FISHERMEN FIGHTING BIG UPSTREAM BATTLE.

Byline: Tom Stienstra San Francisco Examiner 

Hundreds of fishermen will protest at hearings this week the ordered reduction in the salmon catch off the San Francisco Bay Area coast, but the only opinion that counts belongs to Hilda Diaz-Soltero. And Diaz-Soltero, regional director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, already has ordered a 50-percent cutback.

Because Bay Area anglers were largely blindsided by the order made a few weeks ago by Diaz-Soltero, they are lining up to argue against it at a meeting to be held through Friday here.

According to an insider in NMFS, the arguments are irrelevant because there is no debate over the order to reduce catches by 50 percent - only how it will be implemented.

That has sport anglers, party-boat skippers and commercial fishermen lining up to howl their protests. Even though the ocean is now full of salmon and last year was a record season, Diaz-Soltero is enforcing a provision of the Endangered Species Act that says she can order widespread cuts to protect even one endangered fish that might be caught by accident. That is what has been ordered, a 50-percent cutback in the abundant fall-run salmon because of the chance that some endangered winter-run salmon might be caught by accident.

``The Biological Opinion concludes that salmon fisheries are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of Sacramento River winter chinook,'' wrote Diaz-Soltero in a letter. ``The National Marine Fisheries Service must reduce the incidental harvest of winter-run chinook by a minimum of 50 percent.''

This order came as a complete shock last month to the fishing industry, which is claiming that the decline in winter-run salmon is not a result of overfishing but of government water projects that have destroyed spawning habitat.

Proposals include shutting down all fishing in early June, raising the sport-catch minimum-size limit from 20 inches to 26 inches, closing much of the Bay Area coast to all salmon fishing, or a combination of these.

``This is a pretty hard pill to swallow when the people that I represent come off one of the most productive years in history and then are told that our season may be cut in half,'' said Roger Thomas, president of the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association.

``There are many unresolved problems facing the winter-run chinook in their inland habitat, such as 400 unscreened water diversions in the Sacramento River, 2,000 unscreened diversions in the Delta, and direct and indirect losses caused by the Delta pumps and reverse flows,'' Thomas said.

According to a strategy developed by sport and commercial leaders, speakers at this week's meetings will focus on five points:

Eliminating salmon fishing for half the season will do nothing to stop the decline in winter-run salmon.

The real problem is the operation of water projects. For instance, in 1993, irrigation pumps killed 900 winter-run salmon, while the ocean sport fishery accidentally caught two.

The federal government's own review team states, ``The documents lack the clarity and technical rigor necessary to serve as a defensible basis for the management changes proposed for ocean fisheries.''

Winter-run salmon are already off limits to fishing because of previous significant reductions in the season and area closures.

Shutting down 50 percent of the entire ocean salmon season will have an enormous economic impact on ports, bait and tackle shops, fishermen, hotels and restaurants.