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Another decent return of hatchery chinook salmon to the Columbia River is forecast this year, but expected low returns of coho could put a damper on salmon fisheries in the river, along the coast and in Puget Sound.

Fishing in Idaho for spring and summer chinook will probably happen in the same places as last year if pre-season forecasts are correct, but the run size is expected to be smaller than last year, and anglers could see shorter seasons and/or lower bag limits.

The two-state Columbia River compact set openings and regulations for spring chinook and steelhead fishing for recreational anglers at its annual joint-state hearing Wednesday in Vancouver, Wash.

The public is invited to comment on a new plan designed to align state fisheries and hatchery operations to support the recovery of wild salmon and steelhead populations in the lower Columbia River Basin.

Steelhead fishing is unique, considering it is very good anytime catch rates are lower than 20 hours per fish caught.

Commercial gillnetters continue this week to fish over the smallest coho salmon run over Bonneville Dam in nearly two decades.

In the last two weeks, the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee twice has increased its projection for this year’s run of fall chinook salmon into the Columbia River.

The forecasted run of fall chinook salmon into the Columbia River rose to 1,095,900, more than 15 percent higher than the preseason forecast of 925,300 chinook.

A new and highly effective approach to control a viral pathogen that affects threatened steelhead trout in an Idaho hatchery is documented in a new paper.

Commercial gillnetters Thursday (Sept. 10) called for the two-state Columbia River Compact to cease the experimental seine fishery on the Columbia River downstream of Bonneville Dam, saying that participation is low and will get lower as catch rates lag behind goals.

Four salmon stocks – one in the Columbia River Basin and three along the Washington coast -- are found to be subject to overfishing by NOAA Fisheries.

In a sign that Northwest rivers are cooling off, the states of Oregon and Washington lifted their moratoriums on afternoon recreational fishing.

Three fishing seasons opened Tuesday, Sept. 1 and more ocean-fresh fish are arriving daily to Idaho.

After record-breaking catches of fall chinook salmon in the Buoy 10 fishery at the mouth of the Columbia River, the two-state Columbia River Compact is prohibiting the take of all chinook salmon beginning tomorrow.

Greater than average forecasts of fall chinook and coho salmon are opening the way for more commercial fishing in the Columbia River.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s efforts to rescue salmon fingerlings at the Leavenworth Fisheries Complex are already starting to pay off, said Dave Carie, hatchery manager at the Service’s Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission has approved a coho salmon season for the mainstem Clearwater, Middle Fork and North Fork Clearwater rivers.

Treaty Indian gillnet fishing for summer chinook and sockeye salmon began this week in Zone 6 of the Columbia River – Bonneville Dam upriver to McNary Dam – and will continue through at least the next three weeks.

With the spring chinook salmon run estimate rising above 282,000 fish, the two-state Columbia River Compact added more fishing time for both commercial and treaty Indian gillnetters, while recreational fishing remains open in all zones on the Columbia River up through the John Day pool.

With a higher run estimate, the two-state Columbia River Compact made up of Oregon and Washington fisheries managers approved an overnight non-Indian commercial spring chinook salmon drift net fishery this week.

With spring chinook salmon passing Bonneville Dam in higher numbers than expected, fish managers from Washington and Oregon this week agreed to extend the fishing season on the Columbia River for miles below and above the dam.

Spring chinook fishing in northeast Oregon kicked off Saturday, May 2 with the opening of the upper Snake River to salmon fishing. It is the first of several chinook fisheries expected to open later this spring.

The spring chinook sport fishery on the lower Columbia River will reopen for two days – Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3 – under an agreement reached Thursday by fishery managers from Washington and Oregon.

Oregon and Washington fishery managers this week delayed commercial gillnet fishing in select areas by one week until more is known about the size of this year’s spring chinook run.

A non-Indian commercial gillnet fishery in the Columbia River opened for seven hours Tuesday, March 31, yielding 980 spring chinook salmon with an average weight of 12.4 pounds.

An Oregon appellate court recently rejected claims by commercial fishing businesses that a new policy to phase out gill netting on the lower Columbia River violated state law.

Mid-Columbia River anglers are being asked to help insure future fisheries by catching and providing live hatchery steelhead to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to restock the Ringold Springs Hatchery on the Columbia north of the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Pasco, Richland).

Anglers fishing along the north Oregon and Washington coasts, including off the mouth of the Columbia River, will likely see a catch quota for chinook salmon similar to last year's and a lower quota for coho, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

When rainbow trout fall prey to Coldwater Disease, its colorful body erodes into ragged wounds and ulcers. The bacterial infection can kill up to 30 percent of hatchery stock and causes millions of dollars in economic loss.

Anticipating another strong return of spring chinook salmon, fishery managers from Washington and Oregon on Wednesday set the initial 2015 fishing season to run through April 10 on the lower Columbia River.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission on Jan. 9 declined to take action on a staff proposal that would have allowed the use of barbed hooks when fishing for salmon, steelhead and trout in the lower Willamette River, Multnomah Channel and at sites off the lower Columbia River estuary in Gnat Creek and inside Youngs Bay.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider a rule change that will allow salmon, steelhead and trout anglers to use barbed hooks on the lower Willamette River, Youngs Bay, and lower Gnat Creek when it meets in Salem today, Jan. 9.

Bountiful returns of coho and fall chinook salmon to the Columbia River system in 2014 provided the highest harvests in many years for non-tribal commercial gill-net fishermen with more than 190,000 landings reported from so-called “select areas” alone.

Tagging of sport fish has given Idaho fisheries managers an easier and more accurate way to track exploitation rates in the state and, it seems, other states are taking notice.

The Oregon Chapter of the American Fisheries Society will be holding a symposium – Hatchery Vs. Wild Salmonid: Research Management and Reform in the Pacific Northwest – on January 22-23 in Portland.

Angling success is higher when fishing for hatchery raised trout than it is for trout grown in a more natural setting, even when that more natural environment is created in a hatchery.

It may soon be unacceptable for steelhead anglers in Washington state to return a steelhead they catch on selected rivers if the fish in hand originated from a hatchery.

This year’s fall chinook salmon return to the Columbia River basin was supersized, as advertised, and motivated record angler trips to such places as central Washington’s “Hanford Reach,” a 50-plus mile stretch known as home to the basin’s largest remaining wild population of the species.

With the Columbia River fall chinook salmon return nudging up close to the modern-day record, and a coho return much better than forecast in preseason, fishing was very good this late summer and fall on the lower river and elsewhere.

The Columbia River Compact on Wednesday approved a new round of commercial fisheries for both tribal and non-Indian commercial netters on the mainstem Columbia that will likely bring to a close what has been a record-breaking harvest on a near-record return of chinook salmon and a revived coho salmon run.

Commercial fishermen say that an Oregon-Washington strategy aimed at moving gill-netters off the mainstem Columbia River is accomplishing neither of its proclaimed purposes – to reduce impacts on salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act while, at the least, maintaining the economic benefits for their industry.

A near record upriver fall chinook salmon run up the Columbia River, and burgeoning coho salmon numbers, enabled the states of Oregon and Washington, in a joint decision made Wednesday, to add another chapter to the fall commercial fishing season for treaty fishers.

Tribal and non-tribal commercial fishers, as well as lower Columbia River anglers, are sweeping in tens of thousands of salmon this year even while fishery managers keep a close watch on impacts to protected stocks such so-called “B” steelhead bound for the most part Idaho and wild Lower River Hatchery fall chinook salmon “tules.”

It does appear that the fall chinook returns are slowly beginning to grow.

A total of 23,401 fall chinook have been counted at Bonneville Dam through Tuesday with daily counts from 966 fish on Saturday to 4,455 on Monday, but trending downward -- 2,570 on Tuesday, 1,775 Wednesday and 1,076 Thursday.

The Columbia River Compact last week gave the green light to the first commercial “seine” fishing for salmon on the lower Columbia River mainstem since the nets were prohibited under state law by Washington in 1935 and by Oregon in 1950.

Fisheries managers with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game are assessing damage to summer chinook stocks after severe thunderstorms producing heavy rain flushed large amounts of sediment into the South Fork Salmon River.

After nearly six years at the helm, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Phil Anderson has informed the state Fish and Wildlife Commission he will resign from his position, effective Dec. 31.

Aug. 1 marked the opening of the long-awaited “fall” fishing season on the mainstem Columbia River, which this year is expected to see a record number of fall chinook salmon, a run of coho spawners forecast to be 156 percent of the 2004-2013 average and a summer steelhead return similar to the 10-year average.

Continuing strong sockeye and summer chinook numbers could enable tribal fishers to stretch their summer commercial season almost to the final day on the mainstem Columbia River above Bonneville from beginning to end.

Northeast Oregon and Washington anglers will get a rare treat when, for the first time in almost 40 years, they will be able to fish the lower Grande Ronde River, which flows down out of the Blue Mountains in Oregon and across the northeast part of the state, then across the southeast corner of Washington and into the Snake River.

Efforts to balance hatchery production for harvest with aims to protect the genetic “integrity” of naturally producing salmon and steelhead populations must be carefully orchestrated scientifically, and in some cases may be difficult if not impossible to achieve, according a recently published paper that analyzes data from a southwest Washington steelhead supplementation project.

Fishery managers are estimating there are enough summer chinook returning to meet broodstock needs and have fisheries in the South Fork and upper Salmon rivers but are expecting fewer returning fish than the preseason forecast.

Oregon and Washington fishery managers of Columbia River on Wednesday approved both tribal and non-Indian commercial fisheries for the early summer period, and laid out the ground rules for sport fisheries that are expected to target chinook salmon and what is expected to be a bumper crops of sockeye salmon returning, for the most part, to the Okanogan River basin.

The Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama tribes this week took advantage of a growing upriver spring chinook run-size forecast in implementing one last Columbia River “Zone 6” fishery that was expected to bring the treaty fishers within a few hundred fish of their limit for the spring season.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission has adopted the Coastal Multi-Species Conservation and Management plan, http://www.dfw.state.or.us/fish/CRP/coastal_multispecies.asp

which now becomes the state’s working document for managing salmon, steelhead and trout populations along most of the Oregon Coast.

With nearly 10,000 hatchery spring chinook expected to return to the river this year, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced openings today (June 6) on two sections of the Wenatchee River – which are the first such openings in almost 20 years.

An improved upriver spring chinook run-size forecast has allowed Oregon and Washington officials on Tuesday to reopen a sports fishery on the Columbia River mainstem upstream of Bonneville Dam, and set commercial fisheries for this week for both tribal and non-Indian fishers.

Effective immediately, Snake River spring chinook fishing will close for the season below Ice Harbor Dam and Little Goose Dam, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Wednesday.

With catch limits near, planned commercial fisheries targeting spring chinook salmon in so-called “select areas” in the lower Columbia River estuary were rescinded and/or trimmed back in decisions made this week by Oregon and Washington.

Idaho-born spring chinook salmon are starting to show up in the Columbia River, the gateway to their spawning grounds in the Gem State.

Sport anglers get one more shot – Saturday – during the early season in pursuit of spring chinook salmon spawners that are surging up the Columbia River.

Spring chinook anglers on the lower Columbia River will get at least six more days of salmon fishing under a season extension adopted Thursday by Oregon and Washington fishery managers.

Anglers taking to the Pacific Ocean this late spring and summer along the northern Oregon and Washington coasts should enjoy a relative bounty with high numbers of chinook and coho spawners expected, and higher catch quotas being considered for both species than were in place last year.

Newly adopted state fishing rules aiming to push non-tribal commercial gill netters off the lower Columbia River mainstem that were approved late in 2012 and again in 2013, ignore applicable state and federal law and procedure, according to a legal brief filed last week by lawyers representing commercial fishing interests.

Salmon fishing in the ocean and the Columbia River this summer could be great thanks to an abundant run of hatchery coho and a potentially historic return of chinook, according to state fishery managers.

A U.S. V Oregon Technical Advisory Committee subgroup and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is predicting that an almost unfathomable number of adult fall chinook salmon will return to the mouth of the Columbia River this year – 1.6 million.

A recently released report prepared by Salmon for All says there were only minor harvest modifications during the 2013 fishing seasons -- the first year of implementation of a new non-Indian salmon harvest strategy for the lower Columbia River -- and thus it could “serve as a baseline year against which to measure the economic and social effects of the regime changes as they are instituted.”

A relatively long-running legal dispute regarding gill-net use on the lower Columbia River has taken a step forward, with attorneys for the state of Oregon on Feb. 10 telling the Oregon Court of Appeals that challenges to new non-tribal fishing rules are “without merit.”

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife last week announced the proposed boundaries and time period for a closure of the area at the mouth of the Youngs Bay at Astoria, Ore., to sport catch of salmon during the late summer 2014 salmon season.