Has anyone heard concrete dates when the springer fishery on the Columbia will shut down. The fish checker at Cathelamet thought it might stay open through the scheduled end of the month date based on the current catch rates. She was just speculating.
Same question posed for the Hoh and Queets.

Good question. Here's some related ones. How many of the fish coming up the Columbia are Hats and how many Nates? Seems like a lot of the reports I read say that a third or so have adipose fins. Of the Hats, how many got clipped before getting released?

Is there a meeting to discuss this closure?

I've talked to a key state guy and he says the Columbia will stay open through the end of the month. The stuff you might have heard about the commercials taking 4,000 too many was BS, he said. As for mark rates, the state checker at Bonneville checked 172 bank anglers there Monday and they had 48 marked springers and 24 unmarked ones. I've heard that mark rates down low around Cathlamet lately have been more like 55 or 60 percent marked.

You can call them natives if you want to, but what the vast majority of the "Native" springers on the lower Columbia are is just Hatchery fish that haven't been clipped. I was down this morning (our boat got six fish.... Only two were clipped) and the fish checker told me that the odds that any of those unclipped fish were natives was pretty slim.