[5] Summer Season Opens: Fewer Columbia Chinook, Sockeye Expected

The spring chinook season officially turned into summer on June 15, as far as Columbia Basin harvest managers are concerned, and they say about 46,000 summer chinook are expected to return to the river this year. Most are headed upstream of Priest Rapids Dam.

If the prediction comes true, that would be about 60 percent of last year's return, but still nearly three times the numbers that returned in the mid-1990s, and would allow for a harvest of more than 16,000 fish, to be split evenly between treaty tribe and non-treaty fisheries (which includes sport and tribal fisheries above McNary Dam).

By June 28, the chinook run was tracking a little less than expected.

The Colville and Wanapum Tribes are not parties to the treaty that governs lower Columbia fisheries. But all have agreed to manage the summer fishery to allow 60 percent of the non-treaty harvest to go to recreational and tribal fisheries in the upper Columbia, with 40 percent going to the Colvilles and 20 percent to the Wanapum fisheries.

The interim management goal for summer chinook is 29,000 hatchery and natural-origin fish (counted at river mouth), and 65,000 sockeye (counted at Priest Rapids).

Fisheries are constrained by two ESA-listed stocks during the summer chinook season, Snake River sockeye and wild summer steelhead. The non-treaty impact on the listed sockeye is limited to one percent, with a 5-percent limit allowed for treaty fisheries. The non-treaty impact limit on the wild summer steelhead is 2 percent.

Managers estimate that about 298,000 summer steelhead will be counted at Bonneville Dam this year, similar to last year's 319,000 fish count.

However, only 27,000 sockeye are expected to return to the river this year. Last year, 37,000 were counted at Bonneville Dam. About 20,000 sockeye were counted at Bonneville Dam by July 1. Managers say that half the run is generally past the dam by June 23, so the low expectations will likely preclude any non-treaty sockeye fishery from taking place this year. About 12,000 were counted by then.

But non-treaty sport fisheries for summer chinook in the lower Columbia were scheduled for the last two weeks in June, and from Bonneville Dam to Priest Rapids Dam from June 16 to July 31, then open from Priest Rapids to Chief Joseph Dam between July 1 and Oct. 15.

However, the Bonneville to Priest Rapids area was closed July 2, due to a combination of high catch rates in the lower river and less fish than expected.

Non-treaty commercials have three fishing periods scheduled so far, with large-mesh gillnets. Last year, they were allowed more than a dozen 10- to 12-hour openings through the end of July where they were allowed to catch chinook, coho, sturgeon and shad, but had to release all sockeye, steelhead, and green sturgeon. They netted about 4,800 summer chinook last year. -B. R.

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