DAN BACHER

California’s foremost “watchdog” journalist for fisheries and conservation, Bacher writes a far-reaching column that appears on websites and in newspapers and e-mail lists across the western United States. He takes on politicians, government agencies and their appointed directors, corporate agribusiness interests and big oil companies — “anybody who does harm to California’s natural resources and fisheries,” Bacher said.

“The biggest problem we face in the battle to restore our fish populations is that agribusiness, big oil, developers and other powerful corporate interests wield enormous influence over the government agencies that are supposed to guard our natural resources,” Bacher said.

His stories include identifying the first salmon deaths in 2002 on the Klamath River in a fish kill that went on to number 70,000 adult salmon.

Bacher is a founding member of both the California Inland Fisheries Foundation and Restore the Delta, and he promotes American Indian cultures and rights. He has also served on the board of directors for United Anglers of California, the California Water Impact Network and Water for Fish.

He is best known as the 30-year editor of Fish Sniffer, a biweekly newspaper for anglers. He used that position as a springboard to visit hundreds of lakes and streams, and in the process has become one of California’s most traveled anglers. His adventures span from Canada to Central America, where he has caught and released many exotic species of fish.

ARMAND CASTAGNA

A world-renowned angler, bay and ocean skipper, communicator and conservationist, Castagna pioneered a catch-and-release approach to world-record fish after returning a 32-pound, 8-ounce steelhead to the water in 2000.

He filmed the release of that potential record-setter but was denied the standard by the International Game Fish Association because he didn’t kill the fish. Castagna pressed the issue and created a worldwide debate on the ethics of trophy fishing, prompting the association to set standards for registering potential world-record catches that have been released.

Two years after that catch, he released another world-record steelhead (28.5 pounds on 8-pound line), and this time he was awarded a game fish association world record in a watershed moment.

In the 1980s, to the disbelief of many, Castagna had begun releasing steelhead and other elusive trophy fish that he caught. He knows there were some who thought he was crazy. Now, however, many anglers from Northern California to Alaska release their trophy catches.

“Why would you kill what you love the most and then remove the very genetics that inspire you?” Castagna asks. “I release them to fight again another day and to pass on their world-class DNA to their progeny.”

Castagna’s special charter trips aboard his boat on San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean have attracted numerous celebrities, including former manager Dusty Baker and other members of the Giants. Rather that running standard-timed trips, day in and day out, Castagna custom-designs each trip according to that day’s tides, feed conditions and fish patterns.

Castagna is also a teacher. He has produced two films on steelhead fishing (in which all the fish are released), published more than 40 articles, provided free seminars across California and the Northwest, and donated fishing trips and equipment to youth organizations.

He promotes a conservation message in everything he does, from fighting for adequate flows on the Trinity River to the net-pen release of juvenile salmon in San Francisco Bay. He is renowned for his fishing expertise and leadership in catch-and-release fishing, yet his impact on people, one at a time, is also recognized by anybody who has met him.

BILL POOLE

Posthumous

Many on the Pacific Coast consider the late Capt. Poole as the greatest pioneer in saltwater fishing in the past 50 years. He is best known as the founder and owner of Fisherman's Landing in San Diego.

He built many legendary boats in the San Diego local and long-range fleets, developed techniques to catch yellowtail, tuna, wahoo and other big-game sport fish and then hired, trained and mentored many of the most famous and most highly regarded skippers on the Pacific Coast.

Poole, who died in 2009 at age 87, was also an avid hunter who traveled the world and stalked big game. Even though he was one of the world's most well known outdoorsmen, he shared his knowledge with anybody who wanted it, including at free seminars available to the public.

RANDY HOUSTON

The rebel outsider who has refused help from corporations is the founder and president of Purple Heart Anglers, a group of volunteers who have taken more than 1,000 disabled veterans into the outdoors to fish or hunt. Houston required that Purple Heart Anglers be nonprofit, nonpolitical and non-ego, and exist only to support disabled vets for the therapeutic value of the outdoors.

"We don't take help from corporations (that want a commercial presence), so nothing interferes with the cause at hand," he said.

Hunting and fishing have been a lifelong passion for Houston, who got his first hunting license at 9, his first buck at 12, and put a record in Boone & Crockett for a deer in Northern California. He has also fished "forever" and has ventured "everywhere, trying everything" in lakes, streams, the bay, the delta and up and down the coast, always looking for the best of California.

In his office, he prizes a folded American flag, once flown in Afghanistan, which was presented to him by a group of vets from the F\5-159th Medevac Unit. Houston runs Purple Heart to honor his brother, a Purple Heart two-tour Vietnam vet who died from complications from exposure to Agent Orange.

DICK PENNIMAN

He is the nation's foremost expert on ski safety and avalanches and an outdoorsman with a world-class scope of adventures. Penniman has taught more than 3,500 ski patrol officers and others about avalanche safety and has never had a person injured by an avalanche among the tens of thousands who have enjoyed downhill winter sports on his watch.

As an instructor, he has taught for 30 years at Sierra Community College, the National Avalanche School, Outward Bound and elsewhere, and provided free lectures at REI stores in Northern California. As an expert in ski patrol, Penniman has worked for Sugar Bowl and Alpine Meadows, and has been hired as a consultant across the United States and Canada and in Chile, Argentina and Australia.

His adventures also have spanned the globe. Penniman sailed six months from San Francisco to Jamaica, trekked over 360 miles in Nepal to Everest Base Camp at over 20,000 feet, and twice kayaked the length of the Grand Canyon. He has completed the Markleeville Death Ride on a bicycle nine times and has raced in the Great Ski Race seven times.

JOHN KOEBERER

John Koeberer is best known as the innovator who brought new-style concessions based on serving the public - from kayak rentals to cabins - to parks and lakes in California, including Lassen Volcanic National Park, San Pablo Reservoir, Asilomar in Pacific Grove and dozens of other recreation destinations across California.

What is lesser known is that Koeberer is the founder and creator of FitKid, a program that rewards children for participating in outdoor recreation and making healthy choices, and Capture California, the first outdoor online social media game.

Koeberer was the first person in America to appoint a child, a 7-year-old, to a national parks foundation board of directors, to provide advice about what youngsters want at parks.

Koeberer is an avid fly-fisher who fishes in California, Oregon, Montana and the Rocky Mountains, and an accomplished skier, runner and hiker, having hiked every trail at Lassen Volcanic National Park.

BOB FORD

As a police officer, Ford's perspective on youth led him to volunteer and then direct the San Francisco Police Department's Youth Fishing Program. "We just want a chance to steer kids in the right direction," he said.

In 25 years, he helped introduce thousands of youngsters, many of them disadvantaged, to fishing, and in the process provided a window where they could see a better way of life. Trips ventured out the Golden Gate for salmon and to Lake Merced for trout.

He also volunteered to help turn the therapy pool each year at Shriners Hospital For Children into a trout pond so physically challenged young people could catch a fish and have a brighter day. Ford is also an avid outdoorsman whose adventures have taken him across North America from Mexico to Alaska on world-class adventures.

Among thousands of trips, he has caught giant salmon and halibut in Alaska, marlin, tuna and dorado off Mexico, and grouper in Florida, and has dived for lobster in the Caribbean.

NORMAN CLYDE

This 20th-century mountaineer (1885-1972) achieved more than 130 first ascents, many in California's high Sierra and Yosemite. He set a speed climbing record on Mount Shasta in 1923, where he climbed from Horse Camp (at 8,000 feet) to the summit (14,179 feet) in 3 hours and 17 minutes. In 1925, he completed 53 climbs in the Sierra Nevada. Clyde has 1,467 articles archived at the Bancroft Library at the UC-Berkeley. He was a guide, naturalist and author.

"In my 80s, I still prefer to sleep outside at my ranch house, in my sleeping bag, not a bed," said Clyde, according to the Bancroft Library.

In 2018, Tapon returned to his California home after a series of expeditions in which he hiked 10,000 miles, including 2,000 miles across Madagascar, and climbed 50 of 54 of Africa’s highest peaks. Tapon has traveled to more than 100 countries and has written two books, “Hike Your Own Hike,” from 2006, and “The Hidden Europe: What Europeans Can Teach Us,” in 2012.

“The whole five years in Africa, it cost me $110,000,” he said. “It’s a lot of money, it’s true, but a lot of people could afford to do this if they wanted to. I camp, I live simply, buy street food. My biggest expense was a reliable 4x4 pick-up truck to get around Africa.”

MICHAEL FARRIOR

Michael Farrior is a world-renowned figure for his volunteer work with the International Game Fish Association and the Tuna Club of Catalina Island, and as a historian and benefactor for wounded soldiers and youth. His scope of adventures includes 15 years in Alaska, across much of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and in many countries, including Australia, New Zealand and nations in Africa. He is a member of the game fish association's Hall of Fame and was appointed as the first historian in the association's history.

His passion is big-game fishing for giant tuna, with special interest in the history of the sport in California and around the world and sharing that passion with others. Farrior was among the first to privately fund fishing trips for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq. In the past 10 years, he has been the catalyst for launching a series of Junior Angler Tournaments from San Diego to Northern California.

Farrior has contributed to fishery management around the world. In 2009, the game fish association honored Farrior with a special proclamation that declared him a "national treasure." In Washington D.C., then-Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-San Diego, entered into the Congressional Record that Farrior is "sport fishing's own national treasure."

ED MIGALE

Ed Migale is a pioneering saltwater angler, world-traveled expert hunter and a supporter of youth hunting programs who has shared his expertise with thousands.

Migale may be best known for developing light-tackle saltwater fishing techniques, with which he helped invent and refine drift-fishing, including building new-style custom rods designed for salmon, halibut and rockfish. Thousands have attended his seminars.

Lesser known is that Migale, as a hunter, completed the "royal slam" of turkey hunting, taking all five subspecies of wild turkeys found in North America. He has hunted and fished throughout California and much of the United States, Canada and Mexico, along with Argentina and Africa.

Migale has served as a primary volunteer for conservation organizations, including the National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited and the California Waterfowl Association. With California Waterfowl, he was a founding member of the Youth and Education Committee. When federal law first allowed for a special "Youth Hunting Day" in 1996, Migale arranged for dozens of youngsters to hunt at his duck club.

In addition to teaching through seminars, Migale has shared his expertise on fishing, hunting and conservation in national and regional publications, and through Wilderness Unlimited.

JACQUELINE DOUGLAS

Jacky Douglas has been California's No. 1 goodwill advocate for salmon, fisheries, conservation and water issues during a 50-year career. She is charismatic and accomplished, one of the most popular party boat captains in America, and has taken an estimated 150,000 people from all over the world fishing out the Golden Gate. She is the first 84-years-young professional female skipper on the Pacific Coast.

She has donated her time and boat to the San Francisco Police Youth Fishing Program, Golden Gate Fishermen's Association and KGO Leukemia Cure-A-Thon. Douglas is also an excellent naturalist; she can find describe seabirds, marine mammals and ocean anomalies to her customers.

To protect salmon and water resources, Douglas has represented the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association at state and federal hearings and met with several members of Congress.

Douglas passed her Coast Guard examination in 1972, purchased her first party boat and managed to find a niche in a male-dominated profession. With a mastery of boating, safety and fishing, she won over the public, and in turn, her mates at the docks. Her work with newspapers, radio show hosts and TV broadcasts has brought the world of the outdoors into the homes of millions of Californians.

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

Posthumous

America's preeminent landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted came to California in 1863 to manage John C Frémont's Rancho Las Mariposas in the Sierra Nevada. He then became an important leader of the nascent conservation movement in the United States.

Considered to be an expert on Caliƒornia, he proposed through Senator John Conness, that Congress desgignate Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees as public reserves, making it the first wilderness set aside by a government for public use. His recommendations laid an ethical framework for the government to preserve public lands, to protect their "value to posterity."

Olmsted described the "sublime" and "stately" landscape, emphasizing that value of the landscape was not in any one individual waterfall, cliff or tree, "but in the miles of scenery where cliffs of awful height and rocks of vast magnitude and of varied and exquisite coloring, are banked and fringed and draped and shadowed by the tender foliage of noble and lovely trees and bushes, reflected in the most placid pools and associated with the most tranquil meadows, the most playful streams, and every variety of soft and pastoral beauty.'"

Olmsted Point in Yosemite National Park identifies the importance which he held to the park's preservation. He is revered as the designer of New York's Central Park and the grounds of UC Berkeley and Stanford University. Though, his influence in preserving wild places including Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks and Presque Isle forever endear him to anyone who appreciates the untouched landscape.

BILL SCHAADT

Posthumous

Schaadt discovered fishing at an early age along the public piers of San Francisco Bay. He quickly became obsessed with the art of angling. In his late teens, Schaadt moved with his mother to the small vacation town of Monte Rio along California's Russian River.

During the post war years along the Russian River, Schaadt built a reputation as a skilled fly fisherman. With his angling skills and quirky, elusive demeanor, he became the subject of countless classic fishing stories. From the 1950s to mid 1990s, he was regarded as one of the top fly fishermen in the country, if not the world.

An innovative user of shooting head fishing lines, Schaadt helped pioneer Chinook salmon fishing on California's Smith River. He was one of the first to use flies to catch saltwater fish, including striped bass and rock fish. He medaled in fishing contests 12 times over the course of 19 years, usually in the chinook salmon category, and reportedly "caught more big salmon and steelhead than any other man who ever lived."

JIM ADAMS

This professional fishery biologist has an unmatched passion for fly-fishing and its techniques, history and gear. As a biologist, Adams supervised 80 scientists for the benefit of trout streams in California, and he led the pioneering study that transformed Hat Creek into a wild trout stream. He's fished in 14 states, 10 other American countries and provinces, nine European countries, and a few South Pacific venues, mainly New Zealand. Among other things, Adams is credited with inventing methods for catching giant salmon on fly-fishing gear in the deep waters of the Smith River, and he was a contemporary of Bill Schaadt and others featured in the recent film "Rivers of a Lost Coast." He teaches Rocky Mountain summer classes in fly-fishing entomology, and in retirement he fishes 180 days a year and runs a worldwide business selling secondhand books and angling gear to collectors. Named on 65 percent of ballots.

Inducted posthumously: Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture and parks; Bill Schaadt, one of the world's top fly-fishers.

SEP HENDRICKSON

As a tackle innovator, he has helped shape the landscape of fishing across the Western United States. He is also a radio show host, author, photographer, seminar speaker and television personality with the ability to capture the excitement of the adventure. Sep and his wife and partner, Marilyn, are devoted to fishing for trophy-sized trout and kokanee salmon in many Western states, Canada and Alaska. He is best known as the inventor of Sep's Pro Fishing Tackle and is an innovator who designs light tackle and techniques for trout. He and his wife also run the California Inland Fisheries Foundation Inc., which exists to improve kokanee salmon and trout at lakes in California. Named on 70 percent of ballots.

SCOTT WILLIAMSON

He is a world-renowned wilderness hiker and one of America's most inspirational outdoorsmen. Williamson was the first person to complete a continuous one-season round-trip of the Pacific Crest Trail, 5,300 miles. In 1996, while working at a convenience store in Richmond, he was shot in the face during an attempted robbery. The bullet is lodged in his head. Williamson completed the hiking Triple Crown, through-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail. In 2011, despite record snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, Williamson set a new PCT speed record, unsupported, by finishing the trek in 64 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes, an average of 41.1 miles per day. He willingly shares his lightweight camping strategies, speed and training techniques at seminars where he sells nothing but inspiration. Named on 65 percent of ballots.

IL LING NEW

Born in San Francisco and a Yale graduate with an MBA, she turned her back on a lucrative marketing career to teach people self-protection, how to handle firearms, and hunting. She is America's No. 1 female firearms instructor and No. 1 female freelance guide. She has hunted across the hemisphere and to Africa twice, including for Cape buffalo, and trains hunters from across the hemisphere prior to world-class expeditions. She has hunted ducks in California since age 10. As an instructor, she has had a profound influence on people across America, and has taught Marines and police as well as housewives and hunters of all backgrounds. Her skills are world-renowned; with a handgun small enough to fit in her palm, she can put three shots in a pie plate in 5 seconds, has competed nationally for skeet titles, and is versed as an expert in all rifles. She has a stunning ability to improve others' skills and safety. Named on more than 75 percent of ballots.

BILLY GIANQUINTO

"Billy G," as he's known across America, is best recognized as one of the world's best duck callers, the inventor of specialty calls for teal and wigeon used by thousands, and a conservationist who has led dozens of fundraisers for wetland protection.

For 38 years, he has provided thousands of seminars, including volunteer fundraising seminars for the California Waterfowl Association and other groups. He has freely revealed his techniques in more than 300 appearances on television shows and DVDs.

Gianquinto has also worked extensively with youth education. With the Boy Scouts of America, he has taught rowing and canoeing for 45 years, and has also taught flyfishing at the Golden Gate Casting Ponds in San Francisco, among many volunteer outreach programs.

MARTY MACDONNELL

McDonnell of Sierra Mac River trips, is the premier outfitter on the Tuolumne River, an inventor whose ideas have affected thousands, and a prominent conservationist who has inspired many to protect the state's rivers.

As a rafter, McDonnell made the first descent of the Cherry Creek/Upper Tuolumne run and began commercial rafting on the hairball ride. He was the only outfitter allowed to run the Middle Fork of the Feather River.

McDonnell has dedicated his life to getting thousands of people safely and comfortably down whitewater rivers. He invented the first self-bailing cataraft, helped develop the Sotar self-bailing raft, and invented the "boom truck" now used by all rafting companies at takeout.

He created a new way to rescue people caught at waterfalls, now the standard technique for guides.

McDonnell is a charter member of the Tuolumne River Preservation Trust and helped saved the Tuolumne River and the Clavey River from getting dammed. The only book written about The T, "Rocks and Rapids of the Tuolumne River," by W.H. Wright in 1983, is dedicated to "Mr. Tuolumne, Marty McDonnell."

JERRY KARNOW

Karnow is the state's No. 1 wildlife detective, the political leader of game wardens in California, and an avid hunter and angler with a specialty for tracking big game in remote locations.

As a game warden, Karnow has donated thousands of hours beyond his normal shifts, using FBI-type detective skills, to bust hundreds of poaching cases. One such case was profiled on national television and attracted attention to California's force of game wardens from across America.

He is the political leader for game wardens; after election, Gov. Jerry Brown had a meeting with Karnow.

He's an avid hunter and angler, fishing salt and freshwater, and hunting deer, elk, antelope, upland game and waterfowl throughout the west. The past season he took a lifetime-best mule deer in remote terrain that required 11 hours to pack out.

Karnow has an easy, friendly personality that engages the public and puts people at ease, regardless of their backgrounds. In the process, he has become one of the state's most effective advocates for fishing and wildlife conservation and enforcement.