Washington and Oregon on Tuesday approving gillnetting for summer chinook and sockeye in the lower Columbia on the Wednesday night this week and Tuesday night next week.
The commercial fleet will fish from 7 p.m. Wednesday to 7 a.m. Thursday and again from 7 p.m. July 14 to 7 a.m. July 15 with 8-inch-minimum mesh nets.
Robin Ehlke, assistant Columbia River policy coordinator, said officials expect 20 to 40 commercial boats to fish each of the nights with a harvest of 550 chinook Wednesday night and 350 chinook on July 15-16. The netters are expected to catch 100 sockeye during the two periods.
State, federal and tribal biologists have upgraded the summer chinook forecast to 100,000 and the sockeye forecast to 480,000.
The summer chinook run will be the largest since at least 1961 and the sockeye forecast is third largest on record.
At 100,000 summer chinook, the commercials are allowed to catch 2,996 fish. They caught 2,101 in a one-night fishing period in mid-June.
The commercial fleet is allocated 1,440 sockeye and landed 243 in June.
Sport fishing is open in the lower Columbia with a two-fish limit, one of which can be a chinook, including non-clipped chinook.
The sport allocation downstream of Bonneville Dam is 5,873 summer chinook. Anglers had caught 1,770 chinook through June 28 and are projected to catch 1,530 more before the end of the summer management period on July 31.
Sportsmen are allowed 2,860 sockeye in the lower Columbia and had landed 307 through June 28, with a projected catch of 600 more.
