels, marinas and marine supply stores. Fishing communities, which should be bustling through a long fishing season, are becoming ghost towns. Our restaurants, markets and dinner tables are bare of delicious and healthful California salmon.
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When runs are healthy, California’s salmon fishing industry supports 23,000 jobs and $1.4 billion in economic activity.
Today, salmon fishing faces three grim threats.
The first is the ongoing collapse of salmon runs. The Sacramento fall-run Chinook has historically been the backbone of California salmon fishing. Today, that backbone is broken. The count of spawning fall-run in the Sacramento River has fallen 95% in 20 years. Other runs are in danger of extinction.
The cause is simple. During the last drought, irresponsible water management killed nearly all baby salmon in the Sacramento River. Too much water was delivered to a handful of Central Valley agricultural interests. This drained the cold water behind Shasta Dam. Predictably, during the fall spawning season, hot reservoir releases killed salmon eggs and juveniles.
When you kill nearly all the baby salmon, a few years later there are too few adult salmon to support a healthy fishery. Similar actions killed off other runs. California salmon have survived droughts for millennia. This is a human-caused disaster.
The second threat comes from the Trump administration and Congress, which are preparing to slash federal protections for salmon, raise Shasta Dam and grab even more water that salmon need.
The third threat will surprise some. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is aggressively pushing salmon-killing projects: the massive Delta tunnel, the proposed Sites Reservoir and the innocuous sounding — but deadly — Bay-Delta Voluntary Agreements.
The Delta tunnel — 40 miles long and 36 feet in diameter — and Sites Reservoir would pump even more Sacramento River water, further harming salmon. The voluntary agreements are more subtle.
They are a proposal to the State Water Board from the governor’s Department of Water Resources and water users, which pledge to support ongoing habitat restoration and to provide a small amount of additional water for the environment as a substitute for science-based limits on diversions to protect the Bay-Delta ecosystem and salmon.
Worse, the voluntary agreements would eliminate State Water Board limits on diversions by new water projects. The Department of Water Resources admits that the voluntary agreements would double the amount of water the Delta tunnel could pump – with disastrous impacts.
The voluntary agreements would cost state and federal taxpayers $2.2 billion, with most of that money going to the water users behind the scheme. This is a proposal to devastate salmon runs and fishing jobs — paid for by taxpayers. This is a multi-billion-dollar scam.
Earlier this month, Newsom asked the state Legislature to rewrite state law to push the Delta tunnel through and to eliminate a requirement for an environmental analysis of the voluntary agreements. We thank the Legislature for rejected these proposals.
We urge the governor to change course. Newsom is standing up to President Trump in other areas. We urge the governor to also defend our precious salmon and fishing jobs from federal attacks and to work with our industry to restore California’s once-mighty salmon runs.
Today, our industry is fighting for survival. California can turn this decline around with quick action. Gov. Newsom, we need your help.
Scott Artis is the executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, which represents the California salmon fishing industry.