Recreational anglers took a day off fishing for spring Chinook on March 29, but that didn’t give the fish a rest as the day-long gap was filled by nine hours of commercial gillnetting. Anglers were back fishing Wednesday morning, March 30.
The two-state Columbia River compact set the commercial fishing period at its meeting March 28, just in time for up to 100 gillnet boats to begin fishing March 29 for the highly-valued spring Chinook from Astoria to Bonneville Dam.
The compact had set openings and regulations for spring Chinook and steelhead fishing for recreational anglers at its annual joint-state hearing in late January. Expecting a higher than average run of spring Chinook, the compact opened Chinook fishing to recreational anglers on the river below Bonneville dam beginning March 1 and allowing fishing through April 9.
At the same meeting, the compact identified two days that would be closed to recreational fishing — March 29 and April 5 — allowing commercial gillnetters time to fish the mainstem river.
