Drought threatens huge run of Columbia chinook

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NORTH BONNEVILLE, Skamania County - In the pale dawn light, Charlie Gardee walked to the edge of a fir-planked platform over the Columbia River and pulled on a few skinny lines.

Up came a hoop net that spent the previous night submerged in this dam-drowned stretch. Inside he found a single silver-bright Columbia River spring chinook.

The fish was small - only about eight pounds - but it was his first of the year, offering the Yakama Indian fisherman an early taste of what is forecast to be an epic run of a remarkable salmon.

Columbia River spring chinook journey farther in fresh water - and linger longer - than any other salmon in the region. This year's run is expected to be the biggest since Columbia dams began going up in the 1930s, yet the fish are returning in one of the worst drought years of the past century.

Their freshwater migration pushes deep into the region's sun-soaked interior. They will journey into the Yakima, the Methow and other Eastern Washington drainages. They will swim into Oregon's Umatilla, John Day and Deschutes. They will move east through the Snake River and into the high-mountain streams of Central Idaho more than 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

More than 6,000 salmon so far have made their way past Bonneville Dam, 145 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River - a record for March. By June, the run is forecast to top 360,000, more than double last year's return and more than eight times the size of the dismal runs of the mid-1990s.

About 80 percent of these fish emerged from stainless-steel trays of hatcheries, and are often marked by a clipped fin on their back. The rest of the fish - about 72,000 - are wild stock that hatched from eggs laid four to five years ago in the gravel of fresh-water streams.

Some of these spring salmon are classified as threatened and endangered, and their recovery has been a goal of $3 billion in federal spending during the past two decades. Their numbers this year, though dwarfed by the hatchery fish, still are up sharply. The threatened Snake River run is expected to be the largest since 1979.

Even with all the money, the fish have benefited most from a change in natural cycles.

Wet years at the end of the past decade produced ample water flows as these salmon were hatched from eggs and reared in fresh water.

Their migration into the Pacific coincided with a big improvement in saltwater conditions, with nutrient-filled upwellings producing large amounts of feed.

Still, this year's run is expected to fall far short of the spring runs of centuries past.

Some biologists estimate more than 1 million springers once ran up the Columbia River, part of a larger historical run of more than 8 million to 12 million wild salmon. In this drought year, many of the wild fish risk dying before the fall spawning season. Salmon moving into the Snake River could become trapped in sluggish, warm pools just below Lower Granite Dam. Those swimming into Eastern Washington may languish in tributaries diminished by drought and the demands of irrigators and other water users.

"We're real worried about the conditions they will face," said Bill Tweit, a Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist. "It's a gigantic source of concern."

Fishing limits

To protect the wild fish, federal, tribal and state officials have agreed to try to limit the Columbia River harvest to about 18 percent of the combined run. Columbia River tribes under treaty rights will claim most of that, about 47,000 fish.

The rest, about 18,000 fish, is split between nonnative commercial and sport fishermen.

The nonnative commercial fishermen, who work the Lower Columbia with gill nets strung from riverboats, already have caught their quota, about 6,000 salmon.

Their spring salmon fetched a high price, $4 a pound, and injected cash into the sputtering economies of down-river communities. But they're bitter about their short season. "People are glad to get the few crumbs they got," said Kent Martin, a Skamokawa, Wahkiakum County, gill-netter who now makes most of his money in Alaska. "They're just disappointed that there wasn't more time involved with this."

Sport fishermen are celebrating the big run, and are hoping their 12,000-fish quota will allow a long spring season, deep into April.

They can keep any fin-clipped hatchery fish, but must release all other chinook.

Already, just below Bonneville Dam, where the river narrows through the gorge, dozens of boats bob in the river and dozens of bank anglers cast Spin-N-Glos and Wiggleworts.

Fishing like before

James Mason first fished the spring run as a boy back in the 1930s as his father, a Kentucky-born construction worker, helped build the Bonneville Dam. But for the past 20 years, the Lower Columbia below the dam largely has been closed to spring chinook fishing.

Now that it is finally open, Mason, a retired pulp-mill worker from Camas, Clark County, wasn't about to let a bad hip - and uncertain gait - keep him from his favorite shoreside hole.

He grabbed a rod, drove his truck down to the river and then carefully began picking his way through the shoreline rocks.

"It's getting a lot harder to fish - but I'll crawl down there one way or another," Mason said.

Mason and other anglers are wary of boasting about the good fishing. After years without a decent spring season, they fear an invasion of salmon-fevered anglers who will overrun their favorite spots and leave behind mounds of trash.

The tribal fishery also will draw from all over the region. Treaty rights extend to the Nez Perce of Idaho, Yakama of Washington and Umatilla and Warm Springs of Oregon.

Fisherman Gardee and his friend, fellow Yakama James Cayona, track the harvest for the Yakama Nation. They both live in the Columbia River Gorge. Their biggest counting job will come later in the spring, when a small-boat fleet of some 500 Native fishermen will be allowed to set out gill nets targeting the spring salmon.

These fishermen are expected to catch at least 23,500 spring salmon, which will be sold on the open market. They can keep both wild and hatchery fish.

Even though most of the tribal fish are sold for cash, the spring harvest also taps deep into Native traditions.

Fishermen put away spring fish for their families. They give it away to friends, and offer it up for ceremonial feasts at funerals and Indian long houses.

"This fish fights to come back to us," said Cayona, who lives in Bingen, Klickitat County. "It's got the oil that we cherish, that brings energy to our bodies.

"These fish - they're the ones that are supposed to give us the strength to carry us through the year."

Modern fishing conditions

Cayona and Gardee, in some free time, have been fishing for their families from three platforms that stretch like rickety piers out over the Columbia River.

They fish with 8-foot-wide hoop nets that would have been familiar to their ancestors. But the fishing spot is like nothing earlier generations could have imagined.

Downstream, Bonneville Dam stretches like a concrete fortress. Upstream, a steel-decked highway bridge spans the river. Barge-towing tugs and tour boats motor along the river. Behind the platforms, freight train after freight train rumbles along. But one thing hasn't changed: Current is key to good fishing.

The fishermen need a strong river flow to create a shoreside back eddy that pushes the mesh of the net upstream. This creates a funnel-shaped, dead-end salmon trap.

But in this stretch of the river, the current now depends on dam operations. The more power produced, the stronger the spill and the better the current.

In mid-March, federal dam operators stepped up power production to help California cope with rolling blackouts. The current picked up nicely, and Gardee caught his first chinook.

But when California couldn't promise a quick repayment of Northwest electricity, power production dropped off, the current went slack, and so did the nets. Gardee and Cayona got no salmon.

The lack of rainfall also has hurt the fishing.

Without a lot of runoff, the river is clear and salmon can see the nets better and swim around them.

Better fishing to come

The fishing should pick up in the next few weeks as tens of thousands of salmon move through this stretch of river.

The fishermen will stick close to the platforms, night and day. And be on guard. Fish thieves haunt the river on shore and in boats, making late-night raids on nets.

But plenty of fish should still elude fishermen and make their way up past Columbia River dams and into tributaries.

Tens of thousands more hatchery fish are expected to be taken in new rounds of tribal and sport-fishing harvests. But at least 125,000 hatchery fish are expected to return to the hatcheries.

Some of those hatchery fish will be tapped for eggs and sperm. Some will be given to food banks or tribes. A few, carefully selected for their genetic traits, will be released to spawn and help rebuild wild populations. Some will be strewn along riverbanks, their bodies decaying and recycling nutrients.

But some hatchery stock are likely to meet an ignoble end. They may be dumped at landfills.

The wild salmon will move into tributaries, and try to hunker down in cool water until it's time to spawn in the fall. But in a drought year, many of these wild fish may not survive to contribute to the next generation.

Gardee recalls walking the Yakima River during the last big drought, back in 1977. Many spring chinook died in overheated pools of water. He found them floating belly up.

"Nobody seemed to care," Gardee said. "There was nothing I could do but take pictures of what I found. I had a whole album full."

Hal Bernton can be reached at 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com.