Bass Fishing Forum - Westernbass.com

You might wish you had as much power to affect the environment and the economy as the delta smelt.

Enemies have blamed the tiny freshwater fish for putting farmers out of business across California’s breadbasket, forcing the fallowing of vast acres of arable land, creating double-digit unemployment in agricultural counties, even clouding the judgment of scientists and judges.

During the presidential campaign, the lowly smelt turned up in Donald Trump’s gunsights, when he repeated California farmers’ claim that the government was taking their water supply and “shoving it out to sea...to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

The delta smelt is on the brink of extinction. This species...has fallen to the point where it can hardly be found anymore.
— Doug Obegi, Natural Resources Defense Council

But the delta smelt couldn’t be as powerful as all that. The latest California fish population survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which along with San Francisco Bay is the species’ only habitat, turned up only two delta smelt in four months of trawling from September through December. That’s the lowest count since 1967, and a far cry from the peak of 1,673 in 1970. The count is especially worrisome because it came after a wet year, when higher water flows in the delta should have led to some recovery in the numbers.

Read the rest and see the vid http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik ... story.html

Well...the explanation is quite simple. We continue to export more water and treat our rivers as conduits and disposals. Until that changes...
Its kinda like the state budget...if you spend more than you bring in, eventually the accounts empty.

Folks...the delta smelt are truly the canary in the mine. And for the record - not because of bass.

this article says they only found 2 by trawling. Is it possible that a 3" fish, might, just maybe be hiding in the expansive areas of shoreline grass that a trawl net can't get into? Maybe under the hyacinth patches? If I was pushing the agenda I guess I could skew the data to fit my narrative.

The only fish I want to see go extinct is the Moonbeam Fish.

Southern farmers have unlimited appetite to water from North. Instead of using contemporary methods of plants watering like it done in civilized countries with lack of water, they are using archaic ways evaporating a lot of water. Why not? Why to spent money for piping and drops irrigation? Much easier and cheaper to make deal with officials who easy diverting water to South. Kind of Water Welfare. That Welfare continues by years and always not enough. Nobody in California dying from hunger many years, so farmers just worry about their profits - not about overfeeding our population. So, why year by year they are screaming about lack of water? For wasting water and packing pockets?

ING , can you explain or give details on this "archaic" way of irrigation?