The emergency meeting to discuss potential area closures and restrictions on angling has been postponed until this Wednesday, April 15th, at 10AM.
The prior “virtual” meeting was inundated with visitors and participants and swamped the conference capabilities, so it is assumed this new date is more robust and can handle additional folks. The announcement and documentation links follow:
The Commission is rescheduling to April 15, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. the emergency agenda item to consider a regulation that allows the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to suspend, delay, or restrict sport/recreational fishing in specific areas within the state due to public health concerns relating to COVID-19. This regulation would automatically expire May 31, 2020.
The regulation allows for a temporary, adaptive approach to delay or restrict sport fishing based on local government and tribal needs and requests to protect public health and safety from the spread of COVID-19. The regulation itself would not implement any restrictions, but would allow for a tailored approach based on state, federal, tribal and local public health and safety needs and guidance. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has received requests from certain counties, which can be found in the materials at the link below.
We thank the angling community and all our stakeholders in advance for their thoughtful engagement as we work together to help California in this moment.
The relevant documents previously posted for this item are available at http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=178208&inline.
Alpine, Inyo, and Mono counties will have the trout opener delayed based on the decisions made at this meeting. Here is the link to the DFG’s website and announcement.
https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2020/04/15/california-fish-and-game-commission-meets-remotely-allows-cdfw-to-temporarily-delay-restrict-or-suspend-fisheries-where-needed-to-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus/