States Approve Early Start To Spring Chinook Fishing; Tribes, Idaho Concerned About Impacts On Upriver Catch, Broodstock Goals
February 26th, 2021
Oregon and Washington this week opened spring chinook salmon angling from Buoy 10 to the Oregon/Washington border in March. The opening in the lower river is the first time since 2018 that anglers will be allowed to pursue the prized fish early in the season from Buoy 10 to the Lewis River in Washington.
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68 Fisheries Scientists Sign Letter Detailing Why They Think Lower Snake Dam Removal Only Hope For Snake River Salmon, Steelhead Recovery
February 26th, 2021
A letter signed by 68 salmon and fisheries scientists summarizes actions they say are necessary to protect and restore abundant salmon and steelhead runs to the Columbia/Snake river basin. The letter is “intended to help inform regional and national leaders on the policies and actions necessary to restore to a healthy abundance salmon currently listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.”
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ESA-Listed Smelt Return To Columbia River Expected To Be Moderate Size; States Set Commercial Test Fishery
January 29th, 2021
As they do every year from December through May, threatened eulachon (smelt) are returning from the Pacific Ocean and flooding into the lower Columbia River. The smelt – a 7 in., 2.5 oz. fish – may already be moving into their favorite spawning tributaries, the Cowlitz River in Washington and the Sandy River in Oregon, where their numbers peak in February.
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GUEST COLUMN: Reflections, Perspectives On Idaho Salmon Workgroup Recommendations
January 29th, 2021
The robust fishery science literature— beginning with the “Plan for Analyzing and Testing Hypothesis” (Marmorek et al.1998) in the 1990s and continuing to the 2020 report “Achieving Productivity to Recover and Restore Columbia River Stream-type Chinook Salmon (Petrosky et al. 2020)—documents the necessity to achieve an average 4% smolt-to-adult return (SAR) survival in order to recover Snake River (Idaho) salmon and steelhead.
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Washington State Salmon Recovery Report: Most Populations Not Making Progress, Some On Path To Extinction
January 15th, 2021
A new report from Washington State’s Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office shows that most salmon populations in the state still are not making progress and some are teetering on the brink of extinction.
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Another Low Upriver Spring Chinook Run Forecasted For 2021, Snake River Sockeye Projected At Only 700 Fish; Better News Downstream Bonneville Dam
January 8th, 2021
The 2021 upriver spring chinook run, if the fish come in as forecasted, would fall into the bottom 25 percent of runs in the last 40 years, according to a preseason forecast by fisheries managers.
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Annual Flow Operations To Protect ESA-Listed Chum Salmon Underway; Last Salmon To Return, First To Leave
December 17th, 2020
River operators are holding the Columbia River downstream of Bonneville Dam to 11.5 to 13 feet above sea level, a tailwater depth at the dam designed to ensure chum salmon can spawn and that their redds (nests) will remain underwater near Ives and Pierce islands.
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Permanent Fishway To Be Built To Support Fraser River Salmon Passage At Landslide Site
December 17th, 2020
On June 23, 2019, a large landslide at Big Bar blocked a remote section of British Columbia’s Fraser River, one of the great salmon rivers in the world. Enough debris fell into the river to fill 45 Olympic-sized swimming pools, blocking fish passage.
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Coho Reintroduction Boosted By Record Numbers Headed For Oregon’s Grande Ronde, Lostine River; Supports Tribal, Sport Fisheries
November 20th, 2020
Coho salmon are returning to northeast Oregon’s Lostine River in record numbers almost five decades after they disappeared from the same basin. Once again the coho are supporting tribal harvest and a new Oregon recreational fishery.