Hanford Reach fishery to close
early for salmon retention

Action: The Columbia River is closed to the retention of all salmon between the Highway 395 Bridge at Pasco and Priest Rapids Dam.

Effective date: 12:01 a.m. Oct. 15, 2009

Species affected: Salmon

Reason for action: The in-season forecast for fall chinook escapement to the Hanford Reach has fallen below the natural spawning escapement goal of 28,800 adult chinook. The revised total return estimate (spawning escapement + harvest) is predicted to be 33,381 adults. Through October 11, the salmon fishery has harvested an estimated 6,340 adult fall chinook based on creel census data, leaving 27,000 adults to potentially spawn. If the fishery is allowed to continue as scheduled through October 22, less than 26,000 adult chinook will remain to spawn based on the predicted final return and current harvest rate. Closing the salmon retention fishery eight days early will result in approximately 1,000 additional adult fish surviving to spawn. The 2009 harvest is well above the anticipated level and has already surpassed the 2008 harvest by over 40 percent.

Other Information: All salmon must be immediately released unharmed and cannot be removed from the water prior to release. Anglers will be allowed to continue to fish for and retain hatchery steelhead between the old Hanford town site wooden power line towers and Priest Rapids Dam through October 22. Angling for hatchery steelhead from McNary Dam to the old Hanford town site wooden powerline towers will remain open after October 22 under the regulations listed in the Fishing in Washington Sport Fishing Rules (Page 76).

Wild steelhead (adipose fin intact) must be immediately released unharmed and cannot be removed from the water prior to release.

Information contact: Paul Hoffarth, District 4 Fish Biologist, (509) 545-2284 (Pasco), or John Easterbrooks, Regional Fish Program Manager, (509) 457-9330 (Yakima).

Pretty crazy. I fully support closing the fishing if we're not meeting spawner escapement. But this fiasco highlights just how screwed up the management of the Columbia River fisheries is. Here we have a run that officially is supposed to target 60,000 fish escapement over McNary. (Way too low a target obviously.) And we exceeded that escapement by a bunch, 100K fish over McNary. And yet somehow this wasn't enough to prosecute a normal fishery in the Reach?

The sport harvest for the Reach was around 6K fish. Great fishery this year. And the harvest below Bonneville was what? Many tens of thousands? How about the tribal harvest below McNary? Last year it was about 70K. It just seems ridiculous that we have a mindset of harvesting every possible fish in the lower river when we should be managing for a spawner return to the Reach of at least 80K fish, not panicking because we're not going to make a measly 28,500 fish and shortchanging the local anglers who are going to harvest a tiny fraction of what has been caught downriver. The escapement target for McNary needs to be at least doubled and preferably tripled to ensure we have enough fish to spawn in the Reach and have a reasonable sport season.

well were on the subject i was talking to the biologist at ringold last week and he told me the steelhead would not be any good at ringold becouse they only released 56,000 compared to 200,000 the year before,so why raise it to 3 fish if i got this wrong let me know

The 3 fish limit for steelhead is because of an unprecedented number of hatchery fish heading to the upper Columbia tribs (Wenatchee, Okanogan, Similkameen, etc.). So the Ringold fish might not be as plentiful (although if the ocean survival was particularly good there might actually be quite a few) but there should be a lot of fish passing through for the rest of this month.