Salmon fishermen, faced with a shortened season and reduced quotas for kings, may be more likely to try their luck at bottom fishing. However there are probably few salmon fishermen who will make bottom fishing only trips with the kind of catch rates and fish sizes they expect. Most salmon fishermen regard salmon as being so much more superior to rockfish and lingcod that they won't bother to make the trip without the chance to fish for salmon. With the catch rates for bottomfish declining along with salmon, fishing effort looks to be declining also. Total effort estimates for 1992-93 in the Del Norte and Humboldt counties sportfish survey (Eureka) decreased about 20% to about 19,000 trips.
While the allure of salmon fishing prevents many fishermen from making bottom fishing only trips, many salmon fishermen do fish for rockfish after salmon fishing. Like any animal which tries to optimize predatory energy requirements with capture payoffs, salmon fishermen will opportunistically fish for other species, especially if salmon are not present. The hypothesis seems to be valid but supporting numbers are not yet present. Total catch numbers for both all fish and salmon only have decreased together with salmon only decreasing insignificantly more (1%). Catch rates for both have also decreased by about 15% to about 5.3 fish per day for all species.
Perhaps the numbers for 1994 will offer more for seeing a trend in species switching. Our next comparison may account for changes in length of the salmon season. With the approach of the salmon season opener for 1995 perhaps anglers who didn't go in 1993 will get that fishing bug and go bait and switch to bottomfishing after all.