An Outdoors guide to fishing for Hanford chinook

The fall chinook salmon season opened with a whimper on Aug. 16 along the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River. This is the calm before the storm of salmon and anglers stack up in the next two months downstream from Priest Rapids Dam.

Early-bird anglers will start catching big kings in the Ringold area after a couple thousand fall chinook swim over McNary Dam and into the lower stretch of the reach. Get ready: The fish have been moving over McNary at the rate of about 300 a day.

Still, most guides don’t show up until mid September, when the salmon usually start pouring in, especially if river temperatures drop into the 60s.

These salmon are big. According to Washington Fish and Wildlife Department records, most of these salmon, known as upriver brights, are 18 to 25 pounds. A good number of adults reach 40 pounds. Some reach 50 pounds. Occasionally anglers catch a muscled specimen larger than 60 pounds.

The term “upriver brights” relates to their chromelike condition when they enter the Columbia in preparation for their long upstream migration. The eating quality of these salmon remains remarkably decent considering they must travel about 390 miles in fresh water – including 172 miles of reservoirs – to reach Priest Rapids Dam.

Fading flavor: The salmon meat generally remains in good condition through September. Then most Hanford chinooks are headed to the smoker. By mid October, anglers tend to be doing a lot of catch-and-release.

Fishery’s foundation: The Columbia River flows 1,270 miles, 415 miles of which are in Canada, and pours more water into the Pacific Ocean than any other river in North or South America. The river runs through the Rocky Mountains, Selkirks, Cascades and coastal ranges. The Hanford Reach is just a fraction of the river, but it has a big distinction. The 51-mile “reach” is free-flowing water that runs out of Priest Rapids Dam downstream to the Richland area and Wallula Pool behind McNary Dam. This is the longest remaining nontidal free-flowing part of the Columbia River and, not coincidentally, it produces by far the river’s healthiest naturally spawning population of chinook salmon.

Rare opportunity: Anglers don’t have to look for a clipped fin on chinook salmon in the Hanford Reach. The fishery on a given year is 90 to 98 percent wild fish, and they are all fair game.

The 2006 forecast for the upriver brights contingent of fall chinook at Bonneville Dam is 249,100, down from 268,700 last year and 373,000 in 2003, which was the best since the inception of recordkeeping in 1964. But 249,100 is an outstanding number, biologists say. The salmon run a gauntlet of tribal gillnets and sport fisheries as they progress up the Columbia. Some of the chinooks veer off to the Deschutes River; some head to the Yakima. Several thousand are headed for the endangered fall chinook spawning runs of the Snake River.

About 80,000 of those upriver brights are bound for the Hanford Reach. This is the last of the spectacular runs of naturally spawning salmon that penetrate deep into the Columbia River system.

Uncommon security: Ironically, much of the credit for keeping the fall run intact goes to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Security and secrecy involving plutonium production precluded development along the river.

The sage-covered Hanford Reservation hasn’t been open to the public since the 1940s, when the Manhattan Project was established there to develop the atomic bomb. Plutonium from B Reactor fueled “Fat Man,” the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. Nuclear power was generated there in subsequent years. Those operations have ended, but the site continues to be one of the nation’s largest repositories for radioactive waste and the land remains off-limits.

Much of the north and east side of the river is managed in the 195,000-acre Hanford Reach National Monument, where miles of shoreline is wildlife sanctuary within the Saddle Mountains and Wahluke units. This includes the White Bluffs of chalky silt and sandstone that rise 200 feet above the water.

Don’t bank on it: Bank-fishing areas are extremely limited in the Reach because of these restrictions. Bank anglers caught about 90 chinook adults and jacks last year in the Reach compared with 8,000 taken by boat anglers.

Go with the flow: Expect radical daily fluctuations in water levels out of Priest Rapids Dam.

“Last year we had some reverse flows that sent beaver huts floating down the river at 10 a.m. and it was so high you could hardly fish some days with all the weeds during the day,” said Tri-Cities fishing guide Jeff Knotts. “On other days, they’d start dumping that water and I’d tell my clients to get ready to catch fish. Salmon will move when that water starts coming. It can be an advantage.”

Best fishing time: First light to sunrise. Since almost everyone knows that, expect crowds at the launches.

Rookie mistake: Bringing a cooler that’s too small for Columbia fall chinook.