By Scott McBain
First, I would like to welcome our four new HASA board members (Dirk Pederson, Jed Douglas, Michael Davies-Hughes, and Eric Stockwell, see page 23), I hope they find it as enjoyable and reward-ing as I have. I also wanted to thank our outgoing board members (Pamlyn Milsap, Eric Justesen, Gene Morris, and Lonnie Dollarhide) for their service and contributions to HASA over the years, they have really helped make HASA more successful and effective. We have also added a new HASA salmon representative (Bob Smith, aka RBob, see page 16), who will continue to work closely with Jim Yar-nell and others on salmon fishery management issues. We owe a big thanks to Ben Doane for his role in representing HASA on fishery management issues, his contributions are greatly appreciated.
As summarized in this newsletter, there is a mixture of bad news and good news for the 2016 and future fishing seasons for North Coast anglers. There will be some changes coming in 2017/18 for our rockfish season and/or bag limits due to the need to reduce black rockfish harvest, yet there may be some additional opportunities for greater depths and retention of canary rockfish and petrale sole. Additional alloca-tion of Pacific halibut by the IPHC should improve our 2016 halibut season. Salmon fishing will be challenging for the next few years, and hopefully a benefit of the sub-stantial winter rains will be to help in the recovery of our anadromous fishery in the coming years.
As a reminder, the 2016 HASA banquet will be held on Saturday, April 30, 2016, 6:00-9:00 pm at the Arcata Community Center, 321 Martin Luther King Drive in Arcata (next to Health-Sport), so mark your calendars if you haven’t done so already. Tickets will soon be available at many outlets, from board members, or you can e-mail us at hasa6191@gmail.com to obtain tickets. The annual banquet provides nearly all of the resources for our annual operations, including representation at fishery management meetings, economic sur-veys, HSU research, and other efforts to support our saltwater angling opportunities, so please come and continue to support HASA’s efforts.
Lastly, we are attempting to improve our membership by providing two different ways for you to become a member. First, for $25, you can become a member and receive a HASA T-shirt, HASA sticker, and a HASA avatar on the Humboldt Tuna Club. Or you can become a member simply by filling in your name and address on the admission ticket for the HASA banquet in April, which will enter you into a drawing for the door prize, as well as HASA sticker and avatar on the Humboldt Tuna Club. Either way, your joining HASA is critical to improving our voice for representing North Coast salt-water anglers, which will be critically important in the coming years, Best of luck in the coming year!