Buoy 10 Chinook fishery to close Friday, but ocean open for Chinook

Published 4:22 pm Thursday, August 27, 2015

OLYMPIA — Anglers fishing in the Buoy 10 area near the mouth of the Columbia River will have to release any Chinook salmon they catch after Friday.

Following a week of record catch rates and angler turnout, state fishery managers from Washington and Oregon Thursday agreed to close the popular fishery several days earlier than anticipated.

Despite the early closure for Chinook retention, the 2015 Buoy 10 season has been a record. The total catch over four weeks of fishing is expected to reach or exceed 35,000 Chinook in the 16-mile stretch of the lower Columbia River.

Angler effort has been among the highest observed and angler catch rates have been 30 percent higher than the previous record set in 2013. With four fishing days yet to be counted, harvest this year has already exceeded the 2014 catch by 6,000 fish.

“This year’s Buoy 10 Chinook fishery got off to a fast start and just kept picking up speed,” said Guy Norman, regional director for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “We had hoped to keep the Chinook fishery open through Labor Day, but the mounting catch reached the harvest guideline sooner than expected.”

The harvest guideline limits impacts on wild fish protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

However, anglers can still catch and retain hatchery coho and summer steelhead in the Buoy 10 waters, which extend upriver to the Rocky Point/Tongue Point line. Both species are marked as hatchery fish by a clipped adipose fin.

All three species — including Chinook salmon — are also still available for harvest upriver from the Rocky Point/Tongue Point line to Warrior Rock and beyond, Norman said.

“This fall season will continue to provide good fishing for Chinook in the Columbia River upstream to the Hanford Reach,” he said. “If the Buoy 10 fishery is any indication, it should be a great year for salmon fishing.”

Earlier this week the fishery closed to the retention of wild (non fin-clipped) Chinook. However, according to Chris Kern, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife fish division deputy administrator, even with that change the ongoing monitoring showed catch rates continued to be high enough to exhaust the remaining tule impacts.

“If we don’t take this action now, we put the remaining upstream sport fishery at risk,” Kern said. Each section of the river is assigned its own allocation of tule impacts. If the Buoy 10 fishery exceeds its allowable impacts, they must be taken from the upriver sport fishery, which could reduce already limited opportunities in that section of the river.

Chinook harvest at Buoy 10 is scheduled to reopen Oct. 1 following the expected September migration of wild tules into lower river tributaries. Beginning Saturday, anglers may transport Chinook salmon caught in adjacent fisheries (such as the ocean or the Columbia River above Tongue Point) through the Buoy 10 area, but cannot fish for salmon in the Buoy 10 area if they have Chinook onboard.

Starting Saturday, anglers fishing ocean waters off Ilwaco and Westport can keep up to two Chinook salmon as part of their two-salmon daily limit.

Doug Milward, WDFW ocean salmon manager, said the department previously limited anglers off Ilwaco to one Chinook per day to ensure that the fishery would remain open for the entire season.

“We have enough Chinook remaining under the guideline to allow anglers two Chinook per day off Ilwaco without much risk of having to close early,” Milward said.

Through Sunday, anglers fishing in Marine Area 1 (Ilwaco and Westport) had caught 45 percent or 7,118 fish, of the 15,750 Chinook guideline for the area.

Ocean salmon fisheries are scheduled to continue through Sept. 30 in all four marine areas.