The Chehalis River is expected to be a good place to fish for coho salmon and chum later this year.
Increased numbers of coho and chum salmon expected this year on the Chehalis River should make for stronger fishing runs in 2019 than during the previous couple of years.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will likely concentrate its Chehalis River fisheries on coho, according to WDFW District 17 Biologist Mike Scharpf, with the goal of setting up a two-fish bag limit for later this year.
Regulators have held one public meeting and an additional advisory meeting so far in preparation for the 2019-2020 fishing regulation pamphlet distributed each year by WDFW. Ocean fishing options haven’t been finalized, said Scharpf, so a number of influential factors remain unclear.
“It looks like it’s going to be an October-through-December kind of recreational fishery,” Scharpf said. “It’s getting back to kind of what it used to be. We’ll probably go with a standard September-through-November season out in the bay; the lower part of the main stem may open a couple weeks earlier in September, which was pretty much the standard when we weren’t critically low on coho.”
Scharpf does not expect the WDFW to push for a spring chinook season this year on the Chehalis. Forecasted returns are low, so there are not expected to be enough chinook to sustain a spring season. Anglers will be asked to release all chinook, regardless of size, if that is the case.
State policy dictates the WDFW is not allowed to operate a chinook-directed fishery on the Chehalis, according to Scharpf, but they might have one on the Humptulips River in Grays Harbor County.
The trout fishery that feeds the Chehalis is expected to open May 25. Standard size and daily catch limits will be enforced, except on cutthroat and wild rainbow trout. Those fish must be at least 14 inches in length to be kept.
Chehalis River fish runs have been trending upward for decades, Scharpf said. He added that fishing enthusiasts shouldn’t be put off by the smaller number of fish available in recent years, since the data shows a rebound is likely in the near future.
“We did have some really poor ocean conditions from 2015 through 2017 and our stocks decreased in recent years, but we had a larger return than we expected last year and our forecast is a little higher than the previous three-year average,” Scharpf said. “Chinook populations were higher than forecast in 2018, and we do have a fairly robust forecast for this year, but they still haven’t been performing as well as the coho.”
Additional catch limits have yet to be set by the WDFW, though anglers should not expect much deviation from the 2018-19 pamphlet. Two-pole fishing, with the proper endorsement, was allowed from the mouth of the river in Aberdeen up to the South Elma Bridge near the fork of state Routes 8 and 12.
Fishing for sturgeon was allowed around the clock on the Chehalis, subject to statewide rules and regulations. Anglers should look for all rules and regulations to be finalized and published by the WDFW in the coming weeks.
