News Release - Five More Fishing Days

[orsturgeon]

Yee Haw!! Lets go fish.
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For Immediate Release April 20, 2001
Anglers Gain Five More Fishing Days for Columbia River Spring Chinook

PORTLAND - Taking advantage of larger than anticipated returns, fishery managers in Oregon and Washington today opened the Columbia River for five additional days of spring chinook fishing from the mouth upstream to Bonneville Dam.
Anglers can fish for hatchery spring chinook Wednesday, April 25 through Sunday, April 29. The daily bag limit is two adult adipose fin-clipped chinook. Non-clipped chinook must be released unharmed.
Fishery managers now estimate a total run size of 440,000 spring chinook entering the Columbia River in 2001, which is about 75,000 more fish than the pre-season estimate of about 365,000.
Fishery managers from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will meet again next week to discuss the run size and the potential to open the lower Columbia sport fishery for additional days. They will also discuss the potential to open the Columbia River above Bonneville Dam for the first time since the 1970s.
"This year's spring chinook return is outstanding, even more so with the runsize upgrade," said Steve King, salmon fishery manager for ODFW. "We are pleased to be able to re-open the fishery and ask anglers to release the unclipped fish carefully and unharmed."
The spring fishery closed effective April 18 after opening seven days a week for adipose fin-clipped fish starting March 12. It was the first time fishery managers opened the lower Columbia River fishery in April since 1977. When the fishery closed after Tuesday, biologists estimated that 36,700 spring chinook were caught, of which 22,900 were retained hatchery fish, from 147,000 angler trips.
The states of Oregon and Washington, Columbia River treaty tribes, and federal agencies agreed that the Columbia River fisheries should be managed to limit impacts to upriver wild spring chinook, which are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. Non Indian commercial and sport fisheries are not to exceed a 2 percent incidental mortality rate on the threatened stocks. Currently, the total non-Indian impact is 1.8 percent from the winter commercial fishery, this spring's mainstem sport season, a spring experimental commercial fishery, and other non-target fisheries.