This year’s Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery in the Columbia and Snake rivers opens Wednesday, May 1.
Spring chinook fishing in Idaho will open on April 27, with a two-day-a-week season on the Clearwater River and a four-day-a-week season on the Salmon and Little Salmon rivers. The season will run until sport anglers’ shares of the harvest are met (which varies by river) or Aug. 11 — whichever comes first.
Anglers can expect a mixed bag of salmon fisheries this year with increased coho opportunities in the ocean and the Columbia River, but additional necessary restrictions to protect chinook in Puget Sound.
Anglers can expect a mixed bag of salmon fisheries this year with increased coho opportunities in the ocean and the Columbia River, but additional necessary restrictions to protect chinook in Puget Sound.
Idaho Fish and Game staff will share updates on the Lake Pend Oreille fishery and activities planned for 2019 at the annual State of the Lake public meeting on Thursday, April 4 from 6-8 p.m. at the Pend Oreille Events Center. The Events Center is located at 401 Bonner Mall Way, Suite E, in Pend Oreille.
Just half the average number of upriver spring chinook salmon are forecasted to enter the Columbia River this year, a decline in abundance that will limit spring recreational angling.
Washington State fishery managers have scheduled a variety of opportunities for the public to participate in setting salmon fishing seasons for 2019, starting with the annual statewide salmon forecast meeting Wednesday, Feb. 27.
Oregon, Washington and Idaho mandate anglers to release all wild steelhead they catch, but the effects on progeny of the steelhead caused by the stress of the fight, as well as by the air exposure as anglers release the fish prior to spawning, are still being debated.
Idaho chinook salmon anglers will have an opportunity next week to offer their thoughts on how the Idaho Department of Fish and Game will manage the fishery in 2019.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission has signaled its support for state fishery managers' plans to consider the dietary needs of endangered orcas when they set this year's salmon-fishing seasons.
More than 3,000 people registered for the Bonneville Power Administration’s 2018 Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program. Combined, they spent more than 23,000 angler days catching and removing 180,271 of the salmon-eating fish.
Idaho is suspending angling for steelhead in Idaho until it can obtain an incidental take permit from NOAA Fisheries that would legally allow the state to reopen the fishing.
Anglers in Lake Roosevelt caught a 47.5 inch, 27.5 pound northern pike in the lake and another angler caught a pike just 10 miles from the rim of Grand Coulee Dam, much further downstream than previous sightings of the predatory fish.
With continued low returns of summer steelhead into the Snake River and its tributaries, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife this week extended its one hatchery fish bag limit through the end of the year.
Idaho Fish and Game recently reached an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to assume operations of the Hagerman National Fish Hatchery, which raises about 1.6 million juvenile steelhead for release in the Upper Salmon River Basin.
An annual live capture fishing derby, held in the Columbia River’s Hanford Reach near the Tri-Cities — one of the largest derbies of its kind in the country — will be held the weekend of Oct. 26-28.
With the fall chinook run on the Columbia River running about 75 percent of what was already a low preseason expectation, Oregon and Washington closed salmonid fishing from the river’s mouth to the Oregon/Washington border.
Rising water temperatures and poor passage are causing Oregon and Washington fishery managers to shut down fishing at the mouth of the Deschutes River in Oregon and the mouth of the Yakima River in Washington.
Representatives from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, and Idaho Power have concluded that the cause of a recent fish kill in the Snake River immediately below American Falls Dam was a lack of sufficient oxygen in the water.
The number of summer chinook salmon expected to enter the Columbia River took another nose dive last week when biologists that estimate those numbers downgraded the run another 15 percent.
Summer chinook recreational fishing that was to extend to the end of July was abruptly canceled downstream of Bonneville Dam where anglers have already exceeded a new catch allocation based on a 23 percent decline in the run size forecast.
Idaho Fish and Game stocks land-locked chinook salmon in lakes and reservoirs, and biologists are asking anglers to help them learn more about these fish in Anderson Ranch, Lucky Peak and Deadwood reservoirs in southwest Idaho, and Spirit Lake in North Idaho.
With high river flows, low visibility and an apparent lack of angling success, Washington and Oregon extended spring chinook angling downstream of Bonneville Dam and increased the bag limit for hatchery salmon to two per day.
A suppression program in the largest lake in Idaho to significantly reduce the number of lake trout has been successful at recovering the lake’s kokanee population, but biologists are now worrying about another invasive predator – walleye.
More than 4,500 spring chinook salmon crossed Bonneville Dam Wednesday, May 16, capping a week in which the late-arriving fish has averaged more than 2,000 per day, bringing the total run to date to 55,618.
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