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.
Tuesday, May 1, marked the beginning of the 2018 Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
With low returns of chinook and coho salmon expected back to numerous rivers in Washington, state and tribal co-managers Tuesday agreed on a fishing season that “meets conservation goals for wild fish while providing fishing opportunities on healthy salmon runs,” said the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Idaho Fish and Game fisheries managers are considering changes in how lake trout and kokanee salmon are managed in Payette Lake, which is part of the Columbia Basin’s interior waters.
Abundance of Columbia River smelt is so low this year that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has decided not to open the Cowlitz River to recreational smelt dip-net fishing.
Spring chinook salmon fishing begins for recreational anglers next week in the lower Columbia River and two weeks later upstream of Bonneville Dam.
Anglers fishing the Snake River and some of its tributaries in Oregon, Washington and Idaho can keep two to three steelhead per day until further notice.
About 1,100 anglers removed 191,483 northern pikeminnow from the Columbia and Snake rivers in 2017, with payments made by the Bonneville Power Administration to anglers of about $1,542,000.
Landing nets in catch and release fisheries are recommended to shorten fight time, reduce handling time and to protect fish from harm when handling the fish.
Idaho opened three rivers – the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers – last Sunday, October 15, allowing anglers to keep up to two hatchery steelhead per day.
The two-state Columbia River Compact this week opened white sturgeon angling on two days later this month for the area below Bonneville Dam and upstream of the Wauna Power lines at river mile 40.
After considering an Idaho Department of Fish and Game proposal to reopen steelhead fishing for hatchery fish smaller than 28 inches and with a reduced bag limit, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission decided instead to ask for public input on the proposal.
The Idaho Fish and Game commissioners on Oct. 2 set a fishing season for coho salmon, which will run Oct. 17 through Nov. 16, or until further notice.
More than half of the Atlantic salmon raised in a Cooke Aquaculture net pen in the San Juan Islands escaped before the company could recover them from the damaged pen.
The three states that oversee angling regulations on the Snake River closed the mainstem of the river to retention of steelhead in response to a historically low expected return of the fish.
Washington State salmon managers are encouraging anglers to fish for thousands of Atlantic salmon that escaped recently from a salmon farm near the San Juan Islands.
Adrenaline and noradrenaline, the "fight or flight" hormones, peak first, followed more gradually by cortisol. A new study http://jeb.biologists.org/content/220/14/2529 finds that largemouth bass whose cortisol levels rise most after a brief bout of stress are inherently harder to catch by angling.
A three year hook and line, capture and release study to determine whether fish live or die when hooked by anglers is underway on the lower Cowlitz River in Washington.
Tribes, commercial gillnetters and sports anglers will all begin fishing in August as the two-state Columbia River Compact met this week to set fishing times through the fall season that begins August 1.
Idaho Fish and Game wants to know if the current management of Priest Lake fisheries is still working, or if change is needed.
Facing some of the lowest steelhead returns on record, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has already curtailed steelhead fishing seasons throughout the Columbia River basin by adopting rolling season closures, reduced bag limits, and a night angling closure for all species.
Recreational anglers downstream of Bonneville Dam to the Astoria-Megler Bridge turned out in higher numbers and caught more than expected fish early in the summer chinook salmon fishery that opened June 15. As a result, anglers zipped through the original harvest guideline quota and retention of summer chinook ended briefly Friday evening, June 30.
With forecasted numbers of wild summer steelhead at annual lows, Oregon and Washington Friday, June 9, released a plan for rolling angling closures in the Columbia River and its tributaries to protect the fish.
Limited angling for white sturgeon will open next week in the lower Columbia River for the first time in three years, but only downstream of Wauna, a town and paper mill in Oregon, as well as in Bonneville Dam’s pool.
A regional advisory committee that forecasts Columbia River salmon runs so fisheries managers can set recreational, commercial and tribal fisheries this week cut their early season run size prediction for spring chinook in half.
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