FISHING -- Great news on Columbia-Snake chinook runs, not-so-great news on Idaho-bound steelhead and grim news on coho are being reported in the numbers from Joe Hymer, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife salmon expert in Vancouver:

Chinook

• Passage at Bonneville Dam through September 22 totals 755,455 adult fall Chinook.
• The Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) has provided a fall Chinook run update of 1,165,600 adults to the Columbia River (25 percent higher than the forecast) including 734,900 upriver brights (URB) bound for the Hanford Reach. Both would be the second largest on record (since at least 1938).  The records are the 1,268,400 fish of which 784,300 were URBs in 2013.  
• The cumulative total to-date of 37,524 adult fall chinook counted at Lower Granite Dam is the largest since the construction of the dam in 1975. The previous record were the 35,772 fish counted from August 18-September 22, 2013.

Coho

• TAC currently expects the early run adult coho (through September) at Bonneville Dam to be approximately 27,000 fish compared to a pre-season expectation of over 140,000. This will be the fewest fish counted at the dam since 1997.

Steelhead

• A and B run steelhead Bonneville Dam counts since July 1 total 230,630 fish. On September 21, TAC updated the total A/B Index steelhead run to 250,000 at Bonneville Dam and the B Index steelhead to 20,000 fish (5,200 wild).  B run steelhead are the larger, later-returning fish headed to Idaho. The pre-season upriver steelhead forecast was nearly 300,000 with 41,000 (11,700 wild) B run fish. 
• The 5,200 wild B run steelhead are only 44 percent of the original forecast.
• The wild steelhead are now the stock state biologists must pay the most attention to when managing commercial fisheries in the Columbia, said Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Jeff Whisler.