Friday May 12, 2023
Northwest Sportsman —
Signs of life!
After weeks of refusing to crank over given the relatively large forecast, the spring Chinook count at Bonneville fired up the past two days with a combined 10,310 fish, giving hope that this year’s upper Columbia run is just woefully tardy due to a mix of environmental conditions. Stable flows out of the dam could yield more good daily counts after a period of depressed figures that will have given fishery managers heartburn.
While the return still has a long way to go to hit the preseason prediction of 198,600 at the mouth of the big river, Monday and Tuesday bring the year’s tally to 38,652 springers at Bonneville.
Those figures were also posted after what’s known as the U.S. v. Oregon Technical Advisory Committee met at the start of the week to go over the count, river flows and water temperatures. After viewing the data, TAC didn’t issue a runsize update but did put out the following statement.