Fall chinook run smashing all records on Columbia
Posted by Rich, Spokesman-Review, Sept. 12, 2013
SALMON FISHING — It's not a run of fall chinook coming up the Columbia River this season, it's a stampede.
On Tuesday, regional fish managers upped their forecast for this year's fall chinook returns to 835,000 adult upriver brights reaching Bonneville Dam, which would smash the record of 610,436 set in 2004.
The count over Bonneville Dam Wednesday night totaled 573,567 with 42,506 fish coming up on Wednesday alone. That's the sixth highest single-day count since record-keeping started in 1938, and it's probably the DOWNSIDE of the run's peak.
This year's run set three single-day record numbers over Bonneville Dam in the past week, peaking with 63,870 on Monday.
“It’s a string that is mind-boggling, historic — Chin-pocalypse in the words of one angler who stands to reap the benefits, king-ageddon,” exclaims Andy Walgamott of Northwest Sportsman magazine. “It’s not just the Columbia. There are signs that Puget Sound pink salmon were hugely underforecast, and the Oregon and California Coasts’ Chinook season was bonkers.”
The largest percentage of the upriver chinooks crossing Bonneville Dam is headed for the Hanford Reach of the Columbia as well as to the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers in Idaho.
I'll make the easy forecast and predict that thousands of anglers will be there to greet them this season.
