An Update On Eagle Creek NFH Coho Production

There have been a ton of rumors about the future of coho production at Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery east of Portland this fall, and while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had little to say, a source indicates that keeping the lights on at least for 2025 is a high priority for one Columbia Basin tribe.

The facility on a tributary of the Clackamas River annually rears in the rough neighborhood of 850,000 coho smolts, give or take, with 500,000 of those used by the Yakama Nation for programs that have been reseeding Central Washington basins, and the remainder for sport opportunities in the Clack, Willamette and Eagle Creek and to meet the broodstock goal of 3,000 adults for the system itself.

So far this fall, some 8,257 coho have returned to Eagle Creek NFH, which is approximately the same number of rumors that have been circulating about the federal fish hatchery since early last month, when I first heard something from an apparently credible source and began pestering USFWS officials. On October 9, a spokeswoman told me they didn’t “have any updates on any changes to production at this time, but I can update you if anything does come up.”

I haven’t heard anything definitive from a host of USFWS officials since then, but from what I gathered today, while the long-term situation for the facility funded by the federal Mitchell Act and Congress remains cloudy, the Yakama Nation is making it one of their top priorities for 2025, lending optimism that eggs and broodstock will still be collected for the short term.

The Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association is supporting comanagers’ and sovereigns’ efforts around that, according to policy director Liz Hamilton, who noted production also sustains an important local fishery.

In addition to being part of Yakama Nation efforts to return coho to the Methow, Wenatchee and Yakima systems following the species’ extirpation there, Eagle Creek NFH has also been used by the Nez Perce Tribe to rear coho for release in Idaho’s Clearwater system.

Closer to home, over the past five seasons, angler harvest of hatchery coho on the Willamette below the falls at Oregon City and in the Clackamas and Eagle Creek has ranged from combined highs of 3,345 in 2021 and 2,474 in 2022 to a low of 792 in 2020, per ODFW catch records. Eagle Creek NFH is the only facility rearing clipped coho in the Willamette watershed and only hatchery silvers can be retained downstream of the falls.

Of note, returns of wild coho back to the Portland General Electric adult sorting facility on the North Fork Clackamas have surged in recent years, with a record 19,201 early- and late-stock adults back in 2023-24 and just under 13,000 so far for 2024-25.

Should production unfortunately end at Eagle Creek NFH in the coming years, opening retention of wild coho – an Endangered Species Act-listed stock – in the Clack and lower Willamette does seem like a long shot that would require overcoming “numerous regulatory hurdles,” per an ODFW biologist last year, but perhaps now it is less of one considering the direction returns are proving to go.