Lower Columbia Springers To Reopen

UPDATED 7:51 P.M., MAY 15, 2024, WITH COMMENTS FROM ODFW IN THE 10TH-12TH PARAGRAPHS

Hatchery spring Chinook will be fair game again on the Lower Columbia starting this Friday, May 17, for the first of three staggered reopeners stretching over 10 days through mid-June, state managers decided this afternoon.

Fishing will open May 17-19, May 25-27 and June 12-15 between the Rocky-Tongue Point line and Bonneville Dam, ODFW’s Tucker Jones and WDFW’s Charlene Hurst decided two hours into a meeting that also looked at a controversial commercial tangle net fishery on the big river.

Staffers from WDFW and ODFW had initially proposed reopening the river starting this Saturday, but recreational advisors and others pressed managers to get anglers back on the river as soon as possible, so Hurst and Jones trimmed a day out of June and used unallocated springer mortalities to come up with the fish to allow for fishing to begin Friday.

Staggering the reopeners will allow the states to better make changes on the fly in case conditions – catches, river conditions or the run itself – throw a curveball. Daily catches are expected to decline from 346 upriver mortalities a day this weekend to 165 by mid-June.

The fact sheet out ahead of today’s meeting shows that with this week’s slight runsize upgrade to 122,400 above-Bonneville-bound springers, there is a balance of 2,914 mortalities available for recreational fishermen below the dam.

There’s also 678 available on the mainstem Columbia for nontribal commercial fishermen in support of a 12-hour tangle-net opener that Hurst and Jones also approved, albeit with a slight tweak to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. next Monday.

That proposal was the subject of much of today’s public comment, with netters in favor and most all sportfishermen against it. Anglers referenced last decade’s Columbia River reforms meant to move the commercial fleet off the mainstem. In a message to Washington and Oregon governors and directors of both state agencies, the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association’s Liz Hamilton said the fishery would “undermine” those reforms, which were “funded by the $9.75 Columbia River endorsement fee” and “included moving hatchery fish away from sport tributaries into the SAFE areas to provide for a resilient commercial fishery.”

Others noted that netters have been enjoying bang-up springer seasons in the off-channel SAFE fisheries at the mouth of the Columbia the past two years.

And a similar May 2022 commercial opener saw a catch nearly completely comprised of nontarget fish, mostly shad, according to CCA’s Nello Picinich, citing ODFW and WDFW catch records. Jones’ words from the time were used to attack the proposal, but the man himself today was in support of it, saying there was a “narrow window in time to make it work.”

A press release out late in the day from ODFW stated that Oregon and Washington policies “support mark-selective mainstem commercial tangle net fisheries after the in-season run-update when available impacts allow.”

“When we modeled these fisheries during the reform process, we only expected them to happen once every two to four years, and that’s about how often they wind up being considered,” Jones said in the press release. “They can be a small but important piece in the overall commercial economic portfolio and help maintain the commercial infrastructure that is part of overall Columbia River fisheries.”

Tangle nets catch salmon by entangling their teeth instead of their gills, allowing them to be caught alive and wild fish released after being placed in required recovery boxes.

That controversy aside, today’s action effectively makes for a more meaningful June sport Chinook opportunity on the Lower Columbia too. Anglers had been looking at just June 16-19 for summer kings – June 16 is the day Chinook at Bonneville magically go from being springers to summers – but now will be able to fish the river for eight straight days.