[1] Summer Chinook Run May Set Record

Harvest managers have been pleasantly surprised by the strength of this year's summer chinook run in the Columbia River, and have upgraded it accordingly. On June 29, they bumped up their estimate from 49,000 fish to nearly twice that--93,000--then back to 87,000 on July 5 (to river mouth).

Buoyed by increasing hatchery returns to the upper Columbia, the run's upgrade means more fish for both sport and commercial fishers, tribal and non-tribal.

Sporties' allocation below Priest Rapids Dam got a big boost--from 1,325 fish to nearly 5,000 fish, based on the draft harvest plan for the Upper Columbia. Lower Columbia commercial gillnetters should get an equal amount.

Treaty tribal fishers in Zone 6 above Bonneville Dam are expected to have landed more than 11,000 chinook by the end of July. Non-Treaty tribal and sportfishers above Priest Rapids should also share in the bounty, as nearly three-quarters of the non-treaty share is reserved for them.

Hatcheries in the upper Columbia region release about 3.5 million smolts annually, more than half of them yearlings, and most mass-marked. But there is still a wild component to the summer run that spawns in the Columbia, Wenatchee, Okanogan, Methow, Similkameen, Chelan and Entiat rivers.

Through the 1980s, the runs averaged about 20,000 a year, and about 15,000 annually in the 1990s, but since 2000, more than 60,000 summer chinook have returned each year. -B. R.

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