Outlook For Smelt Run Pessimistic

It was the one Northwest fish run that seemed inexhaustible.

By the zillions, smelt faithfully returned each year. The small, silvery fish entered the Columbia in late winter and headed up the Cowlitz, Lewis, Kalama or Sandy rivers.

Commercial landings were measured in millions of pounds. Smelt sold for a quarter a pound in grocery stores and bait shops.

Sport dippers lined the lower Cowlitz, Lewis or Sandy, often getting the 20-pound limit in only a few scoops. Samplings in 1976 estimated the sport catch matched commercial landings.

How times have changed since 1993.

Water temperatures in the Columbia River were extremely cold that year. Most of the smelt spawned outside the Columbia, opting for Washington coastal rivers.

For whatever reason, possibly the El Nino warm-water ocean effect, the 1994 return was awful.

In 1995, the run was subpar, but not a total collapse.

That waited for 1996, when commercial landings were less than 10,000 pounds. Landings provide a measure of smelt abundance.

There’s no reason for optimism because this year’s run is from parents who spawned in 1993 and 1994.

Commercial fishermen prospecting for smelt in the lower Columbia River toward the end of January were catching a few hundred pounds per night. Those fish have been selling in Astoria-area stores for $5 to $6 a pound.

That’s Economics 101, the law of supply and demand.

Fearing the worst, Washington and Oregon are limiting commercial smelt harvest to a 1-1/2-day-per-week test fishery.

Sport dipping is being allowed through Feb. 15.

If the smelt haven’t arrived in abundance by mid-February, sport and commercial fishing is closed. It will stay closed until there’s evidence of a healthy run.