States cancel tonight’s scheduled gillnetting in lower Columbia

Washington and Oregon officials today cancelled gillnetting scheduled for tonight in the lower Columbia River.

Biologist Jeff Whisler of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said the commercial fleet has caught 3,298 summer chinook salmon in two earlier nights of fishing.

That number is 99 percent of the commercial allocation. Whisler said the commercials are projected to catch another 700 chinook if they fished tonight.

The Columbia River Technical Advisory Committee has upgraded the forecast for the summer chinook run to 108,000, the largest since at least 1960.

The sockeye run was upgraded Monday to 500,000, the third largest on record.

Sport fishing remains open in the lower Columbia River. The daily bag limit is two salmon or steelhead, one of which can be a chinook. Any chinook — fin-clipped or not — may be retained.