Wednesday September 17, 2025
Moscow-Pullman Daily News —
Fisheries managers in Idaho and Washington will suspend the harvest of wild fall chinook in the Snake River and its tributaries, while continuing to allow anglers to catch and keep hatchery fish.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game announced the change will take effect Friday and last at least one week. Washington intends to follow suit, said Chris Donley, fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at Spokane.
Warm water in the Snake and Columbia rivers has slowed the upstream migration of fall chinook and biologists fear a significant portion of the fish won’t make it to their spawning grounds. Wild Snake River fall chinook are protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
“We don’t have enough wild fish up here to keep harvesting wild fish,” said Donley. “We will reassess in a week and if we can reopen the harvest to wild fish we will and if not, we will just let (the season) run out on hatchery fish.”
Most fisheries for salmon and steelhead in the Snake River and its tributaries focus solely on hatchery fish and require anglers to release protected wild fish — identifiable by unclipped adipose fins. Fall chinook seasons deviate from that pattern, in part because wild fall chinook are doing better than wild steelhead and wild spring chinook. But there is also a significant portion of hatchery fall chinook, upward of 80%, that don’t have their adipose fins removed. That means when regulations require the release of adipose-intact fish, the odds of catching a keeper drop significantly.
Idaho and Washington each use a sliding scale, approved by the federal government, that allow anglers to keep wild Snake River fall chinook when their numbers exceed roughly 5,000. The run has routinely met that threshold in recent years.
But drought combined with hot summer weather have caused both the Snake and Columbia rivers to climb above 70 degrees, which can make fish reluctant to continue their upstream movement. If survival drops because of it, the 5,000 fish threshold could be in jeopardy.
Fisheries managers expect cooler weather brought on by seasonal changes will lead to more fish movement. They plan to monitor fish passage at dams on both rivers, along with harvest and determine by Sept. 26 if the ban on adipose-intact fish should sunset or continue.