Fall Fact Sheet No. 17 & Compact Action
October 17th, 2011
The Columbia River Compact convened by teleconference at 3:00 p.m. Monday, October 17, 2011 to consider additional non-Indian commercial mainstem fishing time in the late fall time period. The US v. Oregon Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) has been reviewing salmonid stock status weekly. TAC’s current run-size projections include 260,000 upriver bright (URB) fall Chinook and 260,000 early stock coho. TAC has not provided a coho update this week, but the early stock coho run size is tracking closer to 250,000 fish than 260,000, and late stock coho are tracking close to or less than the preseason forecast of 102,300 fish.
Due to the apparent downgrade of the early stock coho run size, the allowable harvest quota remaining for the non-Indian commercial fleet is closer to 4,000 fish than the 6,000 fish in the most recent model run. Catch totals from last week’s Thursday fishery were significantly below staff’s catch expectations. Most fishermen expressed a desire for two openers this week rather than one, since only 2,000 coho were caught last Thursday with much better tides than those this week, and fishermen in Zones 4 and 5 are looking at predictions of high east winds, which are not conducive to catching many fish. The Joint Management Staff was receptive to the request in Zones 4 and 5, but was reluctant to agree with two coho-directed openers in Zones 1-3. Instead, staff decided to extend the recommended Wednesday opener to 14 hours.
Fall Fact Sheet No. 17 and the subsequent Compact Action Notice are appended as PDF files.
