The Fly Fishing Show (in San Rafael last year) will be held February 23rd to 25th in the Young California Building at the Alameda County Fairgrounds, Pleasanton. See www.flyfishingshow.com/pleasanton/ for more information.The NCCFFF Hall of Fame Banquet (the principal NCCFFF fund-raiser) will be held in the Palm Pavilion (adjacent to the Fly Fishing Show) on February 24th. See www.nccfff.org/ for more information. - Editor
* More Owens River
Wow! The flood gates opened recently on the Owens River near Independence, allowing the water to flow another 65 miles and re-watering Owens Lake. The water was diverted in 1913 and sent to what was then the little town of Los Angeles.
With the water, the little town grew into one of the biggest in the world.
For decades, when the wind blew along the dry riverbed, alkali dust filled the air in this magnificent part of the Owens Valley, dulling the views with the haze, obscuring the splendor of the majestic Sierra mountain backdrop. In addition, the airborne alkali dust was unhealthy and has made life even harder for people with asthma and other lung problems.
Restoring water flow to this part of the Owens River is a historic event. It's exciting to think about how much this is can enrich our own trips and fishouts to the Eastern Sierra. I can hardly wait to see and explore! - Elaine Cook
* Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act Passes Congress
On December 8, 2006, in the final hours of the 109th Congress passed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act. The bill keeps intact the existing 10-year rebuilding timeframe and adds in new protections against overfishing. It requires fishery managers to base all quotas on the advice of scientists and advances new limitations on "cap-and-trade" fishing permit programs. - Dougald Scott
* Pacific Fish Decline In Size By 45 Percent
A study produced by NMFS (Levin et al., Conservation Biology, 2006) shows that flatfish, rockfish, and sharks in Pacific Council-managed fisheries have declined in size by 45 percent. For example, an average flatfish caught in 2001 weighed only 57 percent of an average flatfish caught in 1980. Likewise, rockfish and sharks weighed 35 percent and 67 percent less respectively. The study also documents fundamental shifts in relative population sizes of fish species, showing, for example, that a 1977 survey was composed of 60 percent rockfish and 34 percent flatfish, whereas a 2001 survey found only 17 percent rockfish and 80 percent flatfish. The study's authors conclude that single-species management has failed and should be replaced by a multi-species approach, even though the authors pessimistically conclude that the identified "shifts in fish communities may affect the recovery of fishes, even after the implementation of severe fishing restrictions." A second study (Berkeley, Bulletin of Marine Science, 2006) concludes that status quo management of rockfish has failed and cannot restore healthy populations of rockfish.- Dougald Scott
* Midge Larvae Sensitive to Global Warming
New research suggests that changes in midge communities in some areas provide additional evidence that the globe is indeed getting warmer. Researchers gathered sediment from six small lakes in the Great Basin of the western United States with water ranging from 8 to 35 feet deep. Using microscopic examination of core samples, they determined the type of midges that lived in the lakes based on specific variations in head capsule anatomy. They found the upper layers of most of the sediment samples Ð those representing the last 25 to 30 years Ð contained head capsules from midges that normally thrive in slightly warmer water temperatures. Cooler-water midges had nearly, or completely, disappeared. - Dougald Scott