More record-setting runs of fall chinook keep anglers busy.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg / The Register-Guard

The old timers' fish stories always sounded like pure hyperbole.

You know the tales: "The salmon were so thick you could walk across the river on their backs." Or, "The river was so full of chinook, we harvested them with a pitchfork."

Well, it turns out the old timers may not have been exaggerating.

Because the fall chinook were recently running so thick on the Columbia River that some were crushed to death against the concrete fish ladders at Bonneville Dam.

That occurred during a four-day period during which the previous record for daily fall chinook passage at Bonneville (39,376 fish) was exceeded four times.

When the surge had passed, the new one-day record was 45,884.

``I don't think the fish ladders were built to have 46,000 chinook and a bunch of steelhead and a bunch of coho going through on one day,'' said Joe Hymer of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Some fish were killed as upstream migrants tried to crowd through the ladder on the Washington side of the Columbia River, where most of the water was being released.

The big Bonneville counts put the fall chinook run on target to meet the preseason forecast of 600,000 fish.

That will, for the third year in a row, set a record. The current record of 473,700 fall chinook passing Bonneville Dam was set last year. The 2001 count of 400,205 chinook was also a first.

Anglers have been cashing in on the big run. During one week on the lower Columbia, state creel checkers reported that anglers averaged 1.6 chinook per rod, a catch rate unheard of in fresh water - at least in the post-pitchfork era.

The fall chinook run on the Columbia River is just the latest reminder that these are the best of times for anadromous fish. An ocean rich in food, combined with favorable out-migration conditions, can do wonders.

Willamette Valley anglers got a taste of the good times during the spring chinook season.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists report that the final 2003 count of spring chinook passing through the fish ladders at Willamette Falls near Oregon City was the highest on record.

About 87,500 springers passed in front of the fish ladder cameras this year, the most since counts began in 1964. The overall Willamette spring chinook run (including those harvested by sport and commercial anglers and those entering the Clackamas River) was 125,000, second only to 1990's run of 130,600.

Meanwhile, the best ocean salmon fishing season in a decade is still winding down.

As of the latest creel report, 130,000 anglers fishing out of Oregon ports harvested a total of 36,148 chinook salmon and 109,851 fin-clipped coho salmon - or about 1.25 salmon per rod.

In addition, anglers released 145,000 salmon - or another 1.25 fish per rod - most of them non-clipped coho.

That means anglers caught an average of 2.5 salmon each for the entire season, remarkable considering the salmon fishery was nearly written off in the early 1990s.

Wild coho salmon, of course, have been protected by the federal Endangered Species Act since 1993. But the first crack in that barrier could come this month.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking federal approval of a limited sport season targeting wild coho in Siltcoos and Tahkenitch lakes.

The lakes' small tributary spawning streams are "fully seeded" and coho populations are healthy enough to withstand the harvest of a couple thousand coho, according to state biologists.

If approved, the Siltcoos and Tahkenitch coho fishery would mark the first time fishing for a threatened salmon species was legal.

There is a precedent, however, with bull trout; anglers are allowed to harvest that protected species from Lake Billy Chinook in Central Oregon because that population is doing so well.

Mike Stahlberg can be reached at [e-mail].