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2016 Columbia River Spring Chinook Run Close to 10-Year Average by Laura Berg NW Fishletter, June 6, 2016

Spring Chinook started returning in late March, slowly at first but are now on target to almost reach the preseason prediction of 188,800 adult fish at Bonneville Dam, according to recent fact sheets issued jointly by Oregon and Washington.

With no reported passage problems, the 2016 adult return is close to the 10-year average, while spring Chinook jack counts--often an indicator of the next season's abundance--are down.

Recreational, tribal subsistence and ceremonial, and commercial Indian and non-Indian fisheries are in process.

Fisheries on the Columbia and Snake rivers are managed by principally two legal constraints, the U.S. v. Oregon treaty rights decision, allocating harvests between Indians and non-Indians and the Endangered Species Act, requiring only a small percentage to be taken in fisheries.

The Columbia basin's ESA-listed species are spring Chinook from the upper Columbia and the Snake rivers.