Background:
The California eastern sierra trout season is set to open at the end of the month. The event is known amongst many as "fishmas" with thousands of people pushing into some of California's most rural counties for a few days. Two counties (their county council, health officer, and sheriff) sent letters to the CA Fish & Game Commission asking that they delay the opening of trout season until after the Coronavirus saga calms down. Quite simply they didn't want a rush of out of town folk into the counties and potentially getting their citizens sick or clogging up rural hospitals.
Unlike in WA where the WDFW Director has the authority to modify seasons/limits on an emergency basis, in CA only the F&G Commission can do emergency modifications. Due to the coronavirus and the request from the counties the F&G Commission was set to vote on a temporary rule allowing the CA DFW Director to modify seasons as a result of the coronavirus. In the proposed rule it stated the CDFW Director could only do season modifications after consulting with local authorities.
And then the rumor mill started
People were posting all over the internet that CDFW was looking at closing fishing statewide (similar to WDFW) contrary to what the CDFW Director and F&G Commission President was saying.
Today: Today the CA F&G Commission met via teleconference to vote to give the CDFW Director authority to close fisheries on a county level, however they were unable to mute people on the conference line and the conference line was so full by fishermen that commission members weren't able to call in. On top of that people were cussing out commissioners, playing background music, etc. It eventually caused the meeting to be cancelled and scheduled for next week, likely in a manner where public comments will be severly limited.
Audio of the meeting:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article241897916.html?fbclid=IwAR2OeudnOtmMlHORVSsFLChkF1vI4uaJKTm9x1DpXZfeRsyhg886eYyfByA