ILWACO – Fishing for fall Chinook on the lower Columbia River mainstem has remained slow for both sport and commercial anglers but, with a return to the river’s mouth of 671,400 adults anticipated, officials expect the dam to burst soon.

“Word on the river is that things are looking better,” Robin Ehlke of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife told the Columbia River Compact last Wednesday.

The Compact’s Bill Tweit of the WDFW and Curt Melcher of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, representing their department directors, approved an 11-hour non-Indian commercial fishery in the area between the mouth of Washington’s Lewis River and Bonneville Dam that began at 8 p.m. Thursday.

The Compact had on Aug. 19 approved 4 1/2-day tribal commercial fisheries for last week and for the weeks of Aug. 29-Sept. 2 and Sept. 6-10.

ODFW and WDFW staff told the Compact sport fishing at the river mouth’s Buoy 10 had been slow in terms of both effort and catch. During week 34 – two weeks ago – anglers averaged only 0.08 Chinook per rod compared to 0.35 and 0.27 during that week the previous two years. Additionally, only 11,000 angler trips were counted during the week compared to 16,000 during that week in 2004 and 24,000 in 2003 when 893,100 adult Chinook returned to the river.

The catch included only 896 Chinook last week compared to 5,624 during that week a year ago and 6,585 in 2003.

Ehlke said the Buoy 10 Chinook catch did seem to improve early this week, to 0.18 fish per rod Monday and then 0.22 on Tuesday. Many have theorized that migrating fish are stalled outside because of relatively high river temperatures.

Non-Indian commercial fishers have had middling success in the waters below Bonneville, though the fish are relatively large, averaging about 22.5 pounds and of good quality. Fisherman and Salmon for All President Jim Wells told the Compact that wholesale buyers have been paying as high as $2.50 per pound.

“Everyone’s literally screaming for salmon now,” Wells told the Compact.

But with few fish arriving in-river, non-tribal gill-netters harvested only 896 Chinook, 10 coho and 99 white sturgeon during an 11-hour fishery Monday night. That represented only 48 deliveries to buyers, less than half the average daily delivery during four 12-hour fisheries held earlier in August that landed more than 7,000 Chinook.

The non-tribal gill-net fleet has caught only 7,991 Chinook total during August, well below the targeted catch of 13,200 for the month. The catch has included 1,170 “upriver brights,” about one-third of the anticipated URB catch for August. A fishery management agreement aimed to absorb about 24 percent of the non-tribal commercial fleet’s allowed impact on URBs during August, but with likely only the one day of fishing remaining only 8 percent had been incurred. The impact limits are designed to protect the Snake River portion of the fall Chinook run, which is listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The Thursday-night harvest was predicted to yield 2,500-3,500 Chinook. Coded-wire tag information from earlier fisheries show that about 1/3 of the catch to-date have been URBs, a much lower percentage than was expected early in the season. The non-tribal fleet will most likely next be launched during the week of Sept. 19, though spokesmen asked the Compact to consider another outing early next week. This is a time of the year when, historically, the upriver run begins to surge.

“I do think there’s a very good chance that the fishery’s going to be very productive,” Melcher said. Ehlke said that during week 35 both last year and in 2003 the catch jumped within a matter of days. As an example, last year an Aug. 23-24 fishery netted 694 Chinook. The same number of boats caught 3,900 Chinook two days later.

“It has the potential to change in a day or two by a lot of fish,” Ehlke said.

The largest portion of the fall Chinook run, more than 485,000 adults, is forecast to return to hatcheries and spawning grounds such as the Hanford Reach.

The Bonneville Dam count from Aug. 1-23 totaled 13,898, well below the 10-year average of 19,961. Upriver fall Chinook passage normally is 50 percent complete by Sept. 7 but the vast majority of the fish pass Bonneville during the late August/early September time frame.

Counts have picked up since the past weekend, from a few hundred daily counts of 1,054; 2,563; 1,854; 1,659 and 1,737 this past Saturday through Wednesday. Historically this is the time period where counts begin to jump drastically. As an example, last year the daily counts at Bonneville jumped from 1,153 on Aug. 25 to more than 27,000 on Aug. 29 and stayed above 10,000 Chinook daily from Aug. 28 through Sept. 22.

Tribal fishers, with gas prices at all-time highs, are waiting for larger numbers to arrive. Only 187 nets were seen Wednesday in the upriver reservoirs, less than half what would be expected at the peak.

“Fishing is not spectacular, but some guys seem to be catching a reasonable number of fish,” Stuart Ellis, a Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission biologist, said after the first three days’ fishing.

A management agreement between the tribes, states and federal agencies allows an overall impact on the returning URB run of 31.29 percent. Non-Indian fishers get 8.25 percent, which is split roughly between the sport and commercial fisheries.

The four treaty tribes get up to a 23.04 percent impact. CRITFC has estimated that the combined tribal gill-net catch for the first three weeks could total as many as 108,200 Chinook, including 52,700 URBs, and 7,570 steelhead, including 544 “wild B-index fish bound for the Snake River basin. Such a Chinook catch would amount to 64 percent of the tribes’ overall allocation, based on the preseason run forecast.