After a two-month hiatus, sport salmon fishing returns to the Columbia River on Friday with the opening of summer chinook, steelhead and sockeye seasons.
The daily bag limit will be two adult salmonids, which may include up to two hatchery chinook, but no more than one hatchery steelhead. Sockeye also may be retained as part of the limit. The season is expected to remain open through July 31, when the rules change to the fall management regime.
The forecasts call for 63,100 summer chinook and 198,500 sockeye, both down from 2016.
The one-hatchery steelhead limit is the new wrinkle this year.
State fish managers expect just 130,700 summer steelhead to return to the Columbia this year, the lowest number since 1980. The forecast is especially weak for wild steelhead destined for the Snake River and the Columbia upstream of Priest Rapids Dam near the Tri-Cities.
The daily bag limit of one hatchery steelhead with no night fishing also applies through Oct. 31 in the Cowlitz River downstream from the Lexington Drive/Sparks Road bridge; the Lewis River downstream of the mouth of the East Fork; Wind River downstream of Shipherd Falls, the White Salmon River downstream of the county road bridge and in Drano Lake.
Oregon is limiting Deschutes River anglers to one steelhead a day through the end 2017, with a total fishing closure in September. Oregon also is limiting John Day River anglers to one steelhead a day with a steelhead retention closure during September and October.
• The final day of sturgeon retention in the Columbia River downstream of the Wauna power lines has been canceled. State biologists estimate the 3,000-fish harvest guideline has been filled. Sturgeon retention in the Bonneville pool will be allowed on June 23, a Friday.
• Goose Lake in the southern Gifford Pinchot National Forest is accessible from the Willard and Trout Lake sides and was stocked with trout on Monday.
• Klineline Pond in Vancouver was stocked with 1,500 rainbow trout recently.
• Best catches in the northern pikeminnow sport reward program last week came at Bingen Marina (15.3 pikeminnow average), The Dalles boat ramp (11.9 average) and the Port of Camas-Washougal (9.9).
Angler sampling by the Washington (WDFW) and Oregon (ODFW) departments of Fish and Wildlife:
Lower Columbia — Ilwaco/Cape Disappointment/Deep River ramps, 468 boaters with 99 legal sturgeon kept. (WDFW)
Ilwaco, 90 charter boat anglers with 20 legal sturgeon kept. (WDFW)
Buoy 10 to Wauna power lines, 692 boaters with 193 legal sturgeon kept plus 295 sublegal and 178 oversize sturgeon released. (ODFW)
Westport, Ore., to Portland, 14 boaters with 76 shad kept; 39 boaters with six legal, eight sublegal and one oversize sturgeon released. (ODFW)
Woodland, five boaters with 21 shad. (WDFW)
Columbia Gorge (downstream of Bonneville Dam), 111 Oregon bank rods with 967 shad kept. (ODFW)
Mid-Columbia — Bonneville pool, 142 bank rods with 2,034 shad kept and 1,137 released; 150 bank rods with four legal sturgeon kept plus 122 sublegal and four oversize sturgeon released; 105 boaters with seven legal sturgeon kept plus one legal, 268 sublegal and 15 oversize sturgeon released. (ODFW)
The Dalles pool, 63 boaters with 303 walleye kept and 29 released. (ODFW)
John Day pool, five bank rods with seven walleye released; 92 boaters with 281 walleye kept and 107 released. (ODFW)
Elochoman — Eleven bank rods with no catch. (WDFW)
Cowlitz — Twenty-nine boaters with 15 steelhead kept and one cutthroat trout released; 258 bank rods with 27 adult spring chinook, one jack chinook and three steelhead kept plus one steelhead and one cutthroat trout released. (WDFW)
Streamflow at Mayfield Dam is down to 6,200 cubic feet per second with 7 feet of visibility and a temperature of 50 degrees.
Kalama — Twenty-nine bank rods with one adult spring chinook and two jack kept plus three adult spring chinook released; 13 boaters with one adult and one jack spring chinook kept. (WDFW)
Lewis — Four bank rods with no catch; four boaters with one adult spring chinook kept. (WDFW)
North Fork Lewis — Twenty eight bank rods and 18 boaters with no catch. (WDFW)
Drano Lake — Twenty-two boaters with two adult spring chinook and two jack chinook kept plus one adult and one jack chinook released. (WDFW)
Klickitat — Twenty-eight bank rods with 11 adult spring chinook, two jack chinook and two steelhead kept. (WDFW)
Lower Willamette — Downstream of St. Johns Bridge including Multnomah Channel, 748 boaters with 88 spring chinook kept and 29 released. (ODFW)
