Cut in Salmon Season Has Fishermen Fuming : Environment: A combination of factors has caused a disastrous drop in the populations of the fish from Canada to Mexico.

Tom Davis spent three years restoring a 1920s Monterey clipper so he could follow his father down to the sea to fish for salmon.

The little boat crashed again and again through a wall of water crossing the bar at the mouth of the mountain-lined Chetco River because Davis had to get onto the ocean to make a living.

But when the veteran fisherman ran up against a wall of government regulations that have shut down commercial salmon fishing in his home waters, he wanted to get on his motorcycle and ride.

“We’re used to going out and risking our lives to make a buck,” said Davis, 50. “That’s not a problem. But this political baloney--that’s something we’re not used to dealing with.”

A combination of factors--from a shortage of food in the ocean to drought, dams, real estate development and logging--led to a disastrous drop in populations of wild salmon from Canada to Mexico. The Pacific Fishery Management Council sharply cut back this year’s salmon seasons.

There is no commercial fishing for boats docked in Brookings, a tiny port situated in the middle of a 450-mile strip of coast shut down to protect dwindling stocks of wild chinook native to the Klamath River.

Elsewhere on the West Coast, a snarl of quotas, openings and closings have sharply cut back commercial and sport salmon fishing.

“It’s too bad it has to come to this,” said Ken Byrtus, who owns a recreational vehicle park in Brookings. “As human beings, that’s the only way we learn; we wait until it’s almost dead and gone.”

Byrtus has a bulletin board filled with snapshots of smiling customers struggling to hold up last summer’s salmon. But since the fishery council cut the sport season to Mondays through Wednesdays, he has been getting cancellations from sportsmen who fish off his park.

Fishermen curse the government for cutting back their seasons, protecting sea lions that strip their catch and allowing factory trawlers to scoop up thousands of salmon while hauling in huge nets of Pacific whiting.

To bring the salmon back will require state and federal agencies, fishermen, environmentalists and timber companies to pull together, said Jim Martin, chief of fisheries for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and a member of the fishery council.

“It’s a distinct possibility we can find ourselves completely hidebound by overlapping endangered species listings,” Martin said. “And we have only ourselves to blame.”

When the commercial salmon season opens next month, Davis and his wife, Carol, will motor in their 32-foot boat south to California waters, where they can work 15 hours a day on a pitching deck to make a living.

Five dozen boats will stay in port, many of them with “For Sale” signs.

“I can’t go down to Half Moon Bay. I’m beat,” said Herman St. Clair, who has fished the last 20 of his 65 years. “I went down there twice and almost died.”

St. Clair, who quit logging 20 years ago to save his back, had planned to fish until he died, but now he will take his Social Security and try to sell his boat, most likely at a loss.

He believes that loggers, like fishermen, are the ones paying the price for victories by environmentalists.

Although fishermen and environmentalists should be natural allies in fighting to save the salmon, Tom Davis figures the activists are just too radical.

“This is my 34th year fishing,” Davis said. “My dad fished for 50 years. Fishing was basically between me and the fish.”

“We never had to cope with the changing world. . . . Now we’re into this,” he said. “I won’t fight politically. I’ll go off and ride my motorcycle and let the world fall down around me.”