DFWs Reissue Columbia Springer Forecast After Counting Error; Expect 217,500 To Mouth

Columbia River fishery managers today reissued their 2025 spring Chinook forecast after identifying an error “in a spreadsheet that led to the display of incorrect” numbers in yesterday’s release of the first predictions for next year’s Northwest salmon runs.

They’re still expecting more springers back to the mouth of the big river than this year, just not quite as many. The revised forecast calls for 217,500 fish, not 254,100, a figure pretty close to the 10-year average of 221,176.

“To clarify, no official changes to returns or forecasts were made. The issue was a copy error caused by a formula in our public-facing document, which mistakenly double-counted the Willamette River hatchery-origin 2024 return and 2025 forecast, resulting in the incorrect totals being displayed,” stated Britton K. Ransford, a WDFW spokesman for Southwest Washington, in an email early this afternoon.

He noted that 2024’s actual springer return was also tweaked, from 217,658 down to 189,559.

An updated version of the forecasts and comparisons to last year is now posted to WDFW’s website.

All the other figures in yesterday’s forecast appear to be the same.

Ransford said the agency apologized for any confusion.

Ugh, if it’s not “record” fish counts I swore off ever reporting on again in 2024, it’s forecasts.