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9/25/03 Recreational salmon fishing off Noyo really slowed down last week, and it seems that the commercial fleet has moved toward greener pastures as well. The Noyo party boat fleet has been focusing mostly on rockfish trips, but after Labor Day the crowds really thin out. Those six months of closures in the first part of the year hurt these businesses badly. Saturday is a free fishing day. Give it a try without paying the governor. No license needed. The Saturday Night Fish Fry is shaping up nicely. Come down to North Harbor Drive on October 18th, from 4pm til 8pm for some of the finest and freshest fish & chips you ever had. It's a benefit for the Recreational Fishing Alliance; $15 donation requested - if you're already an RFA member it's $10. The Coastside lawsuit versus the DFG is proceeding, and even though any decision in the case will come too late to make any difference this year, key issues must be resolved for the future. One of them is the state's responsibility for managing its marine resources, and where federal management authority begins and ends. Coastside President Bob Franko, along with RFA state chairman Randy Fry and Coastside Political Director Tom Mattusch are getting ready to drive down to San Luis Obispo to attend the trial on Tuesday so I should have more to report next week. A while back I wrote about the French documentary *Uncle Saddam* in which it was reported that Saddam Hussein used to go fishing - with hand grenades - in his private moats. Now comes information, provided to me by the Confidential's anti-terrorism desk, about Osama Bin Laden and his one-eyed sidekick, Mullah Omar. "Omar lives in a large, new house on the western outskirts of Kandahar that Bin Laden built for him. Three years ago, many experts believe, Bin Laden funded the successful Taliban campaign to capture Kabul. The two go fishing together - some say with hand grenades - in lakes in the hills near the city." (From a 2002 report in UK's Guardian newspaper.) Is there a pattern here? The Department of Fish & Game has released its report on the 3-year battle to eradicate northern pike from Lake Davis in Plumas County. If the pike establish themselves in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems, they will devastate the salmon runs. Pike infestation in Alaska has been a serious problem. DFG has been trying everything from chemicals to explosives and traps. Rumors that Saddam and Osama are being held in a bunker underneath the Department's Sacramento office as a "final solution" to the Lake Davis pike problem are completely untrue. Santa Cruz fisherman Karl Jacobsen tells me that the cotton-ball test I described last week, as an example of overzealous DFG enforcement, is really an "urban coastal legend." And come to think of it, it may not have been the Maoris, but a culture in Papua New Guinea, that went fishing with the men in the boat, and the women in the water, pushing. To tell the truth, I'm not really three feet taller than my wife, either. What do you expect? All this, and accuracy, too? Got a fishing report, story, recipe, or a comment? Email me at jim@noyoharborconfdential.com or call 707-964-8326. |