Yakima chinook season taking shape

Fri., April 18, 2008

Scott Sandsberry Yakima Herald-Republic

Lower Columbia season ends soon

The hottest spring chinook salmon angling in the lower Columbia River in decades comes to a close Monday to avoid exceeding the sport-fishing allocation.

"It appears there's a whole wall of salmon charging up the river," said Carmen MacDonald, an Oregon sport-fishing activist who predicted the run will be even larger than the forecast of 269,300.

Washington and Oregon officials agreed after a Wednesday hearing to give sportsmen the weekend, then end the season 10 days earlier than scheduled.

A combination of a large run headed for spawning areas upstream of Bonneville Dam, plus cold, clear and low streamflows in the Columbia, has resulted in high catch rates.

Last week, the average catch was one chinook per 2.5 rods. An aerial survey on Sunday counted more than 1,500 boats between Hayden Island and Bonneville Dam.

One of the surprisingly good fishing locations is under the icon of the metro area – the Interstate 5 Bridge. Three hundred or more boats a day can be spotted around the I-5 and BNSF Railway bridges.

"I've never seen spring chinook fishing this good for this long in one location," said Karl Anderson, of Vancouver, in his 58th year of spring salmon angling. "It's been incredible."

But restrictions under the federal Endangered Species Act to protect wild salmon, plus catch-sharing agreements with the commercial industry and treaty tribes, limit the sport catch to about 24,000 this spring.

Biologist Chris Kern of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said the projected catch through Sunday, the last day of fishing, will be slightly more than 22,300 chinook kept and 4,000 released.

If those projections materialize, there will be about 1,600 to 2,000 fish available in the allocation, not enough for another day when the catch is 1,200 to 1,400 a day on a run that's not yet at its peak.

"This was really a great fishery," said Phil Donovan of the Northwest Steelheaders. "If you had 8 ounces of lead and 7-foot leader, you could catch a salmon."

Vancouver, Wash., Columbian

YAKIMA – Things are looking good for the decade’s fourth spring chinook fishery on the Yakima River, with about 4,800 hatchery salmon expected in a run forecast at 10,060 bound for the upper Yakima.

Although a fishery hasn’t been set yet, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is expected to announce one within the next week. Regional fish program manager John Easterbrooks is anticipating an opener around May 1, with fishing – for hatchery chinook only – to last through the end of May.

The only question seems to be where that fishing will take place.

The stretch of the Yakima River between the State Route 223 bridge at Granger to the mouth of Ahtanum Creek borders the Yakama Reservation, and the 1855 treaty established the reservation boundaries as spanning across the river to the normal high-water mark on the opposite (northern/eastern) shore.

As a result, the state can’t initiate a fishery to include non-tribal anglers without the approval from Yakama tribal leaders, and as of Wednesday afternoon an agreement had not been reached.

“We’re trying to finalize the location, depending on our receiving permission for non-Indian fishing along the reservation boundary,” said state wildlife department regional director Jeff Tayer. “We’re working with the tribe right now on that issue.”

Phil Rigdon, the Yakama Nation’s deputy director for natural resources, could not be reached for comment.

Even if an agreement is reached, non-tribal anglers will need to purchase the Yakama Nation’s combination hunting-fishing permit.

If an agreement isn’t reached, the state will need to move the bulk of the fishery lower in the river, probably opening from the Interstate I-82 bridge at Richland upriver to Benton City.

The timing for such a move, though, has never been better.

A decade ago, that stretch of the lower Yakima had minimal access with largely primitive boat launches. Over the past five years, though, access has been vastly improved.

There are three new boat launches, at Snively Road, Hyde Road and Duportail Road, all in Benton County. Benton City’s launch has been vastly improved, as has one in Horn Rapids County Park.

The upper Yakima stretch from the mouth of Ahtanum Creek to the closed-water line below Roza Dam would still be part of any springer fishery. But the Granger-to-Ahtanum Creek stretch that borders the Yakama Nation requires tribal approval.

That year, the state set a spring chinook fishery, only to see it temporarily derailed when tribal enforcement officers began ticketing anglers in the Yakama-owned stretch of the Yakima who hadn’t purchased a tribal permit.

“We have a lot of land ownership on the (south and west) bank, and we didn’t realize at the time that the language was what it was in the treaty,” Tayer said. “We found that out kind of late in the game, and we had to regroup, pull back and get it ironed out.”

The 2004 fishery was the decade’s third significant spring chinook fishery on the Yakima, following earlier fisheries in 2001 and 2002.

Those fisheries followed a brief but historically significant season for a few Saturdays in 2000 on only a small portion of the upper river – the Yakima River’s first legal fishing for springers in more than four decades.

This year’s fishery may depend on more than just the number of hatchery springers, even if the run reaches the nearly 5,000 that are forecast.

“We could easily catch 1,000 fish, 1,200 fish and not have a problem,” Easterbrooks said.

“That’s not the issue. (Anglers) probably won’t catch that many. What will happen, if we get some hot water, the snowmelt will blow us out of the water.”

High, sudden snowmelt flows would muddy the river, making visibility difficult for both the anglers and the chinook they’re hoping to catch. Anglers and state fisheries officials are hoping the weather remains cool – or, at least, that the warming trend is slow and steady.

“If it stays cold,” Easterbrooks said, “we’ll be in good shape.”