Officials meet Tuesday to consider more gillnetting

Washington and Oregon officials will meet at 4 p.m. Tuesday to consider an additional commercial salmon fishing period in the lower Columbia River.

The net fleet landed 1,610 spring chinook in a 14-hour season on Thursday night and Friday morning. About half those chinook were upper Columbia origin.

The commercials have roughly 800 upper Columbia chinook left on their allocation.

That allocation was based on run forecast of 210,000 upper Columbia chinook entering the river. State and tribal biologists upgraded that forecast on Monday to between 217,000 and 237,000, said Cindy LeFleur, chairman of the Columbia River Technical Advisory Committee.

Both sport and commercial catch totals can increase as the forecast increases.

Sport fishing resumed Sunday from the river mouth upstream to Beacon Rock for boaters and up to Bonneville Dam for bank anglers.

Sampling on Sunday by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife tallied 305 anglers with 27 adult spring chinook, 65 jack chinook and four steelhead. A flight of the lower Columbia counted 400 boats and 466 bank rods.

Streamflow in the Columbia is very high. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported flows of 420,000 cubic feet per second on Monday morning.

The Northwest River Forecast Center predicts the Columbia will peak at about 460,000 cubic feet per second on Wednesday.