[6] Columbia Fish Numbers Still Strong, Others Miss Forecasts Big Time

Relatively slow but steady trickles of chinook, coho and steelhead are still passing Bonneville Dam, lengthening the salmon season for both fishermen and fish watchers.

By Oct. 11, more than 285,000 fall chinook had passed the dam, about 17 percent below the 10-year average. Toward the end of last week, daily numbers were running twice the 10-year average, but have tapered off lately.

On Sept. 29, harvest managers updated the fall run size to 391,000 chinook (to river mouth), which included 208,000 upriver brights, and boosted it again on Oct. 2 to 412,000 fish overall, including 222,000 URBs. On Oct. 10, their estimate went up once more, to 421,400 fish, including 226,000 URBs.

The preseason estimate was 474,000.

Lower river commercial fishermen had caught about 24,000 chinook and 27,000 coho by Oct. 9, and another 5,800 chinook and 36,000 coho in their select area fisheries.

Tribal fishermen above Bonneville Dam were expected to catch about 83,000 chinook by Oct. 6, with about 46,000 upriver brights, which would put them within 3 percent of their 23-percent impact limit on the upriver stock.

The tribes also landed nearly 21,500 steelhead, and 6,400 coho. A seventh week of fishing took place last week.

Coho numbers at the dam were about 81,000, 7 percent above the 10-year average.

Steelhead were running above the 10-year average as well, with about 326,000 in by Oct. 11, and close to harvest managers' pre-season forecast of 313,000 (to the dam).

Overall, spring and summer chinook returns beat expectations, with the springers coming in 40 percent above the pre-season estimate and the summers nearly doubling expectations.

That was not the case further north, where the famed Fraser River sockeye run flamed out, ending at about half the strength (8.7 million) of preseason forecasts (17.4 million) from the Pacific Salmon Commission, which said most of the losses were attributable to the Quesnel and Late Shuswap stocks.

But that poor forecast is nothing compared to what happened with the pink salmon run in Southeast Alaska this year. With fishermen and processors geared up for a return of 52 million fish, only 12 million showed up. ADFG biologists say drought conditions in the late summer of 2004 were likely responsible for the poor showing, because a lack of rain that year had seriously delayed pinks from entering streams and stressed the fish that were able to spawn. The department no longer surveys smolt production, so managers weren't able to temper their rosy prediction with any field data from the following spring.

Meanwhile, the Bristol Bay sockeye run was one of better news, coming in pretty much as expected, with an excellent catch of more than 33 million fish. -B. R.

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