States Set Columbia Springer Seasons, Add 2 More Dalles Pool Sturgeon Days

UPDATE, 11:52 p.m., Wednesday, February 19, 2025: All the fisheries outlined below were approved late this morning by WDFW and ODFW director representatives. ODFW’s Tucker Jones pointed to low, clear water conditions, lagging inflows to upper basin reservoirs and expectations that the Columbia won’t significantly rise and become less clear and affect fishing conditions to say there was “a decent chance of inseason management,” so keep an eye on rules change pages as we get towards early April.

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Columbia fishery managers will mull an initial lower river spring Chinook season running through April 6 as well as adding two more days of sturgeon retention on The Dalles Pool tomorrow.

Those are two of the recommendations from WDFW and ODFW staffers in a fact sheet out ahead of the scheduled 10 a.m. Columbia River Compact call Wednesday morning.

They will also consider an April 1-26 springer fishery on the mainstem Columbia Gorge pools.

Both Chinook season frameworks were “supported” by the Columbia River Recreational Advisory Group, according to the fact sheet.

After subtracting out the 30 percent runsize buffer, nonconcurrent allocations between Washington and Oregon and an overall 9.0 percent impact limit due to the size of the ESA-listed Snake River natural-origin spring and summer king component, the states say there are 4,030 above-Bonneville-bound Chinook available for harvest below the dam and 576 in the gorge pools, as well as 407 for the lower Snake.

DFW staffers forecast that running the season between Buoy 10 and Bonneville through Sunday, April 6, will yield a kept catch of 5,203 springers with 3,961 mortalities from the constraining upriver stock, while the 26-day gorge pool fishery between the Tower Island power lines up to the Washington-Oregon border east of McNary Dam would produce 549 kept kings and 563 upriver mortalities.

Both fisheries are predicted to hit roughly 98 percent of the prerunsize update guideline under staffers’ current assumptions.

Springers from Lower Columbia tributaries such as the Willamette and Cowlitz are also caught during mainstem fisheries.

Inseason catch info could lead to more days on the water if fishing is slow or an earlier close if things heat up too much. The mid-May runsize update could also provide more fishing time if the run is tracking and there’s room in the guideline.

WDFW sets Snake seasons separately.

This year’s overall forecast calls for a Columbia River mouth return of 217,500 springers, just about average for the past 10 years, with 122,500 of those being bound for tributaries above Bonneville. Some 51,200 Willamette fish are expected. Enough are also forecast to the Cowlitz, Kalama and Lewis rivers to not require past seasons’ bubble closures or upstream focus. Bank-fishing-only regulations from Beacon Rock to Bonneville would again be in place.

The Lower Columbia is open up to the I-5 bridge for hatchery springers through March 31 by permanent rule.

Meanwhile, the first springer or two of the year has been reported. One was confirmed landed by a commercial fisherman at Tongue Point, while another was rumored to have been caught in the Willamette.

As for sturgeon, last Saturday’s The Dalles Pool keeper opener was a bit of a bust, with both lower catch rates and effort seen, according to the fact sheet. An estimated 23 diamondsides were kept, leaving 111 fish in the quota, so the states are proposing to open Saturday, February 22, and Thursday, February 27.

Final decisions on all this will come tomorrow. Representatives for ODFW’s and WDFW’s directors Debbie Colbert and Kelly Susewind may adopt the staff recommendations as is or modify them based on public comment and/or their own judgment after mulling what they hear from anglers, guides, state biologists and managers and upstream interests such as several tribes and IDFG.