[3] Sockeye Run Starts Strong As Summer Run Cranks Up

Summer runs are beginning to show in the Columbia River, with sockeye rolling in at the same clip as last year's huge run. They are passing Bonneville Dam at more than 5,000 a day. More than 7,000 were counted on June 18, when the total hit 34,000.

Harvest managers have estimated this year's sockeye run at 184,000, down slightly from last year's return of nearly 214,000, and much greater than the 10-year average. Most will be headed for Canada's Lake Osoyoos, with about 18,000 turning off at Lake Wenatchee, and 600 or so are expected to be aiming for Idaho's Redfish Lake, captive-bred cousins of Lonesome Larry, the only Redfish sockeye to make it back in 1992.

Canadian biologist Kim Hyatt said he doubted this year's Osoyoos run would be larger than 2008's, but should be close. He said this run behaved similarly to sockeye stocks off SW Vancouver Island, with surges in production followed by fairly dramatic declines due to varying marine survival. He said that Osoyoos run has been helped by a fry enhancement project, but about 90 percent of the run is still natural.

Non-treaty fishers are allowed a 1-percent impact on listed sockeye, while treaty Indian impacts are capped at 7 percent (about 12,000 fish this year).

With most summer chinook headed for the Upper Columbia, and none of them on the feds' verboten list, the only real ESA constraints on the fisheries are related to steelhead and the precious Idaho sockeye.

They have pegged the Upper-C's summer chinook run at 71,000 fish, nearly 30 percent greater than last year's return. With most of the run from hatcheries and unlisted, treaty and non-treaty fishermen will each get about 18,000 to catch. Colville and Wanapum tribal fisheries come out on the non-treaty share, with more than 10,000 fish allocated for harvest above Priest Rapids Dam.

Harvest managers announced June 10 they had boosted what is left of the spring chinook run by 5,000 fish to 165,000. This week they bumped it up another 5,000 fish. They officially stopped tallying the spring run on June 15, mainly for accounting reasons, but that doesn't mean most of the chinook passing the dam right now aren't still headed for the Snake.

By June 16, DART numbers showed still more chinook were headed up the Snake past Ice Harbor, compared to the count at Priest Rapids in the mainstem Columbia above the confluence of the two rivers. And PIT-tag data collected at Bonneville Dam shows a considerable number of Idaho McCall Hatchery chinook still passing the dam.

The managers estimated that about 23,000 wild spring/summer Snake chinook have returned to the mouth of the Columbia this year. They pegged the summer steelhead run at 352,000, close to last year's 355,000 fish. They finally opened the spring steelhead fishery below Bonneville Dam for a few days, beginning June 12. They had delayed the opening since May 16, out of concern for impacts to ESA-listed spring chinook.

On June 22, the summer recreational season is scheduled to open, with anglers allowed to keep all chinook, chinook jacks, sockeye, and hatchery steelhead. Several short commercial gillnet openings were slated as well. -B. R.

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