The 2014 California king salmon season that begins May 1 is predicted to be one of the better years recently, despite this winter’s drought. But we'd better enjoy it while we can.

It’s been a long, rocky road for the California salmon. This year, you can take that literally. Because of the severe drought conditions in much of the salmon’s natural habitat, state and federal officials this year started trucking young salmon from their inland spawning grounds to the ocean. The plan is that by the time the program ends, as many as 30 million fish will have hit the road.

But that’s actually a fish story for another year – those immature salmon smolts will have to spend a couple of years in the ocean before they are big enough to harvest. This year’s salmon were the ones who journeyed to sea in 2011, a relatively wet year.

Projections are based on the number of fish biologists estimate are waiting in the ocean to swim back upstream to spawn. This year there are approximately 630,000 salmon off the coast of California from the Sacramento River, which provides the lion’s share of the state’s commercial catch. Estimates are rough and the actual landings can vary widely.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times>>