[4] Robust Forecasts For Columbia Coho, Fall Chinook

Preliminary forecasts released last month have boosted the likelihood that more than 2 million salmon may return to the Columbia River this year. But rather than celebrating the expected bounty, fishers are fighting among themselves over which group gets the lion's share.

Harvest managers said they expect slightly more than a million coho salmon to return--almost twice last year's return. If it comes true, it will be only the third time since 1985 that the coho run has topped a million fish.

On top of that, the managers have just released their fall chinook prediction of 510,900--also up from last year's return of 431,700.

Add those figures to the 300,000 springers expected to return to the river and nearly 200,000 sockeye aiming for the upper Columbia, and the 2-million-fish return seems easily possible.

The actual returns could even be quite a bit higher. The managers lowballed their 2008 sockeye, fall chinook and coho predictions. Their sockeye estimate was off by nearly 300 percent, fall chinook by 18 percent, and coho by more than 260 percent.

Oregon coastal natural coho returns are expected to do well this year, too, with an expected return above 200,000 fish. Last year, managers expected 60,000, but 171,000 actually showed up. Chalk that up to good ocean conditions.

Their fall chinook estimate is similar to the 10-year average, with the total of 510,900 breaking down as: lower river hatchery, 88,800; lower river wild (ESA-listed), 8,500; Bonneville Pool hatchery, 59,300; upriver brights, 259,900; Bonneville upriver brights, 50,000; and Pool upriver brights, 44,400.

In the meantime, Washington and Oregon have set recreational and commercial fishers' spring chinook seasons on the Columbia for March and April, but they still haven't come to an ultimate agreement on allocating the non-Indian share of the catch between the two gear groups.

"This is shaping up to be a very good year for spring chinook fishing in the Columbia River," said Cindy LeFleur, Columbia River policy coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. "The first fish have just begun to arrive, and we hope to see a lot more of them in the months ahead."

Below Hayden Island, the new season provides 30 days of spring chinook fishing in March and April, compared to just 12 days last year. During those two months, anglers also will have 39 days--up from 36 days last year--to catch and retain spring chinook from Hayden Island upriver to Bonneville Dam.

LeFleur said that the fishery could extend beyond April, but that late-season regulations have not been set because of differences between the fish and wildlife commissions of Washington and Oregon over how to allocate the catch. Sportfishers have less impact on ESA fish, so they feel they deserve a larger share of the catch than in previous years.

The two states had formed a commission to solve the allocation dispute, but it hasn't worked. The group recommended a catch-sharing model for spring chinook that would allocate 65 percent of the limited impacts on the ESA-listed wild fish to the sport fishery and 35 percent to the commercial fishery.

But the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to adopt an allocation of 55 percent sport/45 percent commercial for runs of this size. Washington supports a 60/40 split.

The non-Indian harvesters are allowed a 2.2-percent impact on the ESA-listed springers, while tribal fishers above Bonneville Dam are allowed to catch 10.8 percent.

Meanwhile, sporties and commercials are still fighting over fish on other fronts.

A bill pushed by the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association with sponsors in both houses of the Oregon State Legislature has been introduced to get commercial non-Indian gillnetters out of the mainstem fishery altogether. It's the culmination of a plan pushed by sporties last fall that found little traction at ODFW.

Commercial fishermen say the plan is unworkable because there is not enough room in the select areas outside the mainstem to allow for their entire fleet to fish. A report by WDFW tended to back up their claim that expanding the select areas for future net pens was not very feasible. -B. R.

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