A great fish story
Spring, summer chinook runs look promising for Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers
By Eric Barker of the Tribune
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Anglers might want to make room in their freezers. They might be able to fill them with salmon fillets this year.
Fisheries managers at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game are predicting what could be one of the largest returns of spring and summer chinook in more than 30 years.
Beginning sometime in April, the front end of what could be as many as 129,000 chinook should start piling over Lower Granite Dam. That is likely to translate into hot fishing on the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers.
“If (the prediction) comes to fruition, this is the second-biggest run in the last three decades,” said Sam Sharr, a fisheries biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Boise.
Fisheries biologists have been saying for months a big slug of chinook would return to the Columbia and Snake rivers. A big slug translates into 300,000 spring and summer chinook bound for upriver fisheries and spawning grounds returning to the mouth of the Columbia.
This week, they released their best guesses as to how many of those fish will hit the Lower Snake River and tributaries. According to predictions, the Snake River run above Lower Granite Dam will consist of 106,000 hatchery chinook and 23,000 wild chinook. Most will be bound for the Salmon and Clearwater rivers. A smaller percentage will head up the Imnaha and Wallowa rivers in northeastern Oregon and some for the Snake River in Hells Canyon.
Some of the returning hatchery fish will be used to produce the next generation of chinook at various hatcheries. The number not needed for spawning will be split evenly between sport and tribal anglers.
Sharr said on the Clearwater River and its tributaries anglers will have a quota of about 9,000 fish, three times last year’s quota. Anglers on the Lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers will be able to catch about 9,600 chinook. The sport harvest share on the Snake River near Hells Canyon Dam will be about 1,400. There will be a whopping 18,400 chinook available for sport anglers on the South Fork of the Salmon River.
The run also looks strong enough to offer a rare salmon-fishing season on the upper Salmon River, with 6,400 heading to the Pahsimeroi Hatchery on the river of the same name and 1,800 to the Sawtooth Hatchery in the Stanley Basin.
Add it up and it equals about 47,000 chinook available to sport anglers and an equal amount to tribal anglers.
The department is in the midst of writing a salmon fishing plan and proposing season lengths, bag limits and where and when fishing will be allowed. The Idaho Fish and Game Commission will make the final decision.
But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will also have a say. Wild chinook returning to the Salmon River and tributaries are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Fisheries managers must craft rules and regulations designed to allow sport anglers to take advantage of the big run without unduly affecting the protected wild run.
Federal fisheries managers generally set take limits on wild fish. Although all wild salmon must be released by anglers, fisheries managers assume that about 10 percent of the wild fish that are caught and released could die.
Sharr said the state could be able to incidentally kill 1 percent of the wild run. So if there are 23,000 wild fish, and 10 percent of the wild fish caught and released by anglers die, anglers could catch 2,300 wild salmon before fishing has to stop.
He said the trick is timing fishing seasons so the wild take limit isn’t used up quickly. Fisheries in tributaries such as the Little Salmon river have little effect on wild runs. But fisheries in the main salmon river, where there are abundant hatchery fish but also wild fish, can affect wild runs.
So fisheries managers have to decide how long they will leave the lower Salmon River open.
“We have to balance all that when we try to craft a fishery there in the lower Salmon, and make sure we don’t harvest too many there and we don’t bump up against take limit, and jeopardize the ability to have fisheries in other areas,” Sharr said.
But that is not a problem on the Clearwater River, where wild spring chinook are protected by the state but not listed under the ESA.
“In the Clearwater, none of those natural fish are listed so ESA take is not an issue,” said Sharr.
Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273.
