Non-Indian and tribal commercial fishers, as well as sport anglers, on the Columbia River mainstem have begun to feast on what is expected to be another sizeable return of fall chinook salmon.

“They’re really starting to catch fish in the sport fishery,” Patrick Frazier, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Columbia River Management Program leader, said last week. “What that tells us is that there is a pile of fish in the river.”