Northwest Fishing Reports

http://www.seattletimes.com/life/outdoo ... e_left_1.1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Looks good for the Columbia fisheries if they are correct in their forecast!
Also Article states there is bleak numbers due to the "blob" of warm water affecting the coho counts... Mother Nature's to blame....

Thats good news - but - Why is the Columbia River doing so well when Puget Sound and its rivers are nearly dead in comparison?

Not sure if you watch OUTDOOR GPS on Comcast sportsnet, Owin Hayes has a great show for the northwest anglers out there Thursday 6pm, Saturday 8am and Sunday 8 am and has had multiple reports of springer's being caught in the Columbia and Willamette- Which is good news and is really unheard of this early in the year... Looks like I may have to start traveling south this season.....

Some of it is simply M O N E Y! The Columbia dams and industry in general would be in big trouble if ESA listed wild Chinooks were to become listed as Endangered instead of Threatened. So the BPA and others have been throwing money at the problem for years. So they toss in a billion or so and things have a tendency to improve.

The other reason is the Columbia is such a huge river system. Our rivers don't compare at all to the Columbia and all its thousands of miles of tribs. I grew up in North Portland couple miles from the C, caught my first Springer in 1954!

I keep reading that one of the problems with Lake Wash Sockeyes is predation by pike minnows (Squawfish). A bounty program would help like on the Columbia but there is no such thing as BPA money around here.

Larry3215 wrote:Thats good news - but - Why is the Columbia River doing so well when Puget Sound and its rivers are nearly dead in comparison?

Salmon King wrote:I feel it would be an economic disaster to close Salmon fishing for 1 or more years.
There's just too many peoples' livelihood depends on it.
Although there is a MINUTE chance of convincing the Commies and tribal fishers to SAY they won't net.
It's been proven in the past (particularly with the tribal fishers who have shown that they fish by their own set of rules).
Washington needs to do exactly what Oregon did to get he nets out of the Columbia and Willamet rivers.
If we got rid of the nets you wouldn't be considering a temporary closure period for any species of Salmon.
IMO...NO NETS IN PUGET SOUND OR RIVERS THAT EMPTY INTO PUGET SOUND...is the only way to go.

I think he hit the nail on the head........

His numbers are off on the springers- he claims 296,000 came back last year when it was 233,000 including jacks. 300,000 plus were predicted in 2015 and then they dropped their guess to below that.
Point being that the springer numbers declined and they are always a stab in the dark to predict.