Coastal Stripers....

[lee s.]

Aha!!!! it only makes sense that Stripers would still enter the Russian River. There's a ready food supply in the form of Salmon/Steelhead smolts released from the hatchery and returning fish in the fall....
Darian,
You have said a mouthful as to the mystery of our "disappearing" strippers on many of our river locations.......the disappearing numbers of natural foods. Just observe the decline in SHAD numbers and wild steelhead numbers. With the paltry number of hatchery smolts allowed to be released and the ever dwindling supply of shad, our strippers would starve if caught up in the Russian for a season. Of course, there are WAY plenty squawfish and suckers available to them.
.....lee s.

[Charlie S]

Lee, check your private messages.

[Darian]

I've received some requests for info about locations for surf fishing from friends and people on this BB. Found that a link to the California Records Project taken from Zen Fly Fishing website provides some photographic info about spots to be fished. Even tho outdated, it's useful:

http://www.californiacoastline.org/

This project contains photo's of the entire California coastline.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I think there was a lot more bait fish on the California coast about 100 years ago.......obviously.

When they introduced Stripers and American Shad in the late 1800s our ecosystem was pristine with tons of clean water and very few dams. I think the Stripers went crazy with all that food. To say noting of the millions of juvenile salmon.

I don't think there is much food along our coast now. The east coast has a larger shallow shelf and tons of bait fish.

About 60 years ago off the Santa Cruz pier we caught fish all day long. Now it's pretty bleak.....

From the logging, dams, sewage and Ag our rivers, bays and inshore is in pretty bad shape.

.

[Darian]

In addition to causes mentioned by Bill, nearly all of the valley watersheds and some coastal rivers/streams of this state have been/were impacted by hydraulic mining practices during the gold rush of the late 1800's/early 1900's when they were finally banned. All you have to do is look around at the lower sections of any valley and some coastal rivers to see the dredger tailings. Not so obvious is the volume of mercury remaining in those tailings (you can still pan up some mercury in lake Natomas). Placer mining still continues on the south side of the Yuba, today, altho it's contained/managed better than in the past.

The siltation from all of that took decades to wash down river. The landscape surrounding these operations and in stream habitat were altered permanently. All of this resulted in a major loss of anadromous/non-adromous fish in those areas during that time. Recovery took place over a lengthy period and, now, we seem to be contributing to the problem again.

[dpentoney]

I saw a five pound striper taken from Blake Riffle on the Klamath River in the early '70s.

[Darian]

I guess that proves that Stripers probably roam up from the Bay area and down the coast from Oregon. Wonder if there're any Stripers in the mouth of the Eel or Humboldt Bay???