Chinook seasons end with encouraging signs

More changes, both good and bad, are in store for chinook anglers.

Let's go bad news first.

The chinook fishery on the lower Snake River in Washington has closed. Chris Donley, fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said harvest monitoring indicates anglers on the Snake have reached the allowable number of interactions with wild fish. Anglers have to release all wild chinook. Those interactions are tracked and fishing is closed once a quota is reached. The move is designed to protect wild fish.

Three areas of the Snake River - near Ice Harbor Dam, Little Goose Dam and Clarkston - opened for two days per week for eight consecutive weeks this spring. Anglers harvested 704 adult hatchery chinook and caught and released 302 wild chinook. The hatchery fish kept included 199 adults and 17 jacks in the Ice Harbor fishery, 506 adults and 47 jacks at Little Goose and 35 adults at Clarkston.

"We had a pretty good fishery," said Donley. "If people didn't get out and fish this year, I don't know what we can do for them. We had pretty good opportunity."

Anglers fishing between Cherrylane and Orofino on the Clearwater River in Idaho did so well last week that the section will close after fishing hours end today. Salmon anglers pulled 218 chinook from the Cherrylane-to-Orofino section last week, bringing the season total there to 329 and leaving only 41 remaining on the quota for that area, according to Joe DuPont, regional fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. All other sections on the Clearwater River and its tributaries will remain open at least through this week's Thursday-through-Sunday interval.

Last week DuPont said fisheries biologists were busy analyzing DNA samples taken at Lower Granite Dam from chinook bound for the Rapid River Hatchery. He said that work could lead to an increase of the harvest share for the hatchery stock of salmon targeted by anglers on the lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers.

Those results account for the good news. Tests showed that detection of PIT tags implanted in a fraction of the Rapid River fish run represents only about 42 percent of the run's true strength. That means the harvest share on the Rapid River run will jump from last week's projection of 640 to 1,300. The harvest share for fish bound for Hells Canyon Dam has also doubled to a total of about 300.

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Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.