The start of summer steelhead fishing in the lower Columbia River has been delayed because Washington and Oregon officials on Monday decided to postpone the fishery for hatchery-origin summer steelhead from Interstate 5 downstream to the ocean to avoid incidental catches of spring chinook salmon. According to the state, federal and tribal biologists the forecast of the upper Columbia River spring chinook run from 269,300 originally to 180,000 or less now.
Under federal Endangered Species Act guidelines and agreements, non-Indians are allowed to kill 1.9 percent of the wild upper Columbia-Snake spring chinook run incidentally in the process of catching hatchery fish. Enrique Patino of the National Marine Fisheries Service opined that the federal fisheries agency will allow the states to use their discretion, but to manage conservatively.
Gary Soderstrom, president of the Columbia River Fisheries Protective Union, a commercial fishing group, told that the sport handle of spring chinook in mid-May to mid-June would be more like 75 fish per day. These steps of the states have been criticized by many commercial fishermen. They said that it is certainly not good to allow a large sport fishery in the lower Columbia to run through April 20 and catch or kill almost 20,000 spring chinook, while the commercial catch was limited to only about 75 percent of its allocation.
Commercial fishing has also cancelled in off-channel areas near Astoria by the states in order to save upper Columbia chinook from incidental harvest. States officials will decided the next forecast very soon.
