Local vintner Mike Benziger will be the special guest honoree Friday, March 13, at Ramekins when the Golden Gate Salmon Association hosts its second annual Sonoma dinner.
Benziger is being honored for his family-winery’s pioneering efforts in water conservation and bio-dynamic farming, both of which have a long term downstream benefit to our natural waterways and the critters, including salmon, that call them home.
Mike was also the recipient of the National Resources Defense Council water steward award in 2010.
The GGSA dinner is all about salmon, particular those that inhabit, or try to inhabit, and spawn in rivers that empty into the Pacific through the San Francisco Bay.
It will be a good dinner, including wines, cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, but it won’t include salmon because it is not the season. Whatever the menu, with the chefs at Ramekins you know the food will be fabulous. And there is a silent auction that is guaranteed to have some fishing items available.
Tickets are limited. Call 855-251-4472 or visit goldengatesalmonassociation.com. The cost is $125 a person.
The Golden Gate Salmon Association is a coalition of salmon advocates that includes commercial and recreational salmon fisherman, businesses, restaurants, tribes, and environmentalists, elected officials, families and communities that rely on salmon.
GGSA’s mission is to protect and restore California’s largest salmon producing habitat, comprised of the Central Valley rivers that feed the Bay-Delta ecosystem and the communities that rely on salmon as a long-term, sustainable, commercial, recreational and cultural resource.
Keith Fraser, of Loch Lomond Bait Shop in San Rafael, is the only supplier of live mud shrimp in our area. Although they might not sound tasty to us, those little crustacea are gourmet delights to striped bass and sturgeon.
Keith’s customers have been using them this week, in between windstorms, to catch and release dozens of keeper-size stripers, and some really big sturgeon.
Keith said he has never seen the striped bass fishing so hot at this time of year before. Keith said trolling worm-tailed jigs has been “sensational” along the Marin shoreline near the Marin Islands, the Brickyard and along San Quentin.
Keith books Bay fishing party boats for those who would like to fish in the bay, but don’t have a boat. Call him at the Loch Lomond Bait Shop in San Rafael, 415-456-0321.
Dungeness crab and sand dab combo trips are still making anglers smile over at the Sonoma coast, where Capt. Rick Powers takes out anglers, weather permitting, most days. Call Rick at 875-3344 to book a trip.
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