Headlines

The pikeminnow bounty program on the Columbia and Snake Rivers will wrap up a handful of days early next week as managers say that the available funding for the May-September season will have been distributed to participating anglers

ODFW is opening more of the upper Willamette River to coho fishing and will allow fishing with a second rod above the falls, thanks to a run that’s on a pace to possibly set a new record.

Columbia salmon managers are adding still more time to fish for fall Chinook on the big river, including reopening the west Puget Island to Warrior Rock-Bachelor Island line fishery starting this Friday, September 20, through September 30.

Fall Chinook smolts released into a lower Coquille River slough died at the site, ODFW reported

The Oregon Hunters Association and ODFW are teaming up to encourage sportsmen to get their deer and elk tested this season for chronic wasting disease with a drawing for a rifle or scope.

Mid-September 2024 fall Chinook, coho and steelhead catch stats for the Lower Columbia, select Southwest Washington tributaries and the Hanford Reach.

With the clock ticking down to the start of Oregon deer season on October’s first weekend, there’s still time to sight in your rifle at more than a half dozen ranges across the state holding sessions for the hunting public.

If you wondered whether there would still be fall Chinook to be had at Buoy 10 for the September 12-22 reopener, I can report that yes, indeed, there are. To be abundantly clear, the DFWs modeled a mere 400 would be retained when they approved the additional 11 days of opportunity here, along with others…

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission today approved 2025 big game regulations, including a 2 percent increase in spring black bear tags and creating a new opportunity for youth hunters, among other business.

With up to one-third of outmigrating Nisqually River steelhead being eaten by harbor seals but management options limited, NMFS says recent research “supports the need to test seal exclusion from the areas where they take the biggest toll.”

The nonselective coho fishery off Oregon’s Central Coast will close at the end of this weekend, federal and state fishery officials just annnounced.

The Columbia estuary will reopen for fall Chinook with a boosted hatchery coho limit, and the king fishery from the mouth of the Lewis to Tri-Cities was extended by state salmon managers this afternoon.

Washington’s two gubernatorial candidates have detailed their positions on salmon fisheries and recovering Chinook and other stocks, hatcheries and the Fish and Wildlife Commission in response to Q&As from Puget Sound Anglers.

Early September 2024 Chinook, coho, steelhead and sturgeon catch stats for the Lower Columbia, select Southwest Washington tributaries and the Hanford Reach.

Get out your calendar, Washington Coast razor clam diggers! You can pencil in 42 openers starting October 3 and running through the end of December now that WDFW has set the schedule for the first three months of the fall-winter-spring season.

Late August and early September 2024 Chinook, coho and steelhead catch stats for Buoy 10, the Lower Columbia and its Southwest Washington tributaries and the Hanford Reach.

women sustained non-life-threatening injuries after she and her dogs were charged by a black bear while they were hiking in Northeast Washington’s Ferry County.

Camo? Check. Binoculars? Check. CWD rules? Uhhhhh, run those past me once again, please …

State and federal fishery managers announced this afternoon that ocean waters between Cape Falcon, Oregon, and the Queets River in Washington will reopen for one day of salmon fishing next Wednesday, September 4.

Late August 2024 Chinook, coho, steelhead, sturgeon and walleye catch stats for the Lower Columbia River, Buoy 10, Columbia Gorge pools and select Southwest Washington tributaries.

“One of the best prosecuting attorneys I’ve had the pleasure of working with in my 15 years as a member of the Fish and Wildlife Division.”

Where the printed version that came out this past spring told cougar hunters that this season’s rules hadn’t been finalized at press time, they’re now available online, marking completion of a contentious chapter in Evergreen State hunting history that shifts the season from general season + quota to solely quota-driven.

With the start of Washington’s general fall hunting seasons just over a week away and chronic wasting disease confirmed for the first time in the state, WDFW is announcing new rules that archers, muzzleloaders and riflemen, as well as roadkill salvagers, need to be aware of.

If the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission and I had any sense whatsoever, we’d spend our time and energy on something other than, yes, wolves.

Chinook and hatchery coho anglers have through this Saturday, August 24, to fish for salmon off of Westport, per an inseason rule-change notice out from federal overseers this afternoon.

Mid-August 2024 Chinook, coho, steelhead and sturgeon catch stats for the Lower Columbia, Buoy 10 and select Southwest Washington tributaries.

WDFW announces 2,369 multiseason deer tags will go on sale starting tomorrow morning, while the next 130 hunters on the original elk multiseason draw list will have a chance to buy one then as well.

Through yesterday, a total of 29,478 fall Chinook have been counted at Bonneville Dam since August 1, the most for the first 18 days of the month in the 2000s and likely a lot further back than that as well.

Oregon fish and wildlife troopers are looking for those linked to the hooking and rough handling of a sturgeon from a Columbia River spawning sanctuary near McNary Dam this past May.

A three-judge panel of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court’s ruling that left in place a hatchery-based prey increase program meant to provide more Chinook for Washington’s starving southern resident killer whales.

Young Oregon wingshooters can sign up for a series of free youth pheasant hunts coming to state wildlife areas and other locations next month.

Salmon fishing between Cape Falcon, Oregon, and Leadbetter Point, Washington, will reopen for four days next week after a review of catches showed enough hatchery coho were actually available.

Early to mid-August 2024 Chinook, coho and steelhead catch stats for the Columbia from Buoy 10 to Tri-Cities and select Southwest Washington tributaries.

WDFW Police report that state and local officers lethally removed a male black bear after it “struck” a 17-year-old girl in the arm in the Central Washington town of Roslyn Tuesday evening.

A million Baker Lake sockeye eggs will be transferred to a Cedar River hatchery this fall in hopes they help eventually recover Lake Washington’s runs and rebuild its fabled fishery.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is appealing more than $200,000 in state fines recently levied by the Department of Labor & Industries following investigations of accidents that occurred at two Westside smolt traps early this year.