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Despite few fish crossing Bonneville Dam and a spring chinook salmon run that for now doesn’t seem to be gaining steam, Oregon and Washington agreed to add one more day of fishing Saturday, April 14 for recreational anglers downstream of Bonneville Dam.

A 10-year harvest agreement for Columbia River salmon and steelhead was approved March 19 in an order released by U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Mosman.

Harvest Managers Make Some Tweaks To Treaty Sturgeon Fishing, Non-Treaty Gillnetting

The US v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee, which provides fishery managers with in-season forecasts, is forecasting a 2018 fall chinook run into the Columbia River that is 23 percent less than the actual number of fish that returned last year and about one-half of the 10-year average.

A harvest agreement that sets fisheries harvests in the Columbia River basin for the next decade was approved this week by tribes, states and federal agencies.

A federal hatchery on the McKenzie River that was scheduled for closure could soon reopen and be repurposed to raise spring chinook and trophy rainbow trout.

Oregon and Washington approved periods of Columbia River tribal and commercial gillnetting for salmon and smelt, while also setting the last days for recreational sturgeon fishing upstream of Bonneville Dam.

The ability of commercial gillnetters to fish the mainstem Columbia River has mostly been removed by harvest reforms in Oregon and Washington, citing gillnetting as non-selective and potentially damaging to salmon and steelhead, including the 13 species listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

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.

More spring chinook salmon will be heading upstream to the upper Columbia and Snake rivers in 2018 compared to this year’s runs, according to an early forecast of fish returns by the US v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee.

Oregon and Washington confirmed that tribal commercial platform, hook and line fishing will continue through the end of 2017, while also adding a day this weekend for recreational white sturgeon anglers and reinstating night fishing on the mainstem Columbia River, but excluding retention of salmonids.

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.

Beginning Oct. 15, anglers can keep two hatchery steelhead daily in sections of the Snake River and some streams in southeast Washington, state fish managers said Wednesday.

Cook Aquaculture was approved to transfer 1.8 million Atlantic salmon eggs from its facility in Iceland to its land-based hatchery in Rochester, Washington.

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.

Worried about filling quotas at hatcheries, Washington closed the Cowlitz, North Fork of the Toutle and Green rivers to retention of fall chinook salmon this week.

Treaty gillnetters will fish one more week upstream of Bonneville Dam for fall chinook and coho salmon, and steelhead, perhaps ending fall commercial gillnet fishing by Thursday, October 5.

As fall chinook salmon continue to pass Bonneville Dam at a rate of over 7,500 fish per day, the two-state Columbia River Compact met this week, Thursday, September 21, to consider commercial gillnetting in the Columbia River.

Recreational anglers continue to catch stray Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound, the West Coast of Vancouver Island and as far north as the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada. The salmon are some of the nearly 160,000 fish that escaped an aquaculture net pen at Cypress Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington in August.

Treaty commercial gillnetting in the Columbia River targeting fall chinook was extended a week in water upstream of Bonneville Dam during a meeting of the two-state Columbia River Compact. The additional four and one-half days of tribal fishing begin 6 am Monday, September 11 and ends 6 pm Friday, September 15. The Compact met Wednesday, September 6.

Early commercial fall fishing began this week for both commercial non-treaty gillnetters and treaty gillnetters on the Columbia River mainstem while Idaho, due to historic low returns, suspended retention of steelhead in Idaho rivers as of August 17.

As they set harvest limits on steelhead fisheries in the Columbia and Snake rivers, managers have long used timing, the number of the fish crossing dams and the length of the fish as their yardsticks. According to a recent study, this technique for fisheries managers may be an oversimplification and even out of date.

After an 800 mile journey through eight dams and 6,500 feet in elevation gain, the first batch of endangered Snake River sockeye salmon are arriving in Idaho’s Stanley Basin, including four naturally produced fish and nine hatchery fish as of August 9, according to Idaho Department of Fish and Game information.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission has adopted a fall chinook salmon fishing season to open August 18 on parts of the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers.

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.

After saying last week they would likely not continue gillnetting this week, Treaty commercial gillnetters added another 3.5 days of fishing this week – Wednesday, July 12, through Friday, July 14 – in the reservoir upstream of Bonneville Dam.

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.

Oregon will soon apply to NOAA Fisheries for a permit to add lethal removal to its pinniped management plan at Willamette Falls south of Portland.

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.

With the spring chinook run transitioning to the summer chinook run in just one week on June 15, the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee, which estimates fish runs in the Columbia River, decided at its meeting June 5 to stick with its last run size forecast of 118,000 fish at the mouth of the river. TAC expects 110,000 of the spring chinook will pass Bonneville Dam.

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.

Fishery managers have postponed the annual fishery for hatchery steelhead and jack chinook salmon from Tongue Point upriver to the Interstate 5 Bridge set to begin May 16.

Two-year steelhead smolts released from the Winthrop National Fish Hatchery on the Methow River in central Washington generally had better survival from the tributary into the Columbia River and migrated more rapidly to the Columbia estuary than did one-year smolts.

Just 3,337 spring chinook had been counted passing upstream over Bonneville Dam as of April 30, the lowest count of the fish at the dam on record for that date.

Recreational angling improved over the weekend in the Columbia River from the river’s mouth to Bonneville Dam, prompting the two-state Columbia River Compact this week to take a cautious approach to extending early season fishing.

Recreational, commercial and tribal fisheries along the Pacific coast north of Cape Falcon will see similar quotas of chinook and coho salmon this year as was available in 2016, but those fisheries south of Cape Falcon will be limited to protect Klamath and Sacramento river chinook stocks.

At the urging of Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission for the second time in two months changed Oregon harvest reform rules at its March 17 meeting in Corvallis, bringing the rules closer to those adopted by the Washington Commission in January.

Some 10 percent to 21 percent of adult spring chinook migrating in the Willamette River will die before reaching tributaries to spawn, according to a recent study, and the fish most likely to die are those that were injured downstream of Willamette Falls by sea lions, as well as from other migratory-related causes such as descaling and head injuries.

Idaho Fish and Game commissioners approved the spring chinook seasons and rules for the Snake, Clearwater, Salmon and Little Salmon rivers during its regular meeting Thursday, March 16 in Boise.

After today, March 17, when the Oregon Fish and Wildlife commission meets, Columbia River salmon harvest rules will likely look similar in both Oregon and Washington, bringing both states into closer compliance with 2013 legislation that was intended to have completely removed commercial gillnetting from the river’s mainstem and allocate more fish to recreational anglers by the first of this year.

Returns of hatchery chinook and coho salmon to Washington's rivers and ocean waters are expected to vary this year, but low returns of wild salmon projected to several rivers will again make setting fisheries a challenge.

Fishery managers from Washington and Oregon Thursday, Feb. 23, approved an initial sport fishery for spring chinook salmon on the lower Columbia River that reflects a lower projection of returning fish but a larger share of the catch than in previous years for the recreational catch.

In an apparent response to a letter sent Feb. 9 to Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission chair Michael Finley from Gov. Kate Brown, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department staff reopened the Commission’s January 20 harvest reform decision.

In its first hearing of the year, the two-state Columbia River Compact this week set spring fishing for commercial select areas and tribal gillnetters, but with fewer fish forecasted in 2017, the Compact took a conservative approach to setting fishing periods.

I have a few comments regarding the recent article on the Bi-State harvest plan for the lower Columbia River.

Less than one week after the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted changes to its Columbia River Fisheries Reform policy that reduced the time commercial gillnetting would be allowed on the lower river, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted changes to its own policy – and the states’ policies are not the same.

The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted last week to implement the next phase of the state's reform policy on Columbia River salmon management, including updates to provisions for fall chinook salmon.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is reminding Lake Roosevelt anglers that new fishing rules are in effect to protect wild native redband rainbow trout on Lake Roosevelt and the Spokane and Sanpoil Arms of the 150-mile reservoir.

The forecasted return of adult spring and summer chinook salmon to the Columbia River basin in 2017 will be lower than initial estimates made last year in December, but the estimate of sockeye salmon is nearly twice the size of last year’s estimate, according to an early forecast of the runs released this week by the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee.

In its meeting today, December 2, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is expected to approve rulemaking that would extend the transition period through January to implement the Columbia River Fisheries Reform aimed at removing gillnetters from the Lower Columbia River mainstem.

As it reviews preliminary results of the 2016 commercial gillnetting and recreational angling season on the Columbia River at its meeting next week, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will also begin considering statutory changes to Columbia River fishery harvest reform that could extend gillnetting on the mainstem river in 2017, beyond the reform deadline.

Recreational angling for coho and steelhead will resume in the Columbia River Saturday, November 5, but fishing for fall chinook will remain closed.

The National Marine Fisheries Service recently announced a proposal to align descriptions of 28 hatchery programs with descriptions for protected salmon and steelhead populations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California.

With another drop in the fall chinook forecast and a continuing poor run of steelhead and coho salmon this fall, the two-state Columbia River Compact and the state of Washington shut down angling for salmon and steelhead from the mouth of the Columbia River to the Hwy 395 Bridge near Pasco as of Saturday, Oct. 22.

For the fifth time since a relatively high pre-season forecast, river managers downgraded their estimate of the size of the fall chinook run this week.

River managers downgraded on September 26 their estimate of the fall chinook salmon run size for the third consecutive week, and added a fourth downgrade this week.

The expected number of fall chinook to the Columbia River mouth was downgraded again this week to 802,200 fish, 84 percent of the preseason forecast, but the Group-B steelhead forecast was upgraded to 38,200 fish, about 50 percent more than preseason numbers.

The forecasted run of fall chinook salmon into the Columbia River was downgraded 10 percent, but with lower than anticipated catch rates among recreational anglers, the two-state Columbia River Compact Wednesday extended angling for fall chinook from Warrior Rock at St. Helens, Oregon to Buoy 10 at the river’s mouth.

A lower than expected harvest of chinook salmon at the Columbia River mouth prompted the two-state Columbia River Compact at its hearing August 31 to extend the popular Buoy 10 recreational fishing season by nine days through September 14.

Fall chinook salmon passage at Bonneville Dam is within expectations, but catch of the fish is lagging in the popular Buoy 10 fishery for recreational anglers.

Recreational angling for fall chinook and coho salmon opened in most areas of the Columbia River last week, including the popular Buoy 10 fishery, as well as in Columbia tributaries, and in some coastal streams.