Commercial salmon fishermen will have 12 hours to fish Oregon's lower Columbia River, starting at 7 p.m. tonight.

Biologists upgraded their forecast for the summer king run to 120,000, the largest since at least 1960.



Gillnet fishermen set their nets and work their gear to catch salmon on Youngs Bay on Wednesday, July 18, 2012. In this photo, Martin Rice hauls in his gear and shows off a salmon. Susan Chambers photo.A catch of about 500 summer kings is anticipated for tonight. The commercial fleet has a balance of 496 summer kings on their allocation.

The sockeye run has been upgraded to 507,500, which is the third largest on record.

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Samuel Hill is the former associate editor for National Fisherman. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Maine where he got his start in journalism at the campus’ newspaper, the Free Press. He has also written for the Bangor Daily News, the Outline, Motherboard and other publications about technology and culture.

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