Fishing for answers

GOLD HILL — George Pappas knows fishing for the Rogue River’s mighty spring chinook salmon entails moments of intense excitement between hours of casting and casting with luckless tedium.

But those exciting battles with feisty chinook are even fewer and farther between this year for Pappas and hundreds of other Rogue anglers plagued by poor catches from this spring’s low Rogue chinook returns.

"Everybody’s complaining," says Pappas, of Medford. "They keep telling us that it’s going to get better, but right now, it’s terrible."

Over the next month and a half, anglers and the businesses that are supported by them will learn whether the Rogue is the next in a long line of Oregon rivers suffering this year from a poor spring chinook return, a late one — or both.

Counts at Gold Ray Dam near Gold Hill show less than half of the normal returns of spring chinook into the upper Rogue. Biologists have expected at least an average run of around 39,000 fish by Aug. 15, the official end of the spring run.

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Historically, about 80 percent of the spring chinook cross Gold Ray Dam into the upper Rogue, where spring chinook fishing halts Aug. 1. But as of the most recent available counts on June 27, just 13,935 fish have been counted.

And it’s not happening just on the Rogue.

Even more dramatic dips in spring chinook have been seen in the Columbia River, where returns have been far less than half of the pre-season forecast. More lulls have been seen as well in the Willamette River, which is down by more than one-third.

The reason for the sharp and unexpected dip is as murky as the deep watery holes where the Rogue chinook now lay in wait of their fall spawn.

Disease and over-fishing don’t seem to be factors in the low spring returns this year. Also, the ratio of wild-spawned spring chinook with those spawned at Cole Rivers Hatchery are tracking with the 10-year average of about 74 percent hatchery fish, so no crash in the wild or hatchery populations accounts for the low numbers.

That leaves biologists to suspect some unknown shifts in the ocean are the most likely culprit.

"I don’t have a smoking gun," says Steve Williams, the Fish Division administrator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "There isn’t one obvious factor, but it looks like it’s ocean-related.

"After we get all the counts in, tear them apart and try to reconstruct the run, maybe we can find some patterns," Williams says. "But I kind of doubt it."

The only apparent pattern this year is that the unseasonably cool and wet spring created high, cool river flows that derailed chinook’s normal sprint from the ocean to their spawning grounds upstream of Shady Cove.

Not faced with uncomfortably warm water downstream, the spring chinook have ambled upriver much more slowly than normal.

"Undoubtedly, the migration timing has been altered," Williams says.

One thing for sure is that the later-than-normal return has gummed up the works in all 157 miles of the Rogue from Gold Beach to Cole Rivers Hatchery, the farthest upstream destination.

In Gold Beach, unseasonably cool waters have helped anglers catch plenty of spring chinook through June — more than a month longer than normal.

"I’ve had one of the best springer years that I’ve ever had," says Gold Beach fishing guide Steve Beyerlin, whose customers have caught 83 spring chinook so far this season. "And there’s still a fair amount of fish moving through."

But farther upstream, the tales of woe begin.

For Pappas and the other Hayes Falls faithful, it’s not about whether their freezers are half-full or half-empty of 15- to 30-pound chinook. It’s worse.

"Guys I know who can catch 20 fish a year have, like, five on their tag," Pappas says. "I’ve tagged two."

Nowhere has the catch fallen off the table harder than on the upper Rogue, where the majority of the valley’s anglers ply the deep holes for spring chinook. After several good seasons, this year’s so far has been a dud.

"It’s kind of like being shell-shocked," says guide Vernon Grieve, a veteran of 21 spring chinook runs. "We went from having so many limits to struggling for a fish or two. It’s tough."

It’s also spilled over into the operations at Cole Rivers Hatchery, where about half of the run typically ends up.

Normally, the hatchery ponds are so clogged with excess fish that hatchery workers in early June begin killing excess fish for sale to a Washington seafood processor.

This year, however, no fish have been processed so far for sale, says David Pease, the hatchery’s assistant manager. The roughly 4,700 chinook that have reached the hatchery so far are about 40 percent fewer than normal, and only 383 fish have been processed for American Indian tribes as part of Oregon’s treaty responsibilities, Pease says.

Pease says the entire crop of excess fish, all 2,723 of them, have been trucked downstream and released as part of a recycle program aimed at getting more spring chinook caught by anglers. The last batch was hauled Friday to TouVelle State Park and returned to the upper Rogue.

Despite the low counts, ODFW fisheries biologist Dan Van Dyke says it’s still too early to call this year’s run a disappointment.

In recent years, the ODFW has counted about 8,000 late-run fish in July, and there’s plenty of evidence of spring chinook still present in the lower Rogue, Van Dyke notes.

When water temperatures start to rise from the recent hot spell, perhaps these chinook now lollygagging in the lower Rogue might sprint east for the cooler waters of the upper Rogue.

"No question, the run is late," Van Dyke says. "I still think we have a chance of getting to 25,000. But that remains to be seen."

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com.

Rogue River spring chinook salmon