For three salmon seasons, the boats at Spud Point Marina haven’t gone out for salmon. They’ve sat. Crews scattered. Some skippers picked up crab work or rockfish, some got out of fishing altogether, a few sold the boat and the slip and walked off the dock for good. California’s commercial salmon fishery shut in 2022 after Chinook returns collapsed, and it stayed shut in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Last month, the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to crack the door back open. Commercial salmon season reopens May 1.
The next morning, May 2, Bodega Bay throws its 53rd Fisherman’s Festival. And on Sunday afternoon, a priest will walk the harbor sprinkling holy water on bows that will actually leave for salmon this summer.
That’s not nothing here.
The Blessing of the Fleet has been on Bodega Bay’s calendar for 68 years. It started in 1958 at a town celebration called Discovery Days, when 17 boats were blessed in the harbor. Three brothers led the first procession: Eddie, William and Steve Smith. They were Coast Miwok, members of the family that started commercial fishing in Bodega Bay in the 1920s. The Smiths basically built the industry the rest of the town grew up around. The festival’s organizers, an all-volunteer 501(c)(3), still tell that story on their website. They should. It’s the reason the blessing exists.
Walk the docks Sunday and you’ll see boats that haven’t earned a salmon dollar since 2022. You’ll see deckhands who’d written off the species. You’ll see the kids of the kids of the kids who fished out of this harbor watching a priest do something their grandparents watched the Smiths do.
The festival itself runs Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., $15 at the gate, kids 12 and under free. The Blessing kicks off Sunday around 1 p.m. Proceeds fund 22 local groups, including search and rescue, the historical society, the fire auxiliary and youth fishing programs. Saturday at 3 p.m., an ’80s tribute band called Tainted Love is somehow on the main stage, which feels right in a way that’s hard to explain.
But the weekend isn’t really about that.
It’s about whether a small commercial fleet on the Sonoma Coast still gets to be what it’s been for a hundred years. For three years, the answer was open. This Sunday, the answer is yes.
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