[3] Harvest Managers Predict Huge Spring Chinook Run

Columbia Basin harvest managers say next year's spring chinook run could be the third largest to return to Bonneville Dam since the project was completed in 1938.

Managers released their optimistic, preliminary estimate last week, predicting that more than 269,000 spring chinook (to river mouth) will be heading above Bonneville Dam, more than three times the size of the 2007 spring run.

In 2001, more than 415,000 spring chinook passed the dam. In 2002, 309,000 were counted, and 230,000 in 2003. Since then, ocean conditions deteriorated, but have perked up again in the last couple of years.

The big prediction is also good news for ESA-listed wild spring chinook heading for the Snake River. Managers estimate that 21,000 will show up this year, twice last year's numbers. They also expect about 145,000 hatchery spring/summer chinook to return to the Snake, almost three times last year's numbers.

Wild springers from the upper Columbia, which are listed under the ESA, are also expected to do relatively well--2,900 are expected, three times last year's numbers.

But if managers are correct, the spring run in the Willamette is not going to produce much. They estimate only 34,000 chinook will return, even lower than last year's paltry 40,000-fish run.

However, Yakima springers are also predicted to do well. More than 10,000 may show in 2008 if the harvest managers' crystal ball is right. Last year, only about 3,000 were estimated to have returned.

There have been other large runs over the years--in 1972, 186,000 fish were counted at the dam--but heavy fishing pressure by commercial gillnetters in the lower river siphoned off nearly 113,000 fish that year.

In those days, most fish were wild--another big difference from today's run, of which 80 percent or more are hatchery-bred.

By the early 1980s, when hatcheries were going full bore and churning out nearly 400 million smolts a year, Bonneville counts of spring chinook (including jacks) never climbed above 123,000, the mark set in 1986 and including a lower-river fishery that harvested only 1,000 fish. -B. R.

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