Fishing

The Columbia River group had a meeting. They extended the mid river season etc but the most depressing info that came out of the meeting is below in bold.
The U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) met today to review the status of the upriver spring Chinook run. TAC did not provide an official update, but stated the run is unlikely to reach the preseason forecast.

Stock Status

1. Bonneville Dam passage of Chinook through April 29 totals 21,572 adults. Based on the 5-year average, passage at Bonneville averages 26% complete (range 13% to 46%) by April 29 and the 50% passage date is May 7, ranging from May 1 to May 12.

The entire summery is here

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/...M/FS/12/120430s5.pdf

Once again the "experts" and their SWAGs. Don't let this get you down, anymore than their pre-run forecasts. The lower C levels will drop, and the water temps will rise, and the fish will boom...

Our concern should be that the "powers that be" will decide that the chinook coming over Bonneville after the 15th of June will all be "summer-run" and will then allow the lower river interest, bith sports and commercial, to plunder our fish...

do you wanna see my surprised face ? look at the picture.
BBBBBwwwhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaa??????????


"He was on the ground before we heard the shot!"

Optimistic - for a few more days any way. Run did not really start until the 26th last yr. This yearr started a little earlier then died. Figure 12,000 behind last year to date. That's only 2-3 good days if if if

Without a doubt the big pulse of water over bonn the last couple days shut down the run. The big question is wether the numbers are there to recover from it. No one knows. The people making the calls sure dont, they have no way right now of sampling other than the run over the dam.

I just found it amusing the way they state the run will have to reach this many fish to justify what they have alrady caught or are permitting to be caught.

Counts are going back up again. The chinook total count for Saturday was a little over 600. On Monday it jumped to almost 2000. Yesterday it was over 2200. If it keeps up, there's a chance for a halfway decent season.

Not looking good at all. 1500-2500 fish a day will not do if we are to get a decent run this year. Ive spoke a ton about this in the past few weeks. Their prediction is very embarrassing considering they have already slaughtered enough fish. I have one more thing on my mind... If you slaughter the early fish every year then they are going to be later and later and later. Years of killing the early fish doesnt mean more early fish it means the fish are pushed back every year. Anyone else have any thoughts on this.

What your saying hold merit. However, it would require them to kill all the early fish. The hatcheries keep fish from all phases of the run. We are just as much to blame. All the salmon we catch in May are those march/april fish from the lower river. I dont think the geneticists can say how many early fish are required to maintain the "early run" gene.

If the run turns out to be way off I am going to be really surprised and Its not looking good right now thats for sure. I think the lower river group screws ID, BUT thier predictions are based on prior year jack returns. So in that respect I cant blame them. Recently thats been almost crystal ball type prediciting.

My biggest concern is why we are having these large jack returns without a following equally large run of adults. This indicates theres something broke in the system. The smolts are getting to the ocean but for some reason a very large percentage are jacking.

Im still hoping, but I think we've lost the "good run" possiblity and we are rapidly enterering the "hopefully we get enough for a season" realm. I hope Im wrong but remember on June 15 all springers turn into summers and they manage that stock different. We are about 1/2 of last years run right now. If we dont get some successive BIG 8-15,000 days pretty quick its going to be bleak

In terms of the later run timing. Fishing may have a little to do with that, however I doubt its much of a cause. I would bet that its more climatic related. With the better water years we are having the rivers colder/higher later in the spring.

I think that climate has to do with the fish being later, but lets take for instance this year. When you have only roughly 30,000 fish over bonny and the lower river has taken out 15000-20000 fish that would be up the river already that is a huge decline in early fish. When this happens every year for 10 years people cant say that it isnt pushing the run back. I dont know of any science behind it, but to me it seems a common sense idea. It could be just bs, but the runs are getting later and people are using the river conditions to keep slaying the fish on the lower river because they have the idea the fish are just late, but in reality they dont have a clue how many fish are coming. This could be the year that the idea that the fish are just late could bite us in the butt!!!!

Here’s the thing though. We'll use the rapid river hatchery as an example. They need 2500 adults for hatchery needs. Salmon come into the hatchery at 10-200 per day over the 3 month run. The hatchery is only keeping a few fish per day that they intend to spawn, the rest get trucked down river to get re-cycled. So in a nutshell you only need a small sample of each run segment to perpetuate the entirety of the run.

I completly agree with you the Lower river management hoses us. I think they should open later AND manage with better than a 30% upriver over harvest buffer.

One bright spot in this years. To date there have been 400 pitt tagged salmon over Bonn dam. 25% are Rapid River fish, and 20% are Clearwater drainage fish. Usually about 10-15% of hatchery fish are pitt tagged ( usually about 10%)

First pitt tagg fish over Lower Granite yesterday headed for Rapid River

well after watching the cameras today i have to say that today is going to be the highest count yet this season the fish are just plowing through the ladders right now. hope it keeps up.


"He was on the ground before we heard the shot!"

Oh and there are some absolute monsters crossing also. i Like the big guys.


"He was on the ground before we heard the shot!"

Anglers will have at least four more days to fish for hatchery-reared spring chinook salmon on a section of the Columbia River stretching 163 miles upstream from Bonneville Dam.

Jee, who could have imagined that...?

At least they kept the River below Bonneville closed.

if the numbers start to jump and an actual good run ends up coming don't be the least bit shocked if they open up everything again. i was wrong about it being the best day so far. but those fish were just pounding through there yesterday i thought it would have been more then 4000.


"He was on the ground before we heard the shot!"

Watched both sides for 15 min at a time. Averaging 150 for each side. Hopefully the morning shows 6500 +

Some big mothers are coming thru - wonder if the super moon turned them on.

I'd like to take a crack at salmon this year. I bought a permit, might as well use it. When do you think these fish will start showing up in ID rivers?

Don't have much experience river fishing for salmon, I'm afraid. All of my salmon fishing while I lived in WA was in the salt water.

the daily numbers are released every day at 9:00 pm pacific time. sadly the numbers for today were just over 3000. c'mon fish start moving.


"He was on the ground before we heard the shot!"

 I only watched the ladders about an hour last night between 7
;30 & 8 :30. By the way they where running then the count should of been much higher. Must of been completely dead the whole day then.

Well 6089 hope it stays up there !

good boost in confidence but were not out of the woods yet.


"He was on the ground before we heard the shot!"

its going to take 10-15 straight days of these numbers or higher will get us back in the running

Not bad numbers if we want to reach 100,000 or maybe 150000. We need a few days in the 10,0000< to really have a good run return. Im headed up to give it my early try like I do every year on the 17th. Do you guys know where to get that pit tag info when they cross the dams. I was looking all over the internet and couldnt find anything.

http://www.fpc.org/...mon/adultPITtag.html

If you hit the download button and your savey with excel you can tease individual hatchery return #'s out of this info.


The Oregon ladder has been on fire today a steady stream of fish all morning. Id guess 3-5 fish per min steady, the WA side has been slower but has had some big groups. Should be a high count today.

They have been playing with the flows through/over Bonn in an effort to get the fish moving. The hope is the super high flows have stalled the run.

We'll see