This year’s spring chinook salmon return to the Columbia River was belated, but eventually provided fair fishing for sport and commercial fishers alike, according to a season summary released this week by the Oregon and Washington departments of fish and wildlife.

The non-tribal commercial fleet actually landed fewer spring chinook, 4,350, than the previous two years. But the price was right, ranging from $4.50 to $10 per pound off the boat. The average price was $5.51, according to the season summary. With an average size of about 16.4 pounds, that’s $90 per fish.

“That has to be a record,” the ODFW’s John North said of the $10 price collected early in the season. The mainstem commercial season began with five 12- to 24-hour fishing periods in late February and early March, a time when salmon supply from elsewhere is at a low ebb.

The lower river commercial fishery resumed with six fishing period between May 16 and June 2. In total, the gill-netters also harvested 1,651 sturgeon during the winter-spring season.

Additionally, the commercial fishers caught 7,100 spring chinook in off-channel “select area fisheries.” Those are areas where young hatchery produced coho and spring and fall chinook get their final rearing in net pens. When they return as adults, they allow commercial and sport fishers to conduct a focused harvest that results in little by-catch of upriver and Willamette chinook.

North said that since 1993, the select area spring chinook and coho on average have provided 53.5 percent and 40 percent respectively of the overall annual non-Indian Columbia River mainstem commercial harvest. On average, 91 percent of the returning select area spring chinook and 98 percent of the coho are harvested.

In 2005 the fleet caught 5,400 spring chinook on the lower mainstem and earned an average price of $4.15 per pound. The overall spring chinook return in 2006, including upriver and Willamette fish, was similar to last year. The mainstem catch in 2004 was 13,600 spring chinook on a run that totaled nearly 366,000, more than double this year’s return.

The spring chinook run arrived late, raising fears that preseason forecasts of 88,400 upriver and 46,500 Willamette returns would not be met. Because of feeble counts of upriver fish passing Bonneville, commercial fishing was put on hold in late March, as was the sport season on April 14 from Portland to the river’s mouth.

“Through mid-May we didn’t know if we had 30,000” upriver spring chinook, North said. Counts did swell through the month with a final tally of 126,158 adult upriver chinook returning to the river mouth. Upriver chinook that pass Bonneville are counted as “spring” salmon through June 15. Summer chinook counts begin June 16.

The final Willamette return was 56,700.

The preseason forecast for the overall run, including upriver, Willamette, Select Area and Lower Columbia (Cowlitz, Kalama, Lewis rivers) was 161,400 spring chinook.

Tribal ceremonial and subsistence fisheries in the reservoirs above Bonneville resulted in a catch of about 8,800 spring chinook.

The sport fishing season was reopened May 17 from Bonneville Dam down to the river mouth and on May 12 from Bonneville to McNary Dam.

There were 87,000 angler trips taken this spring to the mainstem below Bonneville. Anglers caught and kept about 7,000 chinook and caught and released 2,500 unmarked salmon. They also caught 2,400 steelhead, and released 350. Fishing regulations require the release of unmarked fish that are potentially of wild origin and protected under the Endangered Species Act. A majority of hatchery produced fish are fin-clipped.

The spring chinook sport catch above Bonneville was estimated to be 600 and a mainstem Snake River fishery near Little Goose Dam for hatchery chinook netted an estimated 191 chinook.

The harvest managed to stay within management guidelines to minimize the take of ESA-listed fish, such as Snake River spring/summer and Upper Columbia spring chinook. A maximum overall 2 percent impact was allowed on the upriver run, which includes the listed fish. Combined the mainstem sport and commercial fisheries represented a 1.45 percent impact, according to the season summary. The gill-netters managed to harvest 100 percent of their allocation.

Anglers used up only 52 percent of their allowable impacts, largely because they were called off the river during prime fishing time amidst concerns about a lower-than expected run.

The upriver run counts didn’t begin to rise until the last two days in April and 50 percent of the run had not passed Bonneville until May 12. That’s the latest on record that the upriver run has reached that benchmark, two weeks later than the recent 10-year average.

The ODFW and WDFW staffs estimated that impacts on wild winder steelhead mortalities were less than 0.1 percent of the 16,000-fish run. The management agreement limits impacts to 2 percent or less.

Treaty Indian fisheries are estimated to be 6.7 percent, well below their allowable 8 percent impact.