Columbia and Snake River Basin wild salmon and steelhead did not fare well in 2021.

Columbia River Tributaries - The Forecast is Cloudy and Unsettled

The wild steelhead return is the lowest on record, the spring run of chinook salmon came in at just 50 percent of average, sockeye were at a low point, but wild fall chinook returned in good numbers and recently reintroduced hatchery coho salmon returned in record-breaking numbers over Bonneville Dam.

State fishery managers struggled to manage the worst summer steelhead return on record while trying to allow as much recreational coho and fall chinook salmon angling as possible. The fall chinook return, just two-thirds of the 10-year average, was not low enough to require more conservative management.

Wild Steelhead passing Bonneville Dam in 2021 (Fish Passage Center)

The challenge for the fishery agencies was allowing fishing for hatchery coho based on an exceptionally large forecast (predominately hatchery produced fish) while trying to limit impacts to tule chinook, chum salmon, as well as bright upriver chinook, and very depressed wild steelhead returns.

The final analysis on the fishery impacts on ESA-listed salmon and steelhead will not be well-understood until early 2022 – any damage done will be too late to repair unless spring steelhead fisheries are closed or limited in the John Day, Grand Ronde and Snake Rivers.

Here is a synopsis of the 2021 Columbia-Snake salmon and steelhead runs and fisheries:

Spring Chinook

The preseason forecast for spring chinook was 75,200 fish at the Columbia River mouth, but it upgraded that forecast May 17 to 87,000 fish. The final estimate for the 2020 run of spring chinook was 81,300 fish. Approximately 67,000 spring chinook passed Bonneville Dam, only 54% of the current ten-year average. Many of these fish are hatchery fish. Approximately 34,000 spring chinook passed Willamette Falls which is right on the current ten-year average.

The pre-season non-tribal fishery allocation of spring chinook (based on the run size of 87,000 fish) was 6,438 fish, and state fishery managers expected that nearly 6,000 of the upriver fish would be harvested during the season though detailed information will not be known until February 2022 – barely a month before the 2022 Spring season fisheries are scheduled to begin.

Spring chinook in the Hood River and Deschutes are in trouble. Deschutes wild spring chinook, most of which spawn in the Warm Springs River, may return at fewer than one hundred adult fish. 2018 was the last time sport angling for spring chinook was allowed on the Deschutes. Deschutes River spring chinook are part of the mid-Columbia chinook population that are not ESA-listed – yet they verge on extinction.

Summer Chinook

Chinook salmon passing Bonneville Dam June 16 through July 31 are considered summer chinook. These fish are returning on the tail end of the spring chinook run that is wrapping up in late May. There is an imprecision to the period when spring chinook end and summer chinook begin. Although initially forecasted as 78,000 upriver fish, state managers downgraded the run size to 59,600 fish in late June. However, according to the Fish Passage Center (FPC), some 82,000 summer chinook adults passed Bonneville Dam this year, about 75 percent of the 10-year average run and near the pre-season forecast. Summer chinook are not listed under the federal ESA and spawn mainly in the Columbia River mainstem and in tributary areas from the Yakima River upstream to the Okanagan River.

Fall Chinook

The preseason forecast for all fall chinook was 576,400 fish returning to the Columbia River mouth. TAC updated the run size estimate for the upriver component of the fall chinook run at the Columbia River mouth to 386,000 adult chinook, including 293,900 Upriver bright fall chinook bound for the Deschutes, Snake, and the free-flowing Hanford Reach.

Areas of the lower Columbia had been closed to fall chinook angling for a brief period because of higher-than-expected sport catch rates and mortality of lower river natural tule chinook, which is listed as a threatened species under the federal ESA. However, by late September, most natural tule chinook had presumably entered tributaries to spawn and angling for fall chinook in that zone resumed Oct. 1.

Sport fishers kept 43,870 chinook (and the released 11,250 chinook – likely resulting in over 1,100 additional mortalities), 41,370 coho (releasing 28,570 coho – likely resulting in more than 2,800 additional coho mortalities).

Estimates for off-channel and mainstem commercial fishery harvest in the lower Columbia below Bonneville Dam were 31,800 chinook, nearly 97,000 coho, and 670 white sturgeon.

Sockeye Salmon

Sockeye Salmon passing Bonneville in 2021 (Fish Passage Center data)

The revised preseason forecast was for 149,600 fish at the Columbia River mouth, and by the end of the sockeye migration season, about 151,765 of the fish passed Bonneville. However, the 2021 return was less than half the actual return of the fish in 2020 (341,739 sockeye) and was 50 percent of the current 10-year average run of 304,000 fish.

Only 645 sockeye made the swim to Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River. Snake River sockeye have been ESA-listed since 1991 when just four adult sockeye had completed the 900 mile migration to Redfish Lake. Only forty-four completed the entire journey on their own this year, as Idaho Department of Fish and Game trapped 185 Redfish Lake fish at Lower Granite and transported them to IDFG’s Eagle Hatchery due to warm water concerns.

Summer Steelhead

Passage of Skamania early-run summer steelhead and upriver A- and B-Index summer steelhead at Bonneville Dam since April 1 is the lowest on record. The count of unclipped (wild and natural-origin) steelhead passage (24,520) is the lowest since clipped/unclipped counting began in 1984.

Skamania early-run steelhead, which are primarily bound to rivers between Bonneville Dam and the Klickitat River, came in as the lowest on record.

Upriver summer steelhead, both A-Index and B-Index fish, are counted beginning on July 1, passed Bonneville Dam in record dwindling numbers as well and as of October 25, only 67,383 A-run and B-run steelhead had passed.

While many fishing regulations were adopted to respond to the low return, these rules were implemented too late, were unfairly applied, and were largely unenforceable. While sport impacts may be low, they add up – especially when unmonitored commercial and tribal harvests took place concurrently throughout the migration period.

Many steelhead will return to Idaho where run size is one-third the 10-year average and the third worst run in the last ten years. IDFG has allowed the steelhead season to remain open, only dialing back harvest limits from two hatchery steelhead to one per day.

This report was compiled and sourced from State Agency Fact Sheets, UW Columbia River DART, Fish Passage Center and Columbia Basin Bulletin articles. The Conservation Angler will report in more detail on wild steelhead in our November newsletter.