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Plentiful Fall Chinook, Savvy Tribal Fishermen Hit the Columbia River for Peak of the Migration by Quinton Smith The Oregonian, September 11, 2012

CASCADE LOCKS - Three tribal fishermen pull the 300-foot-long gillnet over their fiberglass boat, untangling and sorting dozens of salmon as an orange sun rises.

Will Zack and two helpers tend nine nets on the both sides of the Columbia River upstream from Cascade Locks. Early morning pulls are best, hauling in some 50 fish in 30 minutes.

Zack and his crew speed to a landing at Stevenson, Wash., where the salmon are loaded into ice-cooled bins. By mid-day the fish are trucked two miles to North Bonneville where they are repacked in ice en route to restaurants and stores across the country.

The fall chinook migration should peak this week in the Columbia River Gorge. As it does, some 400 Native American fishermen from the four tribes allowed to fish in the 147 miles between Bonneville and McNary dams will be furiously minding nets.

While non-tribal commercial gillnet fishery in the lower Columbia is hotly debated via initiative petition and in the governor's office, a 150-year-old treaty and seven U.S. Supreme Court cases guarantee tribal rights to gillnet upriver. They are guided by a 4-year-old, 149-page federal court agreement that details everything from how many fish are caught to how hatcheries operate.

When the season ends Oct. 31, tribal fishermen hope to have landed 150,000 salmon from a flotilla of small boats and by dip nets at 31 fishing sites. The effort involves an array of scientists who advise the four treaty tribes when to fish, tribal police who make sure rules are followed and a greater emphasis on keeping salmon in top condition once they land in the net.

"Job one is taking care of the fish, but job two is taking care of the fishermen," says Stuart Ellis, the scientist who guides the effort for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in Portland. "It's a complex formula."

DIVVYING UP THE FISH

Three types of salmon plop from the net into Will Zack's boat.

The most prized is the upriver bright chinook headed to the free-flowing Hanford Reach or into the Snake River. Tule chinook are a bit larger, a lot darker - and much less valuable - and don't swim much farther than Cascade Locks. The third, coho salmon, have just started to trickle past Bonneville Dam.

But 13 of the Columbia River's salmon and steelhead species are listed as threatened or endangered, so federal, state and tribal agencies closely oversee the harvest.

Managers predict 655,000 salmon will enter the Columbia this fall. To ensure enough protected fish reach spawning grounds, catch rates allocated 105,000 salmon for commercial and sport fishermen below Bonneville. Between Bonneville and McNary dams, tribal fishermen can catch up to 150,000 salmon.

The restrictions are to get enough wild Snake River chinook past Lower Granite Dam - 285 miles from Bonneville. This year, like the past two, the estimate is for 9,000 wild salmon to pass the dam -- about three times the number thought needed to take it off the threatened list.

"What we're trying to do in the mainstem fishery is not mess up the wild fish in the Snake River," Ellis says.

Those numbers are led by the Nez Perce Tribe that release juvenile salmon at acclimation and spawning areas along the Snake and Clearwater rivers. Because hatchery salmon are weaker genetically, many scientists and wild salmon advocates oppose the practice. But it has greatly helped returns.

"The idea is to help get the numbers out there until improvements throughout the system mean that wild fish can sustain themselves without help," Ellis says.

DELICATE BALANCE

Each Thursday Ellis flies over the Columbia to count nets. Last week's 749 was second highest in a decade.

He also consults with tribal biologists on how many days -- typically three to four a week -- tribal leaders want to fish. The goal is to balance the number of fish caught each week with the entire season allowance with how many the market can handle. Too many fish lowers prices; too little river time and fishermen grumble.

"Tribal governments are very much a democracy and tribal fishermen are a big constituent," Ellis says.

One of the busiest is Rex Zack, a Yakama from Toppenish, Wash., who has fished the Columbia for 22 years. He has seven men, including nephew Will, running three boats.

Another three men work at his sorting and loading area at North Bonneville where on this morning, Zack moves bins of salmon and ice with a forklift. His crew has packed the fish into shaved ice. A load of six 850-pound bins must be on the road by 10 a.m.

"He understands the fruits of his labor," says Les Brown, CRITFC's salmon marketing manager. "It's time and temperature. That's the secret."

The biggest change in the tribal fishery in the last decade has been the CRITFC-led effort to improve care of caught salmon. Fish are bled in the boat, then cooled with slush. Instead of pulling nets once a day, it is done up to four times daily with quick trips to iced bins onshore.

Properly bled and iced, a salmon's shelf life can extend to 14 days. The result has been a big increase in prices and interest by buyers.

Brian Tarabochia is a commercial buyer from Astoria who works at Celilo. When he started purchasing tribal salmon nine years ago, three buyers on the river paid 25 cents a pound for a whole fish. This season 10 buyers pay $2 to $2.75 per pound.

"It's quality-driven," Tarabochia says. "They've turned the quality of this product totally around."

With fishing agreements in place and quality improved, CRIFTC is experimenting with a small plant in Bingen, Wash., where tribal fisherman can take their catch. When the plant is fully operational next year, the tribes hope to process and market the fish under their own brand.

"As we've grown the economic value of the tribal fishery it's provided a lot of economic benefit," says Ellis. "Our fishermen are more market savvy than they used to be."