[4] Great Returns For Upper Columbia Steelhead

Like their cousins in the Snake, Upper Columbia steelhead are having a nearly off-the-charts return. By the end of last week, the 2009 run had more than doubled the 2008 return.

The numbers may be much more modest than the Snake's quarter of a million steelies, but it is still great news.

By Nov. 9, the steelhead count way upriver at Rocky Reach Dam was 29,478 fish, with more than 9,500 estimated to be wild. Those overall numbers will likely be the highest since the dam was built in 1977.

The numbers in 2001 and 1985 come close, when around 22,000 steelhead had been counted by this time of the month. But in 2001, more than 10,000 were wild. It's a far cry from 1995, when only 1,739 of the ESA-endangered Upper-C steelhead were counted at the dam by this date.

Next to Idaho's listed Redfish Lake sockeye, the Upper-C steelhead run has probably been the stock in the poorest shape in the entire Columbia Basin.

According to a 2006 analysis by the Interior Columbia Technical Recovery Team, the Upper-C steelhead needed more than a 300-percent improvement in survival to reach the 5-percent risk level under their most optimistic analysis. When the TRT used data from only the past 20 years, their results were even more shocking. It said the stock may need more than a 500-percent improvement to maintain a 95-percent chance of surviving over the next 100 years.

Most of the steelhead counted at Rocky Reach have passed Douglas PUD's Wells Dam, where more than 25,000 have been tallied, and most of these are heading for the Methow River.

Others turned off at the Wenatchee (between Rocky Reach and Rock Island dams) and Entiat rivers, which are fed by watersheds besides the Methow, where NOAA Fisheries scientists have developed interim recovery thresholds for returning wild fish.

The fish agency has pegged interim abundance targets of 2,500 steelhead for the Methow, 500 for the Entiat, and 2,500 for the Wenatchee.

With the large return, especially of hatchery fish, managers have wanted to reduce their impact to wild fish on spawning grounds.

On Sept. 29, they opened a generous sport fishery on hatchery-raised returnees on the upper Columbia, Wenatchee, Icicle, Entiat, Methow (where 15,000 hatchery steelies are due back) and Okanogan rivers. In addition, the Similkameen River opened to hatchery steelhead retention beginning Nov. 1.

Anglers are allowed a daily limit of four adipose-fin-clipped hatchery steelhead, which must measure at least 20 inches in length. Steelhead with intact adipose fins must be immediately returned to the rivers unharmed. Anglers also will be required to release any steelhead with one or more round holes punched in the tail fin.

The selective fisheries were approved by NOAA Fisheries, who determined that they will not impede recovery of the region's wild steelhead, said Jim Scott, WDFW's assistant director of fisheries.

"This is a terrific fall fishing opportunity that also will help further fish recovery efforts by removing hatchery-origin steelhead and increasing the proportion of wild steelhead onto the spawning grounds," Scott said. -B. R.

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