Lower Columbia Reopening For Spring Chinook

Updated 5:03 p.m., April 9, 2025, at bottom with an ODFW press release.

Fishing for hatchery spring Chinook will reopen on the Lower Columbia April 11-13 and 15-17, salmon managers at WDFW and ODFW decided this afternoon.

Fishing is open from Buoy 10 to Bonneville, but bank fishing only from Beacon Rock to the dam.

Oregon’s Tucker Jones and Washington’s Charlene Hurst went with DFWs staffers’ recommendation, with almost no questions asked.

“Seems like a pretty good recommendation to me,” said Jones, pointing to the fishery’s preseason plan and the built-in pause next Monday to assess the first three-day period’s catch stats.

Some guides and anglers had called for the states to reopen starting tomorrow, but Hurst said there would be logistical challenges in doing that, what with salmon staffers headed to California and the culmination of the annual North of Falcon and Pacific Fisheries Management Council salmon season meetings starting this week.

That left “not a lot of bandwidth” available to get all the paperwork in order for a Thursday restart, she said.

Springer fishing has been on the slow side so far, probably due to abundant smelt, poorer water conditions, especially below the mouth of the Willamette. There’s also a plentitude of sea lions on the Lower Columbia.

According to a fact sheet out ahead of today’s meeting, catches through last Sunday, April 6, when the initial season closed, are estimated at 528 adult spring Chinook kept and 105 released for 25,800 angler trips. Inside that are 326 mortalities for the fishery-constraining above-Bonneville-bound springer stocks.

That leaves 3,704 upriver mortalities available for the sport fishery below the dam.

Modeling in support of the extension suggests anglers will boost the overall catch to 4,350 springers and bring the upriver quota to 98 percent of the 4,303 available mortalities after the six days of fishing.

However, knowing that fishing can heat up this time of year, the break between the two three-day openers “provides time to assess catch estimates from the initial 3-day opener … to confirm that the following 3-day block … can occur within the remaining balance. If catch estimates over the weekend are higher than projected, there is sufficient time to modify the fishery if needed,” according to the fact sheet.

While there are perennial concerns the run might not meet forecast, the initial spring fishery operates with a 30 percent runsize buffer just in case. According to the fact sheet, a runsize of 85,570 would provide enough fish to cover the extension. The actual prediction is for 122,250.

Including the Buoy 10 area in the reopener cheered one commenter, who said plunkers at Social Security Beach would appreciate it.

Participants in today’s call also learned about a Warm Springs Tribe program to introduce 20 young tribal fishermen without fathers, grandfathers, uncles or other male relatives to fishing for Chinook below Bonneville in furtherance of tribal traditions. At first, the date was believed to conflict with the bank opener below the dam, but further checking showed it will actually occur April 19.

There were also calls from Columbia Gorge tribes to allow some early springers to make it upstream to power important tribal ceremonial and subsistence fisheries set to begin, and Idaho worried about low catches so far and ODFW and WDFW wanting to fish to an “aggressive” 98 percent target on the upriver mortality cap with the six days of fishing.

But Jones pointed out that there will have been no fishing for several days, allowing a slug of fish through the dam for C&S needs, and that it was too early to assess that the run was off based on catches so far. He said the fishery is being monitored in real time, and if it started tracking ahead, managers would know.

THE FOLLLOWING IS A PRESS RELEASE FROM THE OREGON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE

Six days added for lower Columbia River spring Chinook fishing

April 9, 2025

CLACKAMAS, Ore.—Fishery managers from Oregon and Washington took joint state action today to add another six days of recreational spring Chinook salmon fishing in the mainstem Columbia River downstream of Bonneville Dam. This fishery had closed on Monday April 7 per the preseason schedule adopted in February. 

The added days (April 11-13 and April 15-17) are broken into two blocks with a one-day break between them to allow fishery managers time to assess the catch and confirm the second block of days is able to continue as adopted.  

With the additional days added, the following regulations are in effect:
Dates: Open, Friday April 11 – Sunday, April 13 and Tuesday, April 15 – Thursday, April 17  
Bag limit: Two adult hatchery salmonids (Chinook or steelhead) per day, but only one may be a Chinook. 
Open area: Buoy 10 line upstream to Beacon Rock plus only the Oregon and Washington banks from Beacon Rock upstream to the Bonneville Dam deadline. For exact boundaries visit https://myodfw.com/articles/regulation-updates#columbia-zone
Shad may also be retained. 

Fishing has been slow this year due to poor river conditions, and the lower river fishery used less than 10 percent of its initial allocation of upriver-origin spring Chinook through April 7. Fishery managers will evaluate the spring Chinook fishery in May, after an in-season upriver Chinook abundance update, to see if additional fishing time is possible. 

There have been 521 adult upriver spring Chinook counted at Bonneville Dam through April 7, compared to the recent 10-year average of 669 fish and the recent five-year average cumulative adult count of 415 fish.  It is still very early in the run—based on 10-year average run timing, less than half of 1 percent of the adult upriver spring Chinook have passed Bonneville Dam through this date. 

The fishery upstream of Bonneville Dam (from the Tower Island power lines upstream to the Oregon/Washington border) started April 1 and is scheduled to continue through April 26. 

All other permanent regulations are in effect including the use of barbless hooks when angling for salmon or steelhead in mainstem Columbia River waters from the mouth upstream to the OR/WA state line. Anglers should always check for in-season regulation changes before fishing, see updates at https://myodfw.com/recreation-report/fishing-report/columbia-zone#Regulation-Updates