So was 2010 a good year or a bad year?
Granted, it’s totally a subjective question. But when I made a list of “good” and “bad” news for the year that ends on Friday, the bad side of the sheet of paper had more entries.
Without any more set up than that, here’s my review of the highlights and lowlights of 2010:
Highlights
Columbia River spring chinook — A record-high run of 470,000 spring chinook headed for the upper Columbia River was forecast for 2010.
Most sportsmen were skeptical, since the actual return in recent years often has fallen far short of the prediction.
In fact, Washington and Oregon fishery officials managed the run with a 40 percent buffer to avoid exceeding harvest guidelines if the big number did not materialize.
Well, the prediction was too high, again.
But the 315,000 fish that did show was a good return. Fishing on the lower Columbia lasted through April 18.
There were 184,976 angler trips downstream of Bonneville Dam with 29,247 chinook kept and 5,355 released. Fishing effort was the highest since 2002 and the number of kept chinook was a record high, topping 25,700 in 2001.
A decade ago, the lower Columbia was not even open in April, and old-timers told stories what it was like to fish in the big river at the peak of the run.
Interest built early after an angler caught a chinook on Feb. 1 at Davis Bar and the photos spread via the Internet.
In early April, the Willamette River turned muddy, pretty much nixing fishing success downstream of St. Helens, Ore., and even along the shore of Sauvie Island.
But there was a pocket of clear water from the upper fishing boundary at Interstate 5 to the bottom of Bachelor Island and, literally, about 3,000 boats in that stretch some days.
All that boat traffic made it like fishing in the washing machine. Anglers would troll downstream, then run back up, and the wakes were never ending.
It was like a fishing festival, which is typical when spring chinook are involved.
Klickitat deer survival — The winter of 2009-10 was mild. State biologists tallied the second highest count of fawn deer at the Klickitat Wildlife Area since surveys begin in 1980.
A ratio of 72 fawns per 100 adult deer was counted on March 23-24. The average is slightly less than 50 fawns per 100 adults.
Hunting success this fall will not be known until all the harvest data is gathered and reported. Population size and hunting success do not necessarily always track, due to regulation changes and, importantly, weather conditions during the season.
West Yacolt State Forest trail plan — The state Department of Natural Resources, along with an 11-member citizen advisory group, completed a 10-year recreation plan for the western portion of the Yacolt Burn State Forest.
The plan calls for 78 miles of additional trails on the roughly 40,000 acres of DNR-managed forest in eastern Clark County south of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
The plan calls for 58.5 miles of new motorized trails, three miles of new mountain-bike-only trail and 17 miles of new non-motorized trail.
Most importantly, it serves as blueprint for where trails can and cannot be located.
Unfortunately, with the state’s budget crisis, don’t expect lots of grants to be available to build these trails. If users want these routes, they are going to have to find the resources to get them built.
But now, at least, they have a plan and places to focus their efforts.
Lowlights
Smelt — Smelt, also known as eulachon, were added to the list of threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2010.
How a resource so incredibly abundant 30 years ago could virtually disappear is mind-boggling. I remember one night when I was in high school and we headed off to the North Lewis River to dip. It took only five or six scoops and we had two limits. Now, all sport and commercial dipping is banned. How sad.
Sturgeon — Legal-size sturgeon in the lower Columbia River appear to be at their lowest number since the early 1990s and a slight additional dip is forecast in 2011.
Looking at the strength of some of the year classes in the Columbia also has sounded an alarm for more trouble starting about 2015.
Lower Columbia sturgeon have lots of environmental challenges to face. Smelt and lamprey are all but gone, and even shad numbers have been declining. That’s a lot of food no longer available.
The operation of the hydroelectric system in the Columbia River does not help with sturgeon having suitable spawning flows in many years.
Then there’s sea lion predation. Washington and Oregon are factoring in a lost of 10,600 sturgeon to sea lions in their computer models for 2011. It’s a starting point estimate, but shows the order of magnitude that marine mammal predation has become.
Sport and commercial harvests were cut 40 percent in 2010. Another cut of 30 percent or more looms for 2011.
State biologists reiterate that the lower Columbia sturgeon population is not in jeopardy of going extinct. The legal-size population alone is projected to be 77,000 in 2011.
But meaningful sport and commercial fishing opportunities are slipping away.
Ocean-Buoy 10 salmon — Sportsmen had a quota of 40,600 coho for the ocean area between Cape Falcon in Oregon and Leadbetter Point in Washington. They only caught 61 percent. Many days during the peak of the season, the catch was less than a salmon per rod.
At Buoy 10, the popular late-summer salmon season just inside the mouth of the Columbia River, the catch guidelines were 12,500 chinook and 11,900 coho. Yet anglers caught just 6,800 chinook and 8,000 coho.
Even with three rods in the boat, some days it was hard to scratch up a salmon or two.
Eastern Washington upland birds — Wildlife biologists and farmers in Eastern Washington said pheasant populations were in tough shape following an ultra-wet spring and lousy nesting success.
By all indications, they were right. By December, ranchers who’d let hunters on their properties were asking them to just shoot quail, and save the few rooster for next year’s breeding season.
Finally
Regular readers of this page know I hike a lot. One thing about hiking: Get a good trail on a nice weather day and it’s hard to have a bad time.
Two of the trails I hiked this year clearly stand out as highlights.
The Swale Canyon portion of the Klickitat Trail in central Klickitat County is a real treat. It’s long (12 miles) and is best hiked downhill from Harms Road near Centerville to the Schilling Road trailhead near Wahkiacus.
This trail is best hiked in late April to early May, when it’s green, the wildflowers are out and the rattlesnake are not.
The other hike is from Johnston Ridge Observatory on the north side of Mount St. Helens up to Coldwater Peak. It’s a 14-mile out-and-back with 1,700 feet of elevation gain and loss, but the scenery in the St. Helens Lake basin is spectacular.
