Six days added to angle for spring Chinook below Bonneville Dam

Ahead of the spring chinook mid-May Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) run update, the fisheries managers of Oregon and Washington opted in a bistate meeting last Tuesday to reopen the Columbia River for additional retention days over two weekends. Anglers will be allowed to fish for, and keep, spring chinook in the Columbia River below Bonneville Dam for six days, from Friday through Sunday last week and Saturday, May 23, through Monday, May 25. Five days were added above the Bonneville Dam to the Oregon-Washington border near Tri-Cities. Anglers able to target spring chinook now though Sunday last weekend, as well as Saturday, May 23, and Sunday, May 24. The daily limit will be two adult hatchery salmon or steelhead, only one of which may be a chinook. Ryan Lothrop, the Columbia River fisheries manager for the WDFW, said that the states did downsize the upriver spring chinook run from the initial forecast of 147,302 adults to 126,200 adults, about a 12 percent reduction. Still, catches in the early season and in the initial extensions were low enough to allow some extra days. “We can still operate under the buffered run size,” Lothrop said. “That would be below the 126,000 threshold, so we are above the buffer run size.” There would have been a further 30 percent reduction in the allowable catches if the run came in below that mark. “We had a little bit of a balance from the pre-update, but because of this downgrade it did move us into a lower harvest rate tier,” Lothrop said. “To keep it simple, In the end we still had a balance to work with.” Catches were very slow during the early initial season, and they did pick up some during the extensions, but they were still below expectations. “Things started off a little sluggish and didn’t play out well, and I think there was an expectation of low, clear water,” reported Lothrop, “But because the snowpack melted early, conditions were not too good. It did eventually clear up as we added those extensions, and that last Saturday we had opened was a fairly successful fishing day.” A few extra days were not possible after the last closure, since the indications were that there was a big push of chinook coming, and managers were afraid another day would exceed the limitations. “There were some indications that a big surge was coming, and it did,” Lothrop said. The numbers of spring chinook crossing over the Bonneville Dam jumped up for about a week, and then the numbers started falling off. This means catches were less likely to exceed quotas. Daily crossings have now dropped to less than 2,000 a day, after reaching over 4,000 a day during the peak. Lothrop explained that the split opener will allow managers to look over catches from the first weekend, and be sure they will have enough fish left over for the second period. They will also have the TAC official run update, which will be released Monday. They will then be able to decide whether or not to allow the second weekend of fishing. “After the TAC update, we will have to recalculate,” he said. “If it goes higher, or stays the same, then it comes down to how the catches came out.” The fishing days above Bonneville Dam are only one day less than those of the river below the dam. During the initial upper river season, anglers did not take a lot of fish above Bonneville. “Effort was not quite what it could have been,” Lothrop said. However, the fisheries of Drano Lake and the Wind River have been excellent, and anglers are doing very well there. That has led to these two fisheries having over-the-top crowding, which has led to some angler conflicts at times. In one recent state creel survey conducted on the Wind River, there were over 1,000 boat anglers surveyed. Fishing guide Bob Rees of the Oregon Fishing Guide Service said that even though these extra days could alleviate some of the pressure on these two fisheries, the run is petering out, so anglers will probably not find overwhelmingly good fishing. He also said the crowding at Drano and the Wind River is a result of those being the only places anglers can find a good chance of landing a spring chinook. “The sad fact is those two fisheries are the only good options for springers right now,” Rees said. Still, there will be some opportunity in the mainstem of the Columbia River, and it offers anglers some less-crowded options. “It’s not going to be spectacular catch rates, obviously, and you will still have to work for two or three chances a day. But people will be excited. It is a chance to catch the regions finest salmon,” Rees added. These are what are known as dark-face, or dark-chin spring chinook, which return to the tributaries of the Columbia above Bonneville, and are considered to be superior on the table to the “snow-belly” spring chinook headed back to lower river tributaries. These upper Columbia fish come in later than the snow-bellies, so that is what most anglers will be catching, even in the lower river. These extra days of fishing may not offer the best catch rates, but Lothrop said they do fall in line with the WDFW mission to provide fishing opportunities whenever possible. When the target is spring chinook, most anglers are very happy with that. Anglers are reminded that the second set of retention days could be axed, so always check the emergency rules page for updates. Check the emergency rules here: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations/emergency-rules. Area-specific rules apply, so always check the fishing regulations before fishing.

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