Salmon Recovery – A look back at Mike McHenry, Salmon Activist and Mentor
Mike D. McHenry, Passed away in 2021 but he lives on in other salmon activists
Click Here for a letter sent to NCGASA President James Stone from Mike McHenry in 2019: Solution To West Coast Salmon Decline
NCGASA President James Stone (right) with Mike McHenry (above with glasses) in 2016 at a Farm Bureau meeting with Bob Boucke from Johnson’s Bait and Tackle (bottom left) and Patrick Kittle from Kittle’s Outdoor and Sport store (top left).
Mike McHenry’s background story: As the story was told, Victor McHenry, an airline pilot at Pan Am Airlines, had a boat that had sunk on its mooring in Pillar Point harbor. He told his son Mike one day. “You can have that boat if you want to re-float it.”
That was enough for Mike to hear. He there began his fishing career at the age of 15, fishing in the summers until he graduated from Half Moon Bay High School in 1961. After that, he went full-time on the water. Prior to all this, he was a daily fixture on Romeo’s pier with a fishing pole.
“Mike was a great kid, always fishing from the pier and helping us unload or whatever. Then later, he had the little GG. He’d go down to Three Rocks every day and come in with that boat loaded with ling cod.” Said John Koepf, several years senior and a retired abalone diver.
In 1965 Mike bought the F/V Pescadero and continued his career, now as a salmon fisherman. When his abilities outgrew that boat, he built the Merva W and launched her in 1971, the legendary “blue boat.”
She was a steel 63 foot salmon/crab/albacore fishing boat. He made a name for himself throughout coastal California and Oregon as a fun-loving Irishman and a salmon fisherman extraordinaire. Fisherman were drawn to him as a natural leader and he developed a following of these fishermen he led, nicknamed “the Z Squad”. Click Here for Z Squad Youtube Video.
In the early eighties he pioneered the squid fishery in Half Moon Bay, and he was the first fisherman to send truckloads of squid to market from the waters of Half Moon Bay. The iconic blue boat was by then synonymous with the harbor at Pillar Point and even those that never met Mike felt his presence in the community.
Mike was called upon to refloat a boat once again in 1985 when he sunk the Merva W with too many squid.
“Squid ink you, then sometimes, squid sink you.” Said McHenry at the time.
However, this was not to be the end of the boat that Mike had built and named after his mother. He re-floated her and towed her back to the harbor, where Mike began to tirelessly rebuild the Merva W over the next nine months. Then, the iconic blue boat was born again and continued to deliver millions of pounds of seafood until Mike decided to retire in 2015. Mike was ready to handoff the boat to his son Porter, but not before he made the Merva W unsinkable by sponsoring the boat with air chambers. He was not about to chance another sinking of the blue boat at the hand of his son. The Merva W left the shipyard in Richmond born yet again by Mike’s hands, and better than ever. He retired with his wife and partner, Kim, to their Old Crow Farms in Maxwell, California.
Salmon Recovery
Throughout Mike’s long career, he recognized that it was not enough to just catch fish, it was necessary to lobby for fishermen and to steward the resource. He spoke in front of the California Fish and Game Commission on numerous occasions, and you could hardly find one game warden or official who did not know his name. For his activism and dedication to a lifetime of fishery issues, he was awarded the “Highliner of the Year” Award in 2012 by the Pacific States Marine Commission.
But perhaps his greatest achievement was his contribution to the salmon resource. Mike brought the idea of creating the “Salmon Stamp” to the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, to their directors meeting in Sausalito in 1979. Charlie Fullerton, Director of the CDFG, was present at that meeting and he liked the idea of commercial fisherman taxing themselves to help propagate the resource.
- Click Here to download a oral history of Fullton’s time at CDFW.
Soon thereafter, the salmon stamp was born into existence along with a stamp committee to oversee its one objective; to raise more salmon.
Raising salmon to smolt-size and trucking them past the Delta was wildly successful.
Four years after its inception, California had the record year for landings in 1988 and fishermen enjoyed 25 years of salmon abundance thereafter. The 300% increase of the ocean abundance of salmon was all due to the raising and trucking of smolt size salmon.
When the trucking of smolts bogged down in bureaucratic and ideological missteps decades later, Mike stepped in and took the Merva W up the Sacramento River and loaded it with salmon smolts for the next consecutive 6 years, barged them down to the Golden Gate in the Merva W and released them.
He personally showed the Department of Fish and Wildlife how to save the salmon from extinction. Click here for CDFW’s Pilot Study report 2021.
NCGASA president James Stone said, “Mike’s barging stories are what motivated me to get more involved in salmon advocacy. He showed me that good people can try and do good things. Mike had a rice farm in Colusa County right near Delevan National Wildlife Refuge so he understood the farming aspect too.”
Mokelumne GM Bill Smith works with the Merva W crew.
Click HERE for Facebook photo gallery.
Mike McHenry lost a long battle with prostate cancer in 2021. Upon his death, he only wished that people might privately raise a glass and toast him when he was gone. Obit Link 1: Click Here and Obit Link 2: Click Here
To the people who were involved in the “Salmon Barging,” restoration project, thank you to East Bay Municipal Utility District for funding the Mokelumne River Hatchery. Click Here for a 2017 salmon barging video.
Thanks to Bill Smith, the General Manager of the Mokelumne Salmon Hatchery at the time, Dennis Carlin and the Coleman National Fish Hatchery Staff. There was also a 3-year study done with smolts from the Feather River Hatchery.
Also the Sausalito Army Corps of Engineers for their dock and assistance, as well as Kari Burr of the ‘Fishery Foundation’ who handled “Group 2 of 3” in the salmon barging project as well as many of the other salmon net pens around the Bay and Delta. Many others deserve thanks … their devotion is appreciated and necessary to the success of instituting salmon barging on the Sacramento River.
Click here for CDFW’s Pilot Evaluation of Barging Hatchery-Origin Juvenile Salmon from the California Central Valley through the Bay-Delta, 2021-2022
Click Here for the California Barging & Salmon Restoration Facebook page.
Articles and videos about McHenry and salmon barging
- Seattle Times | Swim to the sea, salmon take a California cruise. Click Here
- YouTube Video by Rob Tillitz Imagery of the Salmon Barging Program: Click Here
- YouTube Video by Rob Tillitz Imagery about Mike McHenry and the heroes of the Barging program in 2012, Click Here
- YouTube Video by Rob Tillitz Imagery when Mike McHenry ran two barges down the Sac, one with smolts from the Feather River Hatchery. Click Here
- Youtube Video by Rob Tillitz Imagery in 2016, year four. Click Here
- Youtube Video by Rob Tillitz Imagery of year five, 2017 of the salmon barding project. Click Here
- Youtube Video by Rob Tillitz Imagery In 2018 Rob asked Bill Smith about the proposed salmon barge to continue on with the work the Merva W started, Click Here
- High Country News | West Coast fishermen have few options against sea lions. The federal government continues to use explosives despite their ineffectiveness. Click Here
- Measures to Boost Salmon Are Working, but Some Fear They Could Backfire, Click Here
