2024 Northwest Fishing And Hunting Year In Review

As every year winds down to the very end, I like to take a look back at what made fishing and hunting news in the Northwest over the previous 12 months. When I began the 2024 edition of my annual review last weekend, for some reason I thought this year just hadn’t been all that newsworthy, but going through all the blogs I posted as well as other sources, boy, was I mistaken!

Record fish runs, great angling, salmon quickly colonizing a freed river, commission antics, a new Department of Fish and Wildlife director, ugly wildlife diseases, lawsuit settlements, people doing good deeds, wolverines in crazy places – ahh, yes, 2024 actually did have some things to get off its chest!

To wit:

GOOD SALMON YEAR

2024 came in large and in charge when it came to many salmon runs, with new sockeye records set at Bonneville Dam (755,909) on the Columbia and Tumwater Dam (190,117) on the Wenatchee, and at Willamette Falls for coho (53,471, and still counting), while the overall adult salmonid count of roughly 1.8 million fish at Bonneville this year put it “among the best four years for returns since the dam was built in 1938,” reported K.C. Mehaffey. Only two back-to-back years during the mid-2010s salmon-splosion and 2001 saw more.

Those three years were all good salmon seasons for anglers, and it’s probable that 2024 will end up as among the better fishing years too – heck, even this sorry excuse of a kayak troller was able to put up more Chinook and coho in his freezer than most years!

While 2024 catch stats elsewhere will take awhile to trickle in – looking at you, Washington, with your mail-in stone tablets – they’re already available for the Columbia. After limiting much of August to hatchery fall Chinook retention only at Buoy 10 and with a subsequent runsize upgrade in their back pocket, state managers were able to reopen sections of the river with two September extensions and more later in fall. In the end, the Columbia fall salmon season produced:

* The 3rd highest Chinook harvest (31,850) and third best catch rate since 1980 between Puget Island and Bonneville;

* The largest coho harvest (6,150) ever in that same stretch over the same period;

* And the 8th highest effort (117,900 angler trips) there too;

• The 2nd highest Chinook harvest (11,213) from Bonneville to Tri-Cities since 2015;

• And the 11th biggest Chinook harvest (18,394) at Buoy 10 since 1982.

While 2024’s big returns to the Columbia will help keep up recent decades’ averages over pre-2000 ones, the bottom line, however, is that reaching the hydropower system mitigation goal of 5 million adult salmon remains elusive, and several stocks are still on the Endangered Species Act list, a large Northwest Power and Conservation Council review that came out late in the year found.

But it wasn’t just the Columbia that had a heyday. Puget Sound coho and chums saw strong returns, with the latter allowing for the opening of roughly half of Marine Area 13, as well as tribal fisheries on the Nisqually River for the first time in seven years. Early in the year, WDFW also announced it had expanded chum broodstock collection efforts to yet another North Sound watershed, the Nooksack, which joins programs on the Skykomish and Skagit.

And the National Marine Fisheries Service touted Oregon Coast wild coho as a “bright spot among West Coast salmon,” reporting some 40,000-plus were caught in the ocean, bays and rivers this season, and said that the stock was showing good progress toward recovery and delisting from ESA.

Steelhead also had themselves a bit of a year. The final Willamette Falls winter-run count of 8,908 was the highest since 2004, while the summer steelhead tally of 18,941 was head and shoulders above recent years and the most since 2016. With a larger than expected hatchery run up the Columbia, managers were able to open parts of the eastern gorge for harvest for the first time in several years, albeit late in the return, and for the first time in nine years, the Methow opened up for retention.

Washington Coast streams saw a return of 39,392 wild winter-run steelhead early this year, beating predictions, and the 2024-25 season’s forecast of 36,756 was enough to finally reopen Grays Harbor systems, as well as again hold the now-typical fisheries on Willapa Bay and Forks-area rivers. That latter figure, while paper fish at the moment, is still 11,000 more wilds than 2020-21’s worst-ever run that kicked off these past few years of heavy restrictions.

It wasn’t all good news with anadromous fish, of course. So few wild summer and fall Chinook were expected to return to Puget Sound’s Skykomish and Snoqualmie Rivers after marine fisheries took their whacks at them that the season for hatchery kings wasn’t even opened, despite a decent forecast of 8,400 clipped fish and an actual return of 6,662. Steelhead season around Reiter Ponds was also switched to selective-gear only and coho fisheries were delayed, all to prevent incidental hookups of those dear sweet precious unclipped kings. So of course somebody drove their side-by-side through one of their redds – more on that later.

But overall, the big fish numbers suggested that a number of different Northwest salmon stocks and species experienced good ocean rearing conditions the past few years. That said, late in 2024, results from NMFS’s annual Newport Line survey suggested “a potentially tough year coming for Pacific salmon,” based on 16 ocean indicators such as the type and availability of forage for Northwest stocks when their young first went to sea this past year and which ranked 18th out of 27 years of data.

FISH-UES

On the sorer side of the subject of steelhead, a federal deep dive into the Olympic Peninsula population concluded that the fish are at “moderate risk of extinction,” a finding that moves the stock a step closer to a possible ESA listing. Sparked by a petition from the Wild Fish Conservancy and The Conservation Angler, next up in the process is for NMFS to evaluate ongoing and proposed steelhead conservation efforts and figure out whether those are sufficient enough to ward off a listing. On the flip side, another assessment this year found Oregon Coast Chinook only face a “low risk of extinction,” making them less likely candidates for ESA.

Meanwhile, a federal status review found that the viability of Willamette River spring Chinook and winter steelhead has declined since 2016 and they should remain listed as threatened. It also recommended that upstream and downstream passage past dams, deep reservoir drawdowns in fall and winter and continued floodplain restoration actions be implemented to help advance their recovery. One of those recommendations has been causing issues for folks the past two falls, however, and so earlier this month, the drawing down of Green Peter Reservoir was halted early after water quality issues with the town of Sweet Home’s system.

While WFC might have scored itself something of a “paper victory” in tying up NMFS with a blizzard of documentation, their attempt to scuttle a federal prey increase program that funds the production of Chinook and other hatchery stocks to help feed starving southern resident killer whales failed as the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld continuing it and a final record of decision was published on the Federal Register in fall. The program produced 8.3 million smolts in 2023 and as many as 11.75 million additional fish were anticipated to be released this year.

WDFW and a local tribe decided to end production of early winter steelhead at the Snoqualmie River’s Tokul Creek Hatchery and now hope the feds will sign off on a replacement broodstock program using the system’s weak returns of wild fish. Local angler Bob McMains has been questioning the state on the science used to squelch the program, but with no need to collect returning adults for eggtake goals, Tokul Creek was opened early for harvest. At press time, 43 had swam through the gauntlet of hooks and were begging WDFW to spawn them instead of end their line forever.

Trying to get ahead of predation on salmonid smolts, a pair of farm bureaus decided to hold a “Walleye Jackpot” out of Lyons Ferry on the Snake River early in the year only to abruptly cancel their plans when word got out about it. But it also came as state, federal and tribal agencies began to more seriously mull the issue of increasing numbers of the nonnative but popular and delicious game fish that are showing up in the river and moving further and further upstream into Chinook and steelhead rearing areas, as IDFG reports are detailing.

Speaking of invasive species, a northern pike was caught by a young angler at a San Juan Islands lake. The lad took pictures and showed his parents, who informed WDFW biologists, leading to the netting and removal of more of the fish placed there illegally by bucket biologists. WDFW netting on Lake Washington also yielded a small pike, a potentially ominous development there because it suggests some might be breeding. While WDFW requested $1.4 million to fund continued predator suppression on the big metro lake for 2025 (as well as secured 1 million Baker Lake sockeye eggs to bolster the hatchery program), no money was included for it in the governor’s budget request.

The Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program fishery wrapped up a few days early in late September as available funding for paying anglers to catch these native but hungry-for-smolts fish dried up. A fair chunk of the budget went to one angler who earned a record $164,260 over the five-month season by turning in 10,755 pikeminnows, also a record.

And finally, NMFS found that harbor seals eat up to one-third of all young steelhead outmigrating from the Nisqually River in Deep South Sound, blunting efforts to recover the wild stock. While the fish made up a small portion of individual seals’ diets, given 1,600 of the pinnipeds swimming around the area, they take a collective bite that may be large enough “to represent an additive source of mortality that ultimately reduces population productivity.” In fall, WDFW planned to fly drones to estimate seal numbers and their consumption of salmonids there and on the Duckabush and Dosewallips estuaries. On the Columbia and Willamette, 53 sea lions were lethally removed in 2024, the third most of any year back to 2008.

‘DYSFUNCTIONAL’ WASHINGTON FISH AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION

Ah, yes, my very favorite Friday evening topic to write about – what are members of the citizen panel overseeing WDFW policies (and whatever else they deem appropriate) up to this time!??! Let’s see, in a 24-hour stretch in January alone, they absolutely had to slam the brakes on their just-about-to-be-voted-on Conservation Policy when several Washington tribes and their attorneys demanded to be consulted on a government-to-government basis about the far-reaching guidance document, and then a few of the same commissioners pushing that policy wanted to tell the state of Oregon how the state of Oregon was going to jointly manage Columbia River salmon fisheries.

In July, failing to recognize the clear recovery gray wolves have made in Washington – the population soared 20 percent to a minimum of 260 – and with Governor Inslee yet again pressing his thumb on the scales of predator management, the commission essentially voted 5-4 to not downlist gray wolves, leaving them as endangered under state law instead. WDFW biologists and managers had recommended downlisting to protected sensitive status, based on an in-depth status review and recovery across a significant portion of their range, but among other reasons, the guv’nah was worried about the impacts of climate change on wolves, specious concerns for a generalist species that were raked over the coals by a former commissioner and yours truly.

Because the whole years-long process of proposing to downlist wolves was such fun and wasted who knows how many state dollars to in the end do nothing, the commission chair thought it would also be neat to talk about the equally as spendy and difficult proposition of translocating wolves around Washington, a notion that I wrote should be relegated to the “heap of craptacular™ ideas.”

(Speaking of translocating wolves, the Colville Tribes switched from a yes to supplying 15 for Colorado’s voter-mandated reintroduction effort to a no when the business council learned the state hadn’t consulted with a local tribe about it.)

And in December, a long-awaited university think tank report said that many people viewed the commission as being “dysfunctional.” Ordered up by state lawmakers in 2023, the William D. Ruckelshaus Center interviewed more than 110 people, from fish and wildlife organizations to environmental groups, tribes to commercial interests, as well as considered WDFW and the commission’s governance structures and how to improve their functions. Three options identified in the report include maintaining the status quo, moving WDFW into the governor’s cabinet, or reforming the commission. Wary sportsmen’s groups prefer that third one and will be watching what the legislature does next when the long session begins in January.

Also worth watching: Whether Molly Linville and Jim Anderson, two wise, long-serving and fishing- and hunting-friendly members, are reappointed. Their terms officially wrap up today, December 31, 2024, though they could continue to serve until reupped or replaced.

WILDLIFE ISSUES

The inevitable first – and soon, second through sixth – case of chronic wasting disease in Washington was confirmed when tests on a whitetail doe found dead just north of Spokane came back from the lab in summer. That led to new testing requirements for all deer, elk and moose harvested in three local game management units, bans on cervid-based urine and scent products and baiting and feeding ungulates, as well as new carcass transportation rules across the eastern third of the state. The hope is that early detection and widespread testing can help contain or at least slow the disease from spreading further into Washington, and hunters are a key part of that effort. Expect expanded mandatory testing in 2025 with the jump to a new GMU. CWD was also found for the first time in British Columbia, in two deer in the Kootenay region north of Idaho, as well as nearby in Idaho close to Bonners Ferry. But while it fortunately still hasn’t reared its ugly head in Oregon, ODFW and a hunters organization teamed up to offer a rifle or scope for those who get their kills tested.

Speaking of wildlife disease issues, as cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, increased with the arrival of migratory waterfowl in the Northwest, a pair of Clallam County cougars succumbed to it in fall. A big cat menagerie on the southeast side of the Olympic Peninsula was also hit hard, losing half of its felines. UPDATE, JANUARY 10, 2025: WDFW reports the HPAI strain that struck the sanctuary animals was different than the one affecting wild animals; also, because of the location of the two stricken Clallam cats, they are not as concerned about broad-scale impacts to the cougar population.

In April, federal managers made final their decision to reintroduce grizzly bears to Washington’s North Cascades. That said, there’s still no firm public timeline for when the National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service would start releasing three to seven bears a year for five to 10 years into the region under a 10(j) designation that at least provides more management flexibility. But if the past provides any hints about the future of this program, it might be to expect more stops and starts with the incoming presidential administration.

It was reported that many of the mountain goats translocated from the Olympic Mountains to the North and Central Cascades by federal, state and tribal wildlife managers died – 112 of 115 tracked by the Tulalip Tribes and 35 of 36 followed by the Stillaguamish Tribe. While likely a function of age for some individuals, where Cascades goat survival was stable to increasing from 2002 to 2015, since 2016 it’s declined, with heavy winters and hard droughts being primary drivers, according to a WDFW study, which also found slightly higher survival among non-translocated goats in the region.

TRIBAL LANDMARKS

February 12 marked the 50th anniversary of the momentous Boldt Decision, when US District Court Judge George Hugo Boldt affirmed tribal treaty-reserved fishing rights to half the harvestable salmon and steelhead in Washington, a ruling that was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. It followed on the so-called Fish Wars, when the state of Washington actively suppressed those rights. A new book published that same week, In Common With, by former Department of Fisheries director Bill Wilkerson, details those fraught times and how the state and tribe eventually began working much more closely on salmon issues in the later 1970s and 1980s, including the birth of comanagement.

On June 13, NMFS granted the Makah Tribe a waiver for ceremonial and subsistence gray whale hunts. The tribe still must apply for and be granted an actual permit, but the waiver allows for the taking of 25 whales over a 10-year period in U.S. waters. A whaling people with that right reserved by treaty, the Makahs applied way back in 2005 for this waiver.

On October 30, a federal judge OKed legal motions from the Siletz Tribes and state of Oregon to vacate a 1980 agreement that sharply limited the tribes’ hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering rights. The move righted a historical wrong – the Siletz were essentially forced to trade their harvesting rights for the re-establishment of a reservation – that arose during the Fish Wars. There are still a lot of important questions to sort out, so stay tuned.

And on December 13, WDFW officially transferred ownership of the Klickitat Hatchery to the Yakama Nation, which it had leased the facility producing spring and fall Chinook, coho and steelhead to for Mitchell Act as well as US v. Oregon production since 2005. “With this ownership, it also ensures that we can take the next steps to modernize and make the fixes to the facilities and the programs we’re trying to implement that will make sure we have salmon for our people,” said Phil Rigdon, Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources superintendent.

THE DFWs

The drowning death of WDFW scientific tech Mary Valentine in late January – the second staffer to die in water in less than six months – led to a brief shutdown of most agency work around rivers, lakes and marine waters for inspections and safety training, as well as eventual fines and citations from the Department of Labor and Industries. In summer, DOI also fined and cited WDFW for a previously undisclosed accident on the Nisqually River last winter that sent a scientific tech to the hospital after he hit his head on the underside of a smolt trap when the boat he was in capsized. While WDFW continues to appeal two citations from both incidents designated as “willful serious,” earlier this month Director Kelly Susewind reported completing corrective actions for other safety violations. “We will continue to refine and implement safety protocols for the well-being of all our staff,” he said.

ODFW acquired 1,073 more acres for its still relatively new and stunningly beautiful and wildlife-rich Minam Wildlife Area in Northeast Oregon, bringing its total size to 16,646 acres, or just a bit over 26 square miles. The state worked with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation on the latest addition, and the overall project protects habitat for deer and elk, spawning grounds for salmon and steelhead, and recreational access for humans. And in the state’s other corner, blacktail deer, elk and other critters will benefit from a new wildlife crossing coming to I-5 south of Ashland, thanks to $33 million secured for the state Department of Transportation and announced at the end of the year.

WDFW Director Susewind expressed disappointment and apologized about a third-party vendor’s software issue that screwed up the 2024 special permit draw for hundreds of Washington hunters across 22 of 27 application categories. In the end, 723 applicants who should have been chosen but weren’t were issued the tag they’d put in for, and WDFW worked to get 738 incorrectly selected applicants into a hunt as well, “where biologically feasible.”

Year 1 of the coming end of Fish Camp at Vernita on the Mid-Columbia’s Hanford Reach was implemented during fall Chinook season as heavy use caught up to the access site and boat ramp that WDFW has leased since 1971 from the federal Department of Energy. The permit actually doesn’t allow overnight camping and it will be phased out completely by the 2026 season, WDFW maintains. There are nearby lodging options, just none positioned so well on the upper reach.

It was revealed that a public boat launch on Washington’s lower Snoqualmie River that’s provided access to coho and pink salmon fisheries for decades may be acquired by the Tulalip Tribes, a proposition that will leave anglers anxious about continued use of the site. The High Bridge access is currently owned by the Department of Corrections and has been managed as a state water access site by WDFW since 1954 after sportsmen got the Snohomish County Commission to grant the old Department of Game a special use permit.

Oregon’s Fish and Wildlife Commission unanimously approved sending a request to increase fishing and hunting license fees to the Governor’s Office for consideration in the 2025-27 budget, albeit with a memo to express concerns about the potential closure of two hatcheries, trying to keep the costs of bear, cougar and turkey tags as is, and more. Speaking of hatcheries, ODFW has been undergoing a legislatively mandated review of the facilities and plans for their future. A final report is due to state lawmakers for this next session.

And in October, the popular Headquarters Unit of WDFW’s Skagit Wildlife Area near Mount Vernon reopened just in time for the start of duck season following construction of a paved boat ramp, the raising and widening of nearby dikes, and an ADA-accessible loading ramp. WDFW and the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council also teamed up to build the first ADA-accessible duck blind in Region.

IN MEMORIUM

This past year saw the passing of several prominent fisheries advocates.

Leonard Krug, president of Oregon Anglers Alliance, died doing what he loved, fishing, when a heart attack struck him down shortly after landing a halibut off the South Coast in October.

Jim Lichatowich, who succumbed to cancer in April, was a former ODFW researcher and fisheries chief turned independent consultant who also authored several books on the plight of salmon and was recalled in a recent Seattle Times article as someone whose writings “put the region on notice that the decline of wild salmon was not just a creek here, creek there problem, but a regional catastrophe, slaying populations over a vast region of the Northwest.”

And Mark Spada, a longtime Snohomish County fish and fisheries advocate, passed away in September at 66. He was a good source of mine, particularly for Skykomish River issues. He was the president of tackle representative business Spada and Associates, and owned a building in downtown Snohomish with his wife where their son has a brewhouse.

Late in the year, Oregon’s hook-and-bullet reporting world mourned the death of Mark Freeman, who began his career in the late 1980s at Southern Oregon newspapers, most notably the Medford Mail-Tribune, where he carried on as an outdoor writer until the paper’s demise in December 2023. Freeman also hosted “Outdoors Oregon” on a local TV station.

The Northwest fishing guide community also lost three members. Michael Shufeldt of Reel Deal Fishing Adventures died in late September during a trip when sudden winds in the Columbia Gorge swamped his boat. An online fundraiser yielded a quarter million dollars for his widow and two young children. Eric Swanson of the Lower Columbia took his own life following legal issues that turned into ridicule at boat ramps and elsewhere. And popular longtime Quinault Indian Nation guide and former tribal council member Richard “Richie” Underwood passed away in late November.

Last but not least, this magazine’s longtime salesman Mike Smith passed away in October. I – we – owe a lot to Mike. He was both my nemesis and the person who turned me onto this company nearly 200 issues ago now. Mike’s connections throughout the Northwest and national fishing and hunting industries and his ability to get folks to buy ads are in no small part what helped me to do more with this magazine and blog and in life than I ever had the right to. RIP, Mike and everyone else who left this plain in 2024.

PEOPLE DOING GOOD THINGS OUTDOORS

One of the biggest Northwest fishing and hunting stories of 2023 was that 245-pound bluefin tuna that turned up on an Orcas Island beach after likely stranding itself there overnight. While reawakening stories of coastal tribes hunting bluefins in inlets, it was emblematic of recovering bluefin stocks in the Pacific, and lo and behold, in October, George Stavrakis of Sherwood, Oregon, caught a 164-pounder, which is believed to be the largest ever caught off the Beaver State. We’ll probably be seeing more and more in the coming years!

Speaking of odd catches, angler Kris Frohberg caught a white bass – a hybrid species – out of the lower Clackamas River. Several other were also reported landed in the nearby Willamette River. Only one lake in the entire Northwest has wipers, landlocked Ana Reservoir, but the fish are available for sale and perhaps somebody illegally emptied out their aquarium, like how a koi probably ended up in the McKenzie River this month. Meanwhile, on Lake Washington, where in 2023 American shad turned up in a north end tributary, in 2024, the fish showed up in the Cedar River, at the lake’s south end.

And since we’re on a jag about oddities, a wolverine or wolverines turned up in Canby/Barlow, Eugene, Nehalem, Netarts, Newport and Westport – we have Gulo gulo all wrong, just totally and completely wrong – and a zebra was caught on a North Bend, Washington, resident’s backyard trail camera after it escaped from a trailer.

PEOPLE DOING NOT SO GOOD THINGS OUTDOORS

Washington game wardens began wearing body cameras in September, and shortly thereafter stated sharing videos of their work. The first added details to a late-night break-in at a salmon hatchery on the Cowlitz River and showed an officer stabbing the tire of a getaway truck to stop it, while the next video observed as an officer retrieved 140 razor clams – nearly 10 times the daily limit – from the vehicle of two Portland men. The videos provide a you-are-there sense of what goes into policing the state’s fish and wildlife resources, while the body-worn cameras increase officer accountability and were funded by state lawmakers.

Other cases I covered in 2024 included how WDFW Police used decoy crabbing setups, security cam footage, surveillance and a search warrant to bust a man suspected of stealing Dungies and pots, buoys and ropes on a North Sound bay; the Snohomish County man who drove his side-by-side through a wild Chinook redd on a stretch of the Skykomish River that has been closed to all fishing this season due to critically low numbers of the salmon species; the King County man who was fined $8,000 and sentenced to 80 hours of community service after being charged with multiple big game violations and used his kills to talk up his supposed hunting skills when in fact “much of the wildlife he poached was baited into his yard or poached on his neighbor’s property”; the 29-month jail sentence and $4,000 fine a Grays Harbor man received for illegal elk kills; and a number of wolf poachings.

AND PEOPLE DOING CRAZY THINGS OUTDOORS

Editor’s note: Kudos for spending about half an hour with me over the course of nearly 6,000 words! I absolutely know I missed some important news stories, so if you wouldn’t mind, hit me at awalgamott@media-inc.com and I’ll fold them in as appropriate. Thanks for reading, and good luck in 2025!