Photo by Ron Sinfelt

Things are looking up -- if only slightly -- for the majority of Golden State trout anglers. The big news is that at last the state of California has a budget with which it can work, which, among other things, brought an apparent end to a lot of nervous hand wringing over the future of California’s fisheries resources.

For the Department of Fish and Game, there are cuts in many areas, but there’s also hope of hiring staff to fill vacant positions, and some funds are being obtained from various federal programs.

More specific to trout fishing is that the state’s hatchery program survived through the political maneuverings of Sacramento, and funding is in place for a fair production run of fish for statewide stocking in 2005. As with just about every other state program, the hatchery system didn’t escape the budget process completely unscathed. Statewide hatchery manager Chuck Knutson said he has 18 percent less money to work with this year than in 2004, but an 18 percent cutback is far from the disaster most observers anticipated just one year ago.

In the long term, however, the operation of the state’s trout hatcheries remains in question. An attempt to provide more funding for hatchery operations by earmarking more of the license fee monies to directly support hatcheries was shelved after several so-called trout fishing organizations testified against the hatchery system. Their catch phrase was that allocating a specific amount to hatchery operations limited the flexibility of fishery managers. In truth, they are opposed to hatchery-supported sport fishing in general, and used this as an excuse to make sure most of California’s trout anglers won’t get their money’s worth.

This probably comes as a big surprise to many of the state’s trout fishermen, who assumed that their license fees went to fishing programs, and probably also thought national and statewide trout organizations had their best interests at heart. Sadly, that’s not the case. For many years, license fees got dumped into programs that have nothing to do with trout fishing, and politically connected organizations have demonstrated a propensity for holding dear to ideology that is far left of center. Among them is an all-out assault on the state’s hatchery trout system. They think that everybody should fish for wild fish, no matter what the circumstance. They’re quite wrong of course, but they have clout.

One important ongoing program that delivers lots of winter trout to urban waters is the DFG’s Fishing in the City Program. This is still up and running well despite the budget woes of the past couple of years, and looks to continue well into the future. For more information on this, including recent planting information, see the DFG Web site listed at the end of this article.

Overall, most trout anglers will still have a chance to take part in local family fishing trips to the Eastern Sierra or the rivers and lakes of Northern California to catch a few trout. Even dry Southern California has its fair share of quality trout waters. We’ve broken down the state by major areas, starting at the northern end.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Overall, Northern California has fared much better than Southern California. The best stream fishing, at least from the DFG standpoint, is the restored upper Sacramento River. The main problem area has been the northeast corner of the state where a number of isolated reservoirs that normally produce fantastic trout angling in wet years have been reduced to mere puddles in the last couple of years. This is especially true of the so-called "alphabet reservoirs" near Alturas. Check with Modoc National Forest or fishing Web sites before you head for these waters this spring.