Oregon Fishing News

Link: http://www.nwfish.com

Oregon and Washington fish and wildlife officials met this week and decided on seasons for the extremely popular Columbia River Spring Chinook Salmon fishery. Anglers, Guides and Commercial gill netters every year engage in heated battles over who gets the bigger share of these highly prized salmon. The Spring Chinook return to many rivers in Oregon but the biggest runs of fish return to the Columbia and Willamette rivers, 2009's forecast is for a huge run of springers to the Columbia. Spring Chinook salmon or Springers as we call them here are without a doubt the best eating of any salmon found anywhere. Springers on average are 10-20 lbs with a large springer being over 30 lbs, on rare occaisions 40 or 50 pound fish are caught. This years battles over sport vs Commercial allocations was particularly nasty with the fish and wildlife commissions of Oregon and Washington fighting as much as the fisherman. Finally they decided with the run of fish arriving in a few weeks with early pilot runs already in the rivers it was time to set the season so that the fisherman could make plans to fish. The Columbia river is complicated when it comes to salmon fishing. Wild fish from several tributaries are mixed in with multiple hatchery stocks of salmon. Most of the wild salmon are listed as threatened or endangered. Hatchery fish are for folks to catch to take home and eat as well as to replenish the hatchery to make more fish. The balancing act comes when trying to allow people to catch fish without harming the wild fish. Fishery managers us an impact formula to determine how many wild fish are released and the estimated mortality rates of wild fish handled to determine how many hatchery fish we can catch before the season closes. This year in an attempt to make sure we dont exceed the impacts on the wild fish they opted for a conservative but stable fishery. During the peak of the run fishing will only be allowed 3 or 4 days a week and will close with a few weeks left on the run to allow run size updates to be made. If the numbers are good it most likely will open back up in May. With it only 4 days a week finding seats on a good fishing guides boat will be tough and if your planning on it you best get on the phone ASAP, just in case here is my number 503-551-6369. I wont go into the exact dates and open areas - go to my fishing report page for the official press release.