Wild chinook salmon harvest to be allowed on Snake River

Cooler temperatures are allowing more chinook salmon to move into the Snake River, and fisheries officials in Washington and Idaho are lifting the prohibition on anglers taking home wild salmon. 

Both the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that anglers could begin harvesting chinook salmon with an unclipped adipose fin from the Snake River on Saturday. 

That ends a pause on killing wild fish that began on Sept. 19 in response to high water temperatures in the Columbia and Snake rivers that slowed the migration of fall chinook. 

Fisheries managers limit the take of wild salmon in the Snake based on counts of fish crossing dams. In announcing the resumption of wild salmon harvest on Thursday, WDFW officials wrote that rates of fish crossing Bonneville Dam and moving into the Snake River had improved and is believed to be sufficient enough to allow wild fall chinook harvest. 

Chris Donley, WDFW’s eastern region fish program manager, said cooler temperatures changed the situation.

“When things cooled off we had more fish move through,” he said. “We decided to take advantage of that.”

Joe DuPont, Idaho Fish and Game’s Cleartwater region fisheries manager, wrote in an update Wednesday that officials expect more than 5,040 adult salmon to pass Lower Granite Dam downstream fof Clarkston, which is a number that Idaho uses to determine how many salmon its anglers can take. 

Washington will still limit anglers to four-days-a-week at the Lyons Ferry Bubble Fishery, which is a 1.4 mile stretch from the red river marker on the south shore of the Snake River upstream to the Highway 261 Bridge.

Angling is open Thursday to Sunday each week there until Oct. 26. The daily limit is two adult chinook, but only one wild.  

The section of river from the power lines crossing the river upstream of West Evans Road – about 3 miles downstream of Clarkston – to the Washington-Idaho border will be open daily until Oct. 15. The river from there upstream to the Oregon state line will be open until the end of October.

Anglers can take three adult chinook from those stretches, either wild or hatchery.