Snake River could have short – but sweet – spring chinook season

The Snake River in Washington could see a short but sweet spring chinook season, according to state fisheries managers.

Chris Donley and Jeremy Trump of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife told anglers at a meeting in Clarkston last week that if catch rates are similar to those seen last year, the state’s projected harvest allocation of a little fewer than 1,000 adult chinook on the Snake will be quickly exhausted.

Anglers fishing near Ice Harbor and Little Goose dams can harvest 100 adult chinook per day when conditions are in prime shape. Trump, the regional fisheries biologist at Dayton, and Donley, the regional fisheries manager at Spokane, are proposing to open fisheries two days a week near Ice Harbor Dam, Little Goose Dam and a short stretch of the river near Clarkston.

Little Goose and Clarkston could be open on Sundays and Mondays, and the Ice Harbor area could be open on Fridays and Saturdays, according to their proposal. All three areas would have a one adult fish per day bag limit.

Donley said the combination of low bag limits and short fishing periods is designed to produce a season that lasts two or three weeks. Allowing fishing three or more days a week, or a higher bag limit, could produce a season that lasts only one week.

“I’m just trying to figure how to stretch this out,” he said.

The state is likely to drop the fishery at Lower Granite Dam, which has seen little participation or harvest in previous years.

“It’s been pretty low effort down there,” Trump said.

However, a final decision hasn’t been made. Donley said the season details are likely to be set and released in mid-April, about two weeks prior to the projected start of the season.

For the third year in a row, anglers at the meeting pressed fisheries officials for a more equitable split of spring chinook quotas between fisheries on the Snake River and those below Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

Those who fish the lower Columbia will have a harvest quota of about 10,000 spring chinook bound for areas above Bonneville Dam, as well as about 6,000 chinook that return to tributaries in the lower Columbia.

According to rules adopted by the Washington Commission of Fish and Wildlife, sport anglers in the state are entitled to 70 percent of chinook available for harvest, and commercial anglers get 30 percent.

The harvest of hatchery spring chinook is limited by the number of wild chinook caught and released during fishing seasons. Sport fishing seasons can result in no more than a 2 percent mortality rate of protected wild fish.

To calculate wild fish mortality, fisheries managers assume about 10 percent of the wild fish caught and released end up dying.

The commission allows sport anglers below Bonneville Dam to account for 75 percent of the wild fish mortality quota; anglers fishing between Bonneville Dam and the Tri-Cities, known as Zone 6, get 10 percent; and anglers in the lower Snake River get 15 percent.

As spring chinook move up the Columbia River, various hatchery runs turn up tributaries. Donley said that means when fish get to the Snake, there is a higher proportion of wild fish to hatchery fish than found in downstream fisheries. Because of that, the wild fish quota is reached more quickly and results in a smaller harvest quota.

Donley said that won’t change unless the commission redistributes the wild fish mortality allocation to give the Snake River a larger share.

“I can’t solve it,” he said. “What I would encourage you to do is work with folks on the commission to solve it.”

Angler Brad Johnson of Lewiston said the department fails to account for the fact that many of the wild fish caught and released on the lower Snake River are not protected by the Endangered Species Act.

For example, wild fish in the Clearwater River, and those that return to Rapid River, are not listed. Even so, if those fish are caught and released, they are treated as though they were ESA-protected wild chinook bound for Idaho’s Salmon River.

Donley said Washington is trying to get a spring chinook fishery management plan approved for the lower Snake River. Doing that would mean the Snake River would have its own wild fish mortality impact number and wouldn’t have to share its impacts with fisheries on the Columbia River.

The result would likely be a modest bump to Snake River harvest quotas, he said.

But getting such a plan is politically difficult.

“Idaho doesn’t want me to have a fisheries management permit. They don’t want me fishing on Idaho-bound fish,” Donley said.

Del Groat of Pomeroy said the commission should shake up the allocation because when it was set, lower Columbia hatcheries contributed a larger share of the annual spring chinook run. Now, the majority of the run is fueled by chinook bound for the upper Columbia River and the Snake River and its tributaries.

Chris Hyland of Walla Walla said anglers in the lower Columbia not only get to catch a much bigger share of Snake River-bound chinook, but they also get to catch thousands of chinook that return to lower river tributaries.