Spring chinook angling from a boat between Beacon Rock and Bonneville Dam will open Saturday, Washington and Oregon officials agreed today.
State, federal and tribal biologists have upgraded the upper Columbia-Snake spring chinook run to 260,000. That’s 10,000 more than the previous forecast.
Angling is open now from the Columbia River mouth to Beacon Rock for boaters and up to the deadline at Bonneville Dam for bank rods.
Boat fishing between Beacon Rock and Bonneville historically is the last to open in the spring. It has the potential for high catches during the peak of the run and can cause the catch allocation to fill quickly.
Robin Ehlke, assistant Columbia River policy coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said sportsmen in the lower Columbia are anticipated to catch 97 percent of their allocation by the end of the spring management period on June 15.
Mid-Columbia — Spring chinook angling between Bonneville Dam ad the Washington-Oregon border, east of Umatilla, Ore., will reopen Thursday.
Angling has been closed since May 10.
Sportsmen in the mid-Columbia have taken 1,552 upper Columbia-Snake chinook. The updated allocation is 2,231 chinook.
The final catch is projected to be 2,102 chinook, or 94 percent of the allocation.
Gillnet season — The commercial fleet will fish from 7 p.m. Wednesday to 5 a.m. Thursday from Beacon Rock to the ocean.
Ehlke said the gillnetters have caught 3,441 upper Columbia-Snake chinook from an allocation of 4,847. The fleet is projected to catch 500 chinook on Wednesday night.
John Day sturgeon — Retention of sturgeon in the John Day pool of the Columbia River Gorge will be closed beginning June 3.
The pool has a sport allocation of 500 sturgeon annually. The catch was estimated to be 386 through Sunday.
Catch-and-release sturgeon fishing will be allowed in John Day pool after the retention closure, except through July 31 in the spawning sanctuary from McNary Dam downstream to the Interstate 82 bridge.
Tribal season — Treaty fishermen in the Bonneville, The Dalles and John Day pools will fish from 6 a.m. Wednesday through 6 p.m. Saturday.
Biologist Stuart Ellis of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission said tribal fishermen are projected to catch 3,100 spring chinook in the 3.5 days.
