Yakima River / Hanford Reach
Salmon Reports and Ringold Steelhead Reports

October 25, 2009
Hanford Reach Steelhead Sport Fishery
The steelhead sport fishery above the wooden powerline towers closed Oct 22 along with the salmon fishery. The steelhead fishery below the powerline towers is scheduled to continue through April 15, 2010 (bank only in April). In the Ringold area this past week bank anglers averaged 1 steelhead for 6.6 hours of fishing and the boat anglers averaged 1 steelhead for 4.8 pole hours (2.5 steelhead per boat).

An estimated 1,874 steelhead were caught in this fishery to date. The majority of the harvest was in the lower Reach. This would be expected as the majority of the above Priest Upper Columbia River return (83%) had passed above the Dam prior to the opening of the sport fishery and the majority of the effort continued to be focused on fall chinook. Roughly 63% of the steelhead caught were harvested. Of the 1,874 steelhead caught, 489 were wild steelhead (26.1%) caught and released.

An estimated 364 steelhead were caught and 193 harvested above the wooden powerline towers during the fishery. This was the first year this section of the Columbia River has been opened in many years. An estimated 145 wild steelhead were caught and released by steelhead anglers in this section during the fishery.

An estimated 1,509 steelhead were caught between the Highway 395 bridge at Pasco/Kennewick and the wooden powerline towers through October 25. Of these 982 hatchery steelhead were harvested and 344 wild steelhead were caught and released. Encounters with unclipped steelhead have been higher than expected in 2009 to date. These wild steelhead catches typically drop dramatically after October but poor clipping of steelhead released from the Ringold facility in 2008 may be partially responsible for the elevated number of encounters with unclipped steelhead. A subsample of 1,475 hatchery steelhead from Ringold were evaluated for mark quality, 9.1% of the sample were not adipose clipped and an additional 5% had poor/partial adipose clips. Unlike many other hatchery facilities the dorsal fin and other fins on steelhead released Ringold rarely exhibit stubbing so hatchery vs wild origin based on dorsal fin erosion is difficult to determine.

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