[1] Spring Chinook Show Up In Lower Columbia
Less than two weeks after the annual meeting of the Pacific Salmon Commission ended in Portland, the first chinook of spring was videotaped passing Bonneville Dam on the last day in February. Since then, 42 more have been counted--a good sign compared to the late start for last year's spring run, when only about a dozen springers had been counted at the dam by now. The late start in 2006 alarmed fish managers, but by the end of June, the run was 40 percent larger than the pre-season estimate.
Commercial gillnetters in the lower Columbia have been allowed three days of fishing, netting nearly 3,000 chinook, about 2,000 more than last year, when the late show of spring fish suspended the winter season in mid-March. Prices for the early March fish were reportedly about $10/lb. from wholesale fish buyers.
But the netters have used up most of their allowable impact on ESA-listed upriver stocks, a little more than half a percent. The February to March commercial season is designed to concentrate on earlier returning hatchery chinook heading for the Willamette River and avoid conflicts with recreational fishermen in April. The gillnetters' impact on wild winter steelhead has been estimated at only .5 percent, one-fourth of their allowable limit.
Together, recreational fishers and non-Indian gillnetters are allowed a 1.5 percent ESA impact, while tribal fishers above Bonneville Dam are allotted a 7-percent impact.
Fish managers have pegged the upriver spring run at 78,500 fish, a little less than last year's pre-season estimate of 88,000. But in 2006, Mother Nature proved them wrong, when 132,000 springers showed up.
This year's Willamette run has a bump in the preseason estimate from last year, to 52,000, which is close to last year's actual return of 60,000, a number that managers had low-balled as well.
Nearly 47,000 of the returning Willamette chinook are expected to be of hatchery origin. The river's harvest management plan estimates a hatchery surplus of 21,000 fish this year, with 80 percent of that number allocated for recreational anglers, who are gearing up for another battle of their own against the netters.
Some sporties are forming a new chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, an East-Coast-based coalition with 180 chapters in 15 coastal states that has had some success in banning commercial gillnets along the Gulf Coast.
The Northwest chapter is being created with the help of Gary Loomis, president of the Salmon Spawning & Recovery Alliance, which has been involved in several lawsuits over ESA salmon harvest issues in the region. The Alliance is a strong supporter of mark-selective fisheries that target hatchery fish to increase returning numbers of ESA-listed wild stocks. -Bill Rudolph.
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