
Heads Up On New Cowlitz Smelt Dipping Wrinkles
There are new wrinkles coming to smelt dipping in Washington’s Cowlitz River, but if you’ve ever taken part in razor clam openers on the state’s coast, you’ve got this.
And no, I don’t mean they banned dipnets and will only allow shovels for smelt.
Starting this year, WDFW has set a whole slate of tentative smelt openers – Wednesdays and Saturdays from February 5 through March 22 – and just as with razor clams and the all-clear agency shellfish managers send out after marine toxin test results come back in the safe range for a given low tide series, they will issue a final greenlight for dipnetting a few days before the start of each weekly set of dates based on harvestable abundance of the oily little fish.

There’s also the new licensing requirement to catch smelt, but for now let’s focus on this new schedule and how it will all work.
Details come from a fact sheet prepared for a Columbia River Compact call this afternoon, WDFW’s recently updated Cowlitz River smelt fishing page and will also appear in the February 2025 issue of Northwest Sportsman Magazine.
Essentially, state managers will again be carefully watching landing data from today’s just-approved mainstem Columbia commercial smelt test fisheries, which collect “valuable” biological data on the Endangered Species Act-listed population, to determine strength and timing of this year’s return as well as use it judge when to open recreational harvest on the Cowlitz in the Longview, Kelso and Castle Rock areas, similar to past years.
Given this year’s expected run size – not the best, but not the worst; more on that later – they will be looking for netboat deliveries averaging at least 200 pounds apiece during at least one of the upcoming 12-hour commercial test fisheries scheduled for Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from January 20 through March 13 before considering opening the Cowlitz for dipnetting.
That part is just like past years, except back then WDFW would only set one single smelt opener at a time, not pencil an entire season’s worth onto the calendar, which is how they let the public plan for highly popular razor clam digging opportunities a couple months out.
(If commercial netters decide not to go fish the Columbia for smelt for whatever reason, state managers could still “use professional judgement to set recreational fisheries on the Cowlitz.)
So what’s this year’s tentative smelt dipping schedule?
February 5 and 8 (approval notice: Friday, January 31)
February 12 and 15 (approval notice: Friday, February 7)
February 19 and 22 (approval notice: Friday, February 14)
February 26 and March 1 (approval notice: Friday, February 21)
March 5 and 8 (approval notice: Friday, February 28)
March 12 and 15 (approval notice: Friday, March 7)
March 19 and 22 (approval notice: Friday, March 14)
WDFW says it will give notice of final approvals for each week’s set of tentative openers by 3 p.m on the Friday beforehand. Dipping would be open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. from the Highway 432 bridge near the mouth of the Cowlitz upstream to the Al Helenberg Memorial Boat Ramp in Castle Rock.

“This approach is designed to provide advance notice of potential fishing days, while balancing increasing fishing effort with sustainable management practices,” WDFW explains on its Cowlitz smelt page.
One recent season saw dippers harvest on average a pound more smelt than the 10-pound limit, likely driven by a few bad actors netting way too many.
A POTENTIAL DRAWBACK TO THIS NEW hard season framework is that spawn-ready smelt are fickle little, er, fish.
This year’s run timing might not line up so well with WDFW’s new handy dandy calendar. Maybe the Cowlitz is running too cold ahead of a potential set of openers, maybe flows are too low or there’s too much runoff, or maybe the water chemistry isn’t quite right for a bazillion little smelty smeltersons to be in the mood, leaving the net-wielding masses ashore mad.
A late influx last winter saw WDFW set a Tuesday opener, while the month before, managers set a Thursday dip on Monday of the same week.
It could mean less flexibility to quickly take advantage of sudden abundance, which to be fair could also occur on those February and March Wednesdays and Saturdays.
WDFW acknowledges as much about the vagaries of fish with brains the size of grains of Cowlitz sand, saying there may be “scenarios where the run size appears large enough for sustainable harvest, though natural factors like water conditions, timing, and unpredictable migration patterns mean smelt are not present in large numbers during days open to recreational dip-netting.”

While WDFW states that it’s “unlikely” smelt dipping will actually open on all 14 of the above tentative dates, they still do expect “some days to be approved based on the current run size expectation.”
OK then, so what kind of runsize is expected in 2025?
With their 2023 management plan in hand, state managers use a blend of preseason abundance indicators to come up with a harvest rate, which also can be adjusted up or down inseason.
One indicator that uses the average of the past three years points to 15.2 million pounds worth of smelt this year. However, a second indicator using the past two years’ returns suggests declining abundance in 2025, and a third that looked at 2024 and the average runsize over the past decade of 8.6 million fish points to a return lower than last year’s 10.4 million pounds and “similar to or less than the 10-year average.”
As it stands, WDFW is using a “precautionary approach” via a conservative 2 percent harvest rate for this year’s run.
AS FOR THAT NEW LICENSING REQUIREMENT to dip for smelt, it follows on passage of House Bill 1226 in Olympia last year. If you already have a freshwater or combo license for the 2024-25 fishing season, you’re golden. But if not, you’ll need to pick one up or get a temporary license. Kids 14 and younger don’t need a license to dip for smelt.
“(Smelt) are the last remaining native fish in the state of Washington to require a fishing license,” WDFW smelt lead Laura Heironimus explained to our MD Johnson for a February article. “And they’re an ESA-listed fish. So part of it [having a license] had to do with our ability to prosecute these fisheries in a meaningful way. If you’ve ever been to the fishery, it can tend to be somewhat of a party downriver, and our hope is to improve compliance with fishing regulations. By requiring a fishing license, people are going to be (hopefully) more aware of the rules surrounding the smelt fishery, using the correct gear, and following the harvest quotas associated with participating in the fishery.”
Heironimus acknowledged there would be “a bit of a learning curve” for Cowlitz dippers.
“I think we’ll be working with people and educating them on any license (questions) quite a bit this first year. And maybe even the next couple years,” she stated.
It might not have been the best idea to introduce two new wrinkles together in the same season, but then again, maybe it will all go smoothly. Time will tell. As will the smelt.