2013 outdoors: Fishing highlights

The total 2013 count of about 953,225 adult fall chinook in the Columbia River at Bonneville Dam this year smashed the record of 610,244 set in 2003. 

The chinook run surged to set several single-day record numbers, peaking with a Sept. 9 stampede of 63,870 over Bonneville.

Upstream, 56,565 chinook over Lower Granite on the Snake River usurped the record of 41,815 set in 2010.

Sport anglers didn’t miss out on the action. They set records for the number of chinook caught in the lower Columbia and Hanford Reach.

Kokanee stood out in North Idaho, with the revival of fishing at Lake Pend Oreille, a big year for numbers and size in Dworshak Reservoir and the debut of a fishery in Hayden Lake.

Other 2013 fishing highlights include:

• Washington OKs phase out of gillnet fishing in main stem Columbia River.

• Barbless hooks required for salmon and steelhead fishing on Columbia.

• Catch limits for walleye, bass and channel catfish were liberalized in much of the Columbia-Snake river systems to encourage anglers to reduce populations of the predator fish to benefit salmon.

• Badger Lake rotenone treatment postponed because of property owner objections.

• Priest Lake anglers posed with choice of mackinaw dominated fishery or kokanee, cutthroats and bull trout; commercial boats hired to net sample the existing fishery.

• Craig Moody of Elk won $1,000 for catching a tagged northern pike in the Kalispell Tribe’s Pikepalooza on the Pend Oreille River. The derby followed the state’s second year of pike-suppression using gillnets to remove 6,000 of the non-native predators from Box Canyon Reservoir.