It’s not officially summer until Monday, but for Columbia River salmon and steelhead anglers, summer begins today.
June 16 is the switch from the spring to the summer management period. Salmon that were spring chinook on Wednesday are summer chinook today.
Fishing regulations effective today include two fin-clipped adult chinook in the daily bag limit, sockeye can be retained, the downstream boundary moves from Tongue Point to the Astoria Bridge and summer steelhead fishing opens in the middle and upper Columbia River.
State, federal and tribal biologists are forecasting a run of 93,300 summer chinook.
Under the various management agreements, sport fishermen downstream of Bonneville Dam have an allocation of 5,221, while anglers between Bonneville and Priest Rapids dams get 920.
The lower Columbia commercials get 2,633 summer chinook. They will fish from 9 p.m. today until 5 a.m. Friday and are projected to catch about 2,200 chinook and a minimal number of sockeye.
Angling tips
Ed Bergstrom of Fish It All Guide Service of Battle Ground offered summer chinook and steelhead tips at a meeting last week of the Lower Columbia chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association.
Among his suggestions:
• When fishing in the Ridgefield-Bachelor Island area, look for 26- to 34-foot water depths.
• Thirty to 36 inches is a good starting point for lead-line length, but he always has a 48-inch lead line on at least one rod in his boat to see if the chinook are off the bottom more.
• MagLips, a plug sold by Yakima Bait, really dive, so use at least a 48-inch lead line.
• Once you’ve found the right weight of lead to hold bottom, change to a sinker that is 4 ounces heavier. Bergstrom said when the sinker gets a bit buried on the river bottom, the resistance helps set the hook on a bite.
• When fishing spinners, use a smaller blade in faster water, a larger blade in slower water. A Colorado style blade in size 4.5 is about the largest he said he uses in the lower Columbia.
• When fishing a coonstripe shrimp behind a Spin-n-Glo, use a No. 6 treble hook as a stinger and it will increase hookups significantly.
• The MagLips 3.0 in orange with black dots is good summer steelhead lure.
• He rigs his Kwikfish with a swish belly hook, but a treble on the back. That treble hook is attached via two split rings.
Lots of sockeye
Sockeye counts at Bonneville Dam are way ahead of expectations this summer.
The Columbia River Technical Advisory Committee issued an initial forecast of 101,600 sockeye returning to the river mouth.
Through Tuesday, the count at Bonneville Dam was 40,729. The 10-year average through June 14 is 14,353. Counts typically peak around July 1 at Bonneville.
Last year’s count at Bonneville was 512,500 sockeye, but most of those fish never survived to reach the spawning grounds due to high temperatures in the reservoirs.
