Looks like the commercial springer fishery on the Columbia will be shutting down for the time being...

Here's a link to the article:

The Columbian

Here's the article:

Commercial spring chinook season nearly done

Friday, March 26, 2004
By ALLEN THOMAS, Columbian staff writer

Commercial fishing for spring chinook salmon in the lower Columbia River likely will done for the season no later than Thursday.

Washington and Oregon officials approved an eight-hour commercial fishing period that ended at 5 a.m. this morning and scheduled a meeting at 8:30 a.m. Monday to see how many chinook remain on the netters' guideline.

Heading into last night's netting, the commercials had used up 30 percent of their guideline of upper Columbia River chinook. With the ratio of upper Columbia chinook growing, the net fleet will use up the balance of its guideline quickly.

In addition, state fishery officials are reserving 25 percent of the commercial allocation to allow netting in April and May in off-channel locations such as Youngs Bay, Blind Slough and Deep River.

On Tuesday night, the commercials landed 2,321 spring chinook, bringing their season total to 5,907.

Kathryn Kostow of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said the commercial fishermen are expected to land about 3,500 chinook from Thursday night's fishing, bringing them to 65 percent of their guideline.

However, stormy weather along the coast may result in fewer chinook being caught than projected, said Les Clark of the Northwest Gillnetters Association.

On Monday, the states will have updated landings numbers and may schedule another eight-hour commercial fishing period for Monday night.

Steve Williams of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said that Monday might be the final commercial fishing period in the lower Columbia this spring.

Another netting period could be possible Wednesday night if catches are below expectations.

More than 1,000 sport-fishing boats were on the lower Columbia on Saturday, and that number is expected to mushroom once the commercial season is over.

Jim Wells, president of Salmon For All, an Astoria-based commercial fishing group, said it appears the monster run of spring chinook forecast for 2004 is finally entering the Columbia.

Wells said it appears the bulk of the fish have made it upstream about as far as Pillar Rock, which is slightly upstream of Grays Bay.

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Fish on...

Todd

Just in time for me!

That is very good since we are going down Wednesday. Sounds like they may be netting if they don't have a good catch tonight. I think the run is late anyway so the first part of April should be getting better. Thanks for the news Todd!l

From the article:

"On Tuesday night, the commercials landed 2,321 spring chinook, bringing their season total to 5,907."

I wonder if they also keep records on the number of steelhead captured in those same nets during that time?

Seems the commercials ahve had good luck, but from what I am reading the sporties ain't doing so hot...maybe getting the nets out will all us little guys a chance at some fish.

Mike

The nets are back in tonight though

Mike B,

The estimated daily and total catch of both wild and hatchery steelhead and chinook are carefully considered in conducting the fishery.

Here is some recent data:
see: http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/crc/crc29mar04fact.pdf

Mainstem non-Indian commercial fishery impacts to listed species are estimated to be 0.332% for upriver spring chinook and 0.578% for wild winter steelhead through the March 25-26 fishing period. Total impacts to date represent 41.50% of the total upriver spring chinook impact limit (0.80%) for non-Indian commercial fisheries and 28.90% of the wild winter steelhead impact limit (2.00%) for non-Indian fisheries.

Over the eight fishing periods, a total of 8,346 chinook were kept, with 4,760 fish kept during the two 8- hour small mesh fisheries. Sampling of landed catch from the small mesh fishery showed 49% percent were upriver fish. The average size of the chinook declined from about 18 pounds to about 13 pounds.

The observed mark rate for the week of March 22 for chinook was 75% with a total observation of 317 chinook kept and 85 steelhead released for the combined March 23-24 and March 25-26 fishing periods. More information from the individual fishery observations are shown in the table below.

You can keep up with the statistics and openings at the CRC information site:
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/crc/crcindex.htm