Better late than never for chinook

Big-river fishermen are learning to go with the flow this spring.

Spring chinook salmon fishing looked like a bust, now it’s a boom – or at least the success was booming all the way up into the McNary area until Friday, when rainstorms sent a surge of off-color water down the Columbia.

Fish managers from Washington and Oregon came close to calling the 2006 spring chinook fishery a bust a month ago when April returns over Bonneville Dam were the lowest on record. Then the late-arriving run surged over the dam.

Last week, the fish managers revised their forecast to 125,000 adult fish expected to come upstream from Bonneville. That’s up from 106,900 fish counted at the dam last year. The 2006 preseason forecast was 88,400.

The run has waned in the lower Columbia as the fish move upstream and fishing should pick up in the Snake River system as high river flows decrease.

Starting at noon Tuesday, however, the Corps of Engineers plans to begin letting woody debris through the spillways at Little Goose and Lower Monumental dams. This can create snags for anglers and danger for boaters.

High spring flows have accumulated about three acres of logs and debris upstream of Little Goose Dam, officials said. It will take two or three days for the debris to start showing at Lower Monumental.