SALEM, Ore. — Sport fishing inside the green buoy line at Astoria will be closed Aug. 1 through Sept. 15, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission decided Friday.
The new Youngs Bay Control Zone boundaries will be a line from the Warrenton Fiber seawall upstream through the green navigation buoys to the Astoria-Megler Bridge. Sport fishing will not be allowed south of the line and north of the Highway 101 Bridge over Youngs Bay.
Senate Bill 830, passed by the Oregon legislature in 2013, directed the commission to create a closure area. It is part of several Columbia River sport and commercial fishing reforms that emerged in 2012.
The closed zone is designed to reduce the interception of hatchery-origin fall chinook and coho returning to the Youngs Bay commercial fishery.
The reforms shift more of the spring and summer chinook harvest to sportsmen and phase out the use of gillnets in favor of seines or other alternative gear by 2017.
