Buoy 10 Boaters Beware: Swimmers Joining Chinook, Coho On August 11

The Buoy 10 fall salmon fishery is off to the races this morning, and come sunrise Sunday, August 11, anglers there will need to keep an eye out for swimmers crossing the broad estuary of the Columbia.

The Astoria Regatta and a local hospital are holding a 5-mile fundraising swim above the Astoria-Megler Bridge starting at 6 a.m., with participants crossing through the fishy North Channel as they make their way from Knappton on the Washington side to the Maritime Museum in Astoria on the south shore of the big river.

Said to be the first organized event of its kind across the Columbia here in nearly a century, swimmers will be required to be accompanied by a paddler, kayaker or jet skier, according to online registration information that also warns of the river’s many dangers.

For hatchery Chinook and coho anglers, it will add an extra wrinkle to a fishery that’s already pretty complex, what with its busy shipping lanes, ocean tides and river currents, saltwater wedge, weather straight off the Pacific Ocean, and hundreds upon hundreds of fishing boats navigating the river in search of the hot bite – which was on what color spinner again?!?

A heads-up on the swim went out last night on the local angling forum Ifish, where it also served as fodder for a few jokes.

“How do you punch a swimmer on your card?” asked one. “Wild or Hatchery?” and “Catch and release?” wondered a couple others. “I’m guessing it’s mostly Tules,” cracked a fourth. “How many will get picked off by sealions or cormorants?” stated a fifth about the Columbia’s plentiful piscivores. There was also the obligatory “Make sure you have a big enough net.”

While someone saw it as a potential excuse for the DFWs to close the river for a day and another observed, “Maybe barbless is a good thing now…..,” one poster put a bow on it, writing, “well they had the right mental acuity to do it on the right tide series i am sure it will go with no problems just so long as all our brother sportsman pay attention and are courteous to other river users.”

Indeed.

The fundraiser is being put on by Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria as it seeks to expand its facilities. No doubt that over the years an angler or two has ended up there with a hook where it wasn’t meant to be.

“This is actually a resurrection of a trans-Columbia River swim that first occurred in 1934,” said Dr. Paul Silka, CMH Emergency Department medical director, in a press release announcing the event last month. “When I first got to Astoria and I saw the river, having been an open-water swimmer, I said, ‘That’s got to be done, we’ve got to cross that river.’”

Participants will transit the river as a 5.65-foot high tide at Tongue Point at 6:28 a.m. ebbs to a 1.94-foot low by noon.

Safe swimming and good fishing to all.