Salmon fishing closed on Columbia River

With spring chinook counts at one of their lowest levels ever, fishery managers in Oregon and Washington have called an emergency closure for all salmon, steelhead and shad fishing on the Columbia River starting today.

Potentially, the closure is only temporary. But for now, the entire mainstem Columbia is closed for these species until further notice below McNary Dam, said Washington Fish and Wildlife Department officials.

Fishing will remain open under state rules for hatchery spring chinook and other species in Columbia tributaries, including the Cowlitz, Kalama, Lewis, Wind and Klickitat rivers and Drano Lake, as well as the Willamette River in Oregon.

The fate of the Snake River system salmon fishing seasons depends on what develops far downstream at Bonneville Dam, the first dam the fish pass on their upstream migration to spawn.

“It puts a damper on things, that’s for sure,” said Tony Capdevoscq of Cap’s Sportfishing based in Cheney. “I put everybody on hold until I hear more from Fish and Game. You can’t tell them, ‘Let’s go fishing,’ if there’s no fish.”

Anglers can still fish for steelhead that came into the Snake River system last winter and are making their last surge to spawning areas such as those in the Clearwater River. Idaho’s spring chinook season is scheduled to open Saturday.

“It wouldn’t make any difference if they decided to delay the Idaho season,” Capdevoscq said. “At this point, there’s no reason to go fishing since there’s only been three salmon counted over Lower Granite Dam.” Lower Granite is the last Snake River dam fish pass before entering Idaho.

By now in an average year, more than 50,000 spring chinook would have been counted across the Columbia’s Bonneville Dam.

By Monday, however, 1,545 were counted – the second-lowest count for this time of year since record-keeping began in 1938. In 1952, the lowest number was counted at 1,251.

Preseason projections forecast a total of 254,100 upriver spring chinook and 116,900 Willamette River-bound fish.

The number of fish coming over Bonneville has started to increase slightly to about 500 a day. Fish managers, who haven’t settled on a reason for the lack of a salmon migration, say there’s still a chance the fish are staging in the ocean and could still make a surge up the Columbia.

“This is either the latest run in recorded history, or the smallest run in recorded history, or both,” Steve Williams, deputy director of fisheries for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Associated Press.

To protect the fish, Oregon and Washington have stopped both commercial and sport fishing. They have also taken the rare step of shutting down target commercial and sport fishing for hatchery and net-pen reared fish in Youngs Bay, Knappa and Blind sloughs near Astoria and Deep River in Washington.

Commercial gill-nets caught around 5,300 hatchery spring chinook in March. Sport anglers were expected to have caught close to 9,000 by midnight Wednesday, including Willamette spring chinook.

The states will confer again on April 27 to analyze the Bonneville Dam counts. Fishery managers said they will monitor the status of the run daily and can reopen fisheries if the runs pick up.

Buzz Ramsey, Northwest regional sales and promotion manager for Luhr Jensen and Sons, a tackle company in Hood River, said anglers and the industry support the closures because “we all want to do our part.”

“A lot of guys like going down to the Columbia or Snake,” said Rick Brown of White’s Outdoor tackle shop in Spokane. “Besides being the best-eating salmon you can get, the spring chinook are a salmon we can get without traveling all the way to the ocean.”