BY ANDY WALGAMOTT, NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN MAGAZINE
Not great news from today’s Columbia River fall fact sheet.
Yesterday, the US v. Oregon Technical Advisory Committee downgraded expectations for adult fall Chinook back to the mouth of the big river. TAC now expects 599,100 fish this season, down from 657,000 in last week’s runsize update, which itself was an upgrade on the preseason forecast of 636,500.
The retreat appeared to confirm one state manager’s “squeamish” feeling last week about a primary component of the run.
“I still have lingering concerns about the fall Chinook runsize, especially the upriver bright component,” Tucker Jones, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Columbia River, said last week despite the TAC upgrade.
Two URB stocks are accounting for the lion’s share of the downgrade.
TAC now expects 226,000 URBs – fall Chinook headed to the Hanford Reach and the Snake River – back to the mouth of the Columbia, down from last week’s 270,900, which was also the preseason forecast.
Pool upriver brights, or PUBs, dropped from last week’s 106,300 to 92,800. The preseason PUB forecast was 102,200; these fall Chinook return to tributaries such as Drano Lake and the Klickitat River.
“Counts fell off since last week, so that lowered the passage expectations for all stocks,” said Ryan Lothrop, WDFW Columbia River manager, this afternoon.
The reduced URB expectations saw Idaho Fish and Game today tweak the daily limit of fall Chinook from three including one wild fish to three hatchery fish only beginning September 17.
“The bag limit modification for fall Chinook is necessary because the return of natural-origin fish is lower than the preseason forecast, and the fishery is approaching the allowable impacts on natural-origin fish,” said Chris Sullivan, IDFG anadromous fisheries coordinator.
On the flip side, Bonneville Pool hatchery, or BPH, fall Chinook are coming in above forecast. Some 123,800 were forecast, but now 140,700 are expected to the Columbia. These are tules headed for Spring Creek National Fish Hatchery, where some 65,000 adults and jacks are already on hand at the federal facility near Hood River. Record numbers of adult-sized tule jacks and jacks are being seen at Bonneville, the fact sheet says.
On the steelhead front, TAC also revised the A- and B-index steelhead forecast to 61,500 at Bonneville Dam. If it comes to pass, it “would be the lowest steelhead count since the dam was built in 1938.” The preseason forecast was 133,700 of these summer-runs headed back to the upper Columbia, Snake and Blue Mountains streams. DFW records back to 1984 show the next closest run came in in 2021 at 67,752 fish.
In response, IDFG today lowered the daily limit from three to two hatchery steelhead on a number of rivers.
“The changes to the steelhead fisheries are necessary to limit impacts on natural-origin fish and ensure hatchery broodstock needs are met,” said Sullivan.
Downstream, managers had restricted steelhead seasons from the outset, and then with poor counts at Bonneville, ODFW closed the Deschutes and John Day to steelheading in-season.
Lower Columbia salmon anglers had hoped for a Chinook extension after great fishing at the Warrior Rock Light deadline this month, but today’s fact sheet offered no such bonus. It did include a 2.5-day tribal gillnet fishery early next week in Zone 6 with a reduced sanctuary area around the Spring Creek intake.
Stuart Ellis of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission said that the four treaty tribes were mindful of weak B-index steelhead numbers and that it had been “questionable about how workable” a three-night opener would have been within available impacts, so they decided on the more conservative fishery, despite “real economic impcts to fishers, especially those who make the bulk of their annual income” during the fall gillnet season.
Sportfishing advisor Don McBride of Tri-Cities said he appreciated the caution, and he also expressed concern about the proportion of upriver brights headed to the Hanford Reach versus Snake River.
Managers’ goal is to get 60,000 URBs to McNary Dam, and so far 50900 have been counted there, with 20,405 of those continuing on to Ice Harbor Dam, the lowest on the Snake. The halfway mark in terms of run timing is September 18 on average over the past 10 years.
