By Jordan Nailon
The Chronicle
The long wait is over for anglers in the Upper Chehalis River system. A moratorium on fishing of all sorts came to an end on the mainstem above the mouth of the Black River on Oct. 1, while both the Skookumchuck and Newaukum rivers are set to open up on Oct. 16.
An emergency closure put an end to all sport fishing on the Chehalis River system back in May due to a dismal forecast for returning spring Chinook salmon. That ban on all angling was expected to last through the end of June but was later extended indefinitely when stock assessments did not improve.
The preseason target for returning spring Chinook salmon in the river system was 1,400 fish, but the forecast didn’t align with those goals. The total return was expected to include just 581 adult springers.
“The real reason that we closed things was a low forecast abundance of spring Chinook and after the 2018 return, which was less than 500, a forecast that was in the same range for this upcoming fall threw up a big red flag for us,” explained WDFW biologist Mike Scharpf.
“We decided with the co-managers that we needed to do something.”
In mid-July a series of staggered openings for the Chehalis River system were announced with the upper river last on the list. In August, the Chehalis River and its tributaries opened to anglers from the Highway 101 Bridge in Aberdeen up through the South Elma Bridge. Then on Sept. 16 legal game fishing sparked back up from Elma up to the mouth of the Black River. The mainstem and Southfork Chehalis rivers were the most recent to open to anglers, leaving just the Skookumchuck and Newaukum rivers left to open to sport fishing next week.
Scharpf explained that the closures, and then the staggered openings, were intended to allow spring Chinook to enter the Chehalis River basin from the ocean and then migrate upstream in advance of any legal fishing pressure. He added that springers are still spawning in parts of the Newaukum and Skookumchuck rivers, which is why they’re still closed.
Limited enforcement resources left the state with few options when it came to enforcing the closure, but the regulation change, which even banned fishing for non-native species like bass, left many anglers disappointed and wary at best. At their worst, the public was left angry and tempted to poach through the closure. Most local violators professed ignorance of the regulation change. Others said they simply didn’t care.
Scharpf admitted it’s likely that each spring and summer will continue to be a high-stakes guessing game to see how many spring kings will actually make it back to the Chehalis. He lamented that the persistently dire return projections make tough decisions even more difficult.
“You have to play it year to year. If our portions change and the population goes up then we’re not going to worry about it. If we continue to see really small returns we’re still going to play it by ear,” explained Scharpf. “We certainly understand that bass are a factor to predation. So, if by limiting people from targeting bass are we contributing to predation rates?”
By comparison, the fall Chinook return is expected to consist of at least 17,000 more fish than the spring run. However, no Chinook salmon of either seasonal stock may be harvested on the Chehalis River system.
That means that coho, more colloquially known as silvers, are the primary target for anglers this time of year. And there’s supposed to be a mess of them arriving any time. According to Scharpf the preseason forecast calls for 63,000 wild coho to return this fall and winter with another 48,000 hatchery fish completing their roundtrip as well.
Scharpf added that you can probably take that estimate with a grain of salt.
“Our hatchery forecast last year did not come in nearly as high as the actual forecast so I think the hatchery forecast is a little high,” he said.
