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The St. Helena High School Fishing Club had a successful day on San Pablo Bay aboard the Predator. Club members include, from left, Luis Galeano, Dakota Laurent, Jenna Bauer, Crystal Nunez, Jessica Wiig, Brandon Burgess and Kai Blasingame.
During the St. Helena High School Fishing Club’s latest outing, SHHS junior Dakota Laurent shows the 42-inch leopard shark he caught and released.
Evan Blasingame, faculty advisor of the St. Helena High School Fishing Club, reported that the group had an outstanding day of shark fishing with Mike Andrews on the Predator in San Pablo Bay last month.
It was non-stop action for much of the day and everyone caught multiple fish, including several leopard sharks, a sevengill shark, and two bat rays.
The club exists to introduce youth to fishing and conservation. People interested in supporting it can contact Blasingame at eblasingame@sthelenaunifed.org.
During the final week of the ocean salmon season, the Lovely Martha ran north to the Marin coast to put limits in the box for its seven anglers to 24 pounds. When the weather cooperates, the fleet is still landing limits of quality rockfish.
The recreational crab season will open this weekend. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has banned the use of crab traps for a few more weeks because the risk of whale entanglement, but hoop nets will be allowed.
Pat Fetzer of St. Helena fished with AC Fly Fishing out of Redding, where they drifted the lower Sacramento River for limits of rainbow trout.
The Napa River Striper bite remains strong for both lure and bait anglers. While most fish are small, limits are common.
Opening day of duck season
My duck club in the Yolo Bypass was sold last year to the Los Angles Water district for the water rights, so our usual hunting spot was no longer.
We hunted Clear Lake for many years and decided to give it a try again. We arrived at 5 a.m. and found the lake to be very low and difficult to launch at the county park in Kelseyville. The forecast was for winds of 10-20 mph, which is good for waterfowl hunting. We drove the boat a half-mile to our usual spot, only to find some other hunters had grabbed it. We hunted until noon and managed four ducks and three cackling geese. The highlight of the day was a banded Northern Shoveler, which had been banded at Summer Lake, Oregon in August. What makes this so unusual is that I bagged a mallard five years ago that had been banded in the same spot by the same biologist.
Recent research has established that very few juvenile Chinook salmon survive the migration from their birthplace in California’s Central Valley tributaries, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and out to the Pacific Ocean.
Records from rotary screw traps on the Stanislaus and Tuolumne rivers show that most young salmon do not even make it as far as the San Joaquin River, still hundreds of miles away from the Golden Gate Bridge. Numerous elements contribute to the low survival of juvenile salmonids, including habitat alteration, pesticide pollution, and predation by non-native fish.
Most ongoing restoration efforts attempt to lessen the burdens that juvenile salmon face by improving their rearing habitat, controlling pollution, and adjusting river flows. Despite these restoration efforts, juvenile salmon abundance and survival have continued to decline. Reducing interactions between juvenile salmon and non-native predators could prove to be an effective restoration approach, but achieving this can be remarkably difficult.
Bulk sampling in the Napa River
Napa Research Conservation District staff are wrapping up Year 2 of a six-year project in the Napa River Watershed focused on monitoring water quality through bulk sediment sampling. This effort supports compliance with the Vineyard General Permit issued by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Staff from the RCD went out on foot and in kayaks during the rainy season in 2021 and surveyed where they thought the sampling should occur. They needed to find sites that fill certain criteria, such as:
* Are they in the range of steelhead or Chinook?
* Does the area contain potential salmonid spawning habitat?
* Is it accessible for staff?
* Is the landowner willing to grant access?
This year, Napa RCD environmental scientist Paul Martin went out to the sites to make sure they were suitable and met the criteria. He then dug sediment samples out of the dry riverbed and a nearby dry area. The dirt was placed on tarps to dry completely for several days before they worked the material through a series of seven sieves that get finer and finer.
Each of the different sizes of sediments, from each of the sieves, were then weighed in the field. The smallest sediments collected were sent to a lab for further analysis. At the lab, the finest sediments were sieved but into much smaller sizes, ranging from 5.6 millimeters all the way down to less than 1 millimeter.
Napa RCD developed the monitoring plan in tandem with the water board for the Napa River and Sonoma Creek watersheds. This work is part of the Vineyard General Permit, which outlines Total Maximum Daily Loads of sediments that can be released into the Napa River watershed. The idea is to evaluate the condition of the streambed in areas that provide spawning habitat for steelhead and/or Chinook salmon. The Napa and Sonoma County farm bureaus are coordinating this group water quality monitoring program on behalf of all vineyard owners within the two watersheds.
By doing this bulk sediment sampling for two years, a baseline is established of what the sediments look like in different sections of the Napa River Watershed. The monitoring ceases for four years to allow sediment supply reduction efforts to take effect and hopefully prevent soil erosion and sediment delivery to streams. Time is needed for high flows during several rainy seasons to transport and sort sediments.
This data will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of Vineyard Best Management Practices in reducing sediments released into the Napa River. If the sediment levels are found to be rising even with the best practices in place, the water board will impose stricter regulations to protect the spawning habitat of steelhead and Chinook salmon.
Fishermen plead not guilty to felony charges in tournament cheating scandal
A pair of competitive fishermen were flagged by suspicious tournament officials after allegedly putting lead weights and fish fillets in their catch. They pled not guilty to criminal charges on Wednesday.
According to authorities, the two men had participated in the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Tournament in Cleveland on Sept. 30, where anglers competed to see who could catch the heaviest walleye fish. The tournament’s director, Jason Fischer, became suspicious when he noticed their walleyes weighed in far more than expected. In total, 10 weights were found inside the walleyes; eight of these weighed 12 ounces and two weighed 8 ounces. The pair had also stuffed walleye fillets inside the fish.
Had the two men won the tournament, they would have received $28,760.
The prosecutor’s office stated that the felony charges are punishable by up to 12 months in prison, and the misdemeanor offense by up to 30 days in jail. A conviction could also result in an indefinite suspension of their fishing licenses.
Who knew fishing could be a felony?
Brent Randol can be reached at brentrandol@comcast.net or 707-481-3319.
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ST. HELENA — The St. Helena High School Athletic Hall of Fame is continuing its legacy while in the process of adding to it.
It’s been a big year for Ira C. Smith, the sports director for Napa radio stations KVON-1440 AM and KVYN-99.3 FM.
Prolific Prep of Napa Christian, an elite boys basketball program, hosted Western Canada Prep Academy on Saturday afternoon and will play agai…
Brent Randol writes about people and topics related to outdoors in the Napa Valley.
ANGWIN — The Pacific Union College volleyball team won every other match this season, finishing 7-8 overall and 5-4 in the Small Schools Bridg…
Brent Randol writes about people and topics related to outdoors in the Napa Valley.
Erik Zaidel, who spent five seasons at St. Helena High, three as the varsity head coach, and guided the Saints to back-to-back CIF North Coast Section Class A titles in 1979-80 and 1980-81, will be one of five inductees into the St. Helena High Athletic Hall of Fame on Oct. 29 at the Native Sons Hall.
The St. Helena High School Fishing Club had a successful day on San Pablo Bay aboard the Predator. Club members include, from left, Luis Galeano, Dakota Laurent, Jenna Bauer, Crystal Nunez, Jessica Wiig, Brandon Burgess and Kai Blasingame.
During the St. Helena High School Fishing Club’s latest outing, SHHS junior Dakota Laurent shows the 42-inch leopard shark he caught and released.
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