PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - One year after a crash in Klamath River salmon returns sparked a full-scale closure, sport anglers off the southern Oregon coast are on track for a 100-day chinook season from mid-May through late August.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted the framework for ocean-salmon seasons at its meeting Tuesday in Portland, where it also determined commercial troll fishing for chinook will be open intermittently along the entire Oregon coast from May through the summer. Like sport anglers, the commercial fleet off Brookings, Gold Beach and Port Orford saw no chinook fishing last spring and summer.
“While this won’t be a banner year for ocean salmon fishing, overall it’s an improvement from 2017,” Chris Kern, a deputy administrator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in a news release Wednesday.
Meanwhile, sport salmon fishing in the ocean off the Columbia River will open June 23 and is expected to run through Labor Day.
The council’s recommendations will be forwarded to the National Marine Fisheries Service for approval. The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will be asked to adopt matching rules for state waters at its April 20 meeting in Astoria.
The ocean season was crafted around estimates that 462,800 Rogue River fall chinook are now in the ocean, which is almost twice that of last year, the Mail Tribune reports.
Those fish entered the ocean during the drought years of 2014 and 2015, but they largely escaped low and warm summer flows thanks to supplemental water from Lost Creek and Applegate reservoirs.
In contrast, Sacramento River-bound chinook smolts were hit hard by drought, triggering poor survival rates, with estimates of 229,400 Sacramento chinook in the ocean, down 1,300 from last year.
That dip kept the season from opening earlier and closing later than the recommendations adopted Tuesday.
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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
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