For Immediate Release Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Entire Columbia River closes to spring chinook angling Wednesday night
CLACKAMAS - Facing the second-lowest spring chinook counts on record for this date, Oregon and Washington fishery managers today decided to close all sport angling and commercial fishing for spring chinook in the Columbia River, effective 11:59 p.m. Wednesday night.
The decision closes the fishing season for salmon, steelhead and shad in the mainstem Columbia River between the mouth at Buoy 10 upstream to McNary Dam near the Oregon-Washington border. In addition, fishery managers decided to close the "select area" bays off the mainstem Columbia River near Astoria to sport angling and canceled previously scheduled commercial seasons in those areas. The commercial fisheries in Blind Slough/Knappa Slough, Deep River and Youngs Bay were slated to occur April 21 and April 25.
If the counts for spring chinook at Bonneville Dam improve during the coming weeks, fishery managers will consider re-opening the fishing seasons.
Pre-season predictions for 254,100 "upriver" spring chinook salmon to enter the Columbia River and cross Bonneville Dam have not materialized. To date, only 1,545 spring chinook have been counted at the dam. Over the last five years, an average of 31 percent of the run had passed by this time, which would equate to more than 70,000 fish. Fishery managers will meet at 11:30 a.m. April 27, to assess the run and make a new run size prediction.
Fish managers set the Columbia River spring chinook fishery based on the number of fish expected to return from the ocean and the allowable impact to wild salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. "Impacts" are the unintended mortalities associated with handling and releasing wild fish. The allowed non-Indian impacts are 2 percent of the total runs of ESA-listed Snake River spring/summer chinook and Upper Columbia River spring chinook.
Descriptions of the "select areas" scheduled to close can be found in the 2005 Oregon Sport Fishing Regulations on pages 93-94. The information also is available on the ODFW Web page at
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/ODFWhtml/...s.htm#columbia
Additional information about the Columbia River spring chinook season also may be found on ODFW's Web page at
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/OSCRP/CRM/action_notes.html .
SKP
Pete, Is the Columbia Closed, or just recommended?
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