[5] Managers Tweak Sockeye, Summer Chinook Run Estimates

Columbia Basin harvest managers took a fresh look at ongoing salmon runs in the Columbia River and decided the summer run will not meet their preseason expectations of 71,000 fish (to river mouth).

By July 12, about 42,500 summer chinook had been counted at Bonneville Dam. The managers figure now that about only 55,000 will enter the river this year, after tweaking their preseason estimate a week ago to 58,000, Now it's expected to come in about 23 percent below the preseason number.

Most of those fish are of hatchery origin and are bound for the upper Columbia. Since they are not listed for ESA protection, a fair amount have been harvested. Tribal fishers in Zone 6 above Bonneville split the harvest allocation 50-50 with non-tribal fishers, and Colville and Wanapum tribal fishers further upriver.

The Zone 6 fishery was expected to catch about 11,600 summer chinook by July 11, along with 10,000 sockeye. About 5,000 summers have been caught in non-Indian sport and commercial fisheries below Bonneville Dam.

On July 6, the managers had bumped up their expectations for sockeye by a small amount--to 190,000 from about 184,000. But that has been revised to 185,000.

By July 12, the Bonneville sockeye tally added up to more than 174,000--about 100,000 fish above the 10-year average. Most are headed for British Columbia's Lake Osoyoos, and some for Lake Wenatchee, with a trickle headed up the Snake for Idaho's Redfish Lake.

Future sockeye runs in the Columbia may get a boost from a new program sponsored by the Yakama Nation that plans on trapping 500 pair of sockeye at Priest Rapids Dam and releasing them in Lake Cle Elum, far up the Yakima watershed. The first batch of sockeye was transferred last week.

The 200,000-fish sockeye run in the Yakima watershed was extirpated more than a hundred years ago after the irrigation storage system was developed without fish passage at local dams.

"The restoration of sockeye salmon to the Yakima River Basin is a significant step for the people of the Yakama Nation," said Ralph Sampson, Jr., chairman of the Yakama Nation.

"For centuries, the sockeye took care of our people until it was carelessly extirpated from this river. From this day forward this precious resource will once again call the Yakima River and these beautiful mountain lakes and streams home," he said.

The tribe has already started a program to raise coho in the lake, and has developed a temporary outlet for migrating smolts. But a flume designed to get fish out of the lake only works now if the lake refills.

The Bureau of Reclamation and the Washington State Department of Ecology are working on an EIS for modifying the dam at the lake for juvenile fish passage. There are plans to build a tower that will allow the fish to leave even when lake levels aren't at their maximum. However, returning adults would still have to be trapped and hauled back into the lake.

The tribe is also working with WDFW to evaluate a supplementation effort to restore fish populations above the dam. -B. R.

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