Sockeye salmon are creating a stir on the Columbia River, surging past Bonneville Dam in unexpectedly high numbers and biting surprised steelhead anglers’ hooks.
The 66,468 sockeye counted at Bonneville Dam through June 19 appears to be an all-time record since the dam was constructed in 1938, according to WDFW fishery biologist Joe Hymer. The 15,543 fish counted Thursday is the highest daily sockeye count at the dame since 1955. The peak daily count that year was 27,112 fish on July 7.
“They are catching sockeye like crazy, phenomenal numbers of sockeye,” the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Cindy LeFleur said Wednesday.
Unfortunately for the anglers, however, the sockeye have not been fair game. But that will change.
The Columbia River Compact late Thursday afternoon, based on the abnormally high counts at the dam, approved harvest and sale of sockeye in non-Indian commercial fisheries below Bonneville and in treaty fisheries above the dam. The Compact, which sets mainstem commercial fisheries, is made up of representatives of the Oregon and Washington departments of fish and wildlife directors.
Meeting later as a joint state panel, the ODFW’s Steve Williams and WDFW’s Bill Tweit approved the harvest of sockeye during a June 21-28 sport fishery on the mainstem from the river mouth up to Bonneville and June 21-July 31 above Bonneville.
Sockeye returns have historically bobbed up and down from year to year. Last year’s return to the Columbia mouth was only 26,000 and the 2006 run numbers slightly more than 37,000.
The last year that sockeye retention was allowed on the mainstem was in 2004 when the return totaled 130,000 and an estimated 672 fish were caught, mostly in commercial fisheries. A return of 120,000 sockeye in 2001 allowed a harvest of 1,690 fish with most snared in gillnets.
But before that, little sockeye fishing was allowed on the mainstem dating back to the mid to late 1980s. The highest sport catch in decades was 226 sockeye in 1984, LeFleur said.
Mainstem fishing for sockeye has been limited since the listing in 1991 of the Snake River portion of the run under Endangered Species Act.
State officials had said that non-Indian fisheries for sockeye were not likely this year in the Columbia mainstem because the forecast return would barely meet management goals—the escapement of 65,000 upper Columbia River sockeye as far as Priest Rapids Dam. Under average migration conditions that normally requires passage of 75,000 fish over Bonneville.
But with a count of 11,295 Wednesday swelling the 2008 total to 50,930, that escapement goal is within reach. The Wednesday daily count far surpasses the total run in 1995, a record low 9,667 fish.
The Technical Advisory Committee met Thursday morning to review the counts and decided that a run of at least 100,000 could be expected.
Passage is typically 50 percent complete by June 24 based on the recent 10-year average, and 28 percent complete based on the earliest timing.
Through Monday, 30,223 sockeye salmon had been counted forging over Bonneville’s fish ladders, the highest total through that date in a half century or more, Hymer said. The total is higher than any recorded back to at least 1960, the earliest counts Hymer could find.
