Opinion of Travis Wendt

I make my living helping people catch fish throughout the Columbia River Basin. As a guide with Reel Time Fishing, I work the Clearwater, Snake, Columbia and Grande Ronde rivers. My customers reserve motel rooms, eat in local restaurants, buy fuel and tackle, and often plan their trips months in advance.

That business depends on one thing I cannot manufacture: fish.

This year, I was counting on a productive spring chinook season on the Clearwater River, followed by sockeye fishing on the upper Columbia. Instead, both opportunities largely disappeared.

Idaho’s spring chinook season opened April 25 with cautious optimism. The preseason sport harvest share for the Clearwater basin was estimated at more than 2,000 adult chinook. As the run weakened, that estimate fell to 1,202, then ultimately to just 644 adults.

Historically, about 95% of Idaho-bound chinook passing Ice Harbor Dam are expected to reach Lower Granite Dam. This year, that conversion rate dropped to approximately 87%.

The lower Clearwater closed after only a brief period of productive fishing, and the rest of the basin soon followed. Guides went from preparing for a season to canceling trips and explaining why the fish our customers expected never arrived.

When a season collapses, guides do not simply rearrange a few appointments. We refund deposits. We lose income. Deckhands lose work. Customers cancel hotel rooms and restaurant reservations. Fuel stations, sporting goods stores and other small businesses lose money they expected to earn.

Many guides spread that risk by working different fisheries. That is why I was also counting on the upper Columbia sockeye season.

The preseason forecast called for roughly 275,000 sockeye past Bonneville Dam, enough to support a summer fishery. Instead, the run came in far below expectations, and Washington state canceled the season before it opened. Another important piece of the guiding calendar vanished.

No responsible guide wants managers to keep fishing when conservation needs cannot be met. Closing a fishery when there are not enough salmon is the right decision.

But we should not mistake closures for successful salmon management.

Managing scarcity is not recovery. Reducing harvest shares is not recovery. Asking guides, anglers, tribes and river communities to accept shorter seasons is not recovery.

On the Clearwater, we also cannot ignore the four lower Snake River dams every Idaho salmon must pass twice — once as a juvenile heading to the ocean and again as an adult returning home.

Habitat restoration, hatcheries, spill and fish-passage improvements all matter. But after decades of mitigation, Idaho is still getting abbreviated fisheries and emergency closures. The status quo has not produced the healthy, harvestable salmon runs our communities were promised.

Restoring a free-flowing lower Snake River by removing its four federal dams is the most important action available to improve survival for Idaho’s salmon and steelhead. The transportation, irrigation and energy services those dams provide must be responsibly replaced, but continuing to manage salmon toward smaller runs and shorter seasons is not acceptable.

The most immediate action we can take is to implement more aggressive predator management. Nonnative walleye and bass, along with predatory birds such as pelicans and cormorants, place increasing pressure on juvenile salmon and steelhead. Simply asking anglers to harvest walleye and report their catches is not enough. Idaho, Washington and Oregon need to develop incentive-based programs modeled after the successful Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program to meaningfully reduce predator populations that consume large numbers of young salmon.

State leaders should also work with federal agencies to manage overabundant predatory birds where they are demonstrably harming struggling salmon populations. Predator management cannot remain an afterthought.

As this commentary goes to print, Idaho’s A-run steelhead return is falling dramatically short of expectations — thousands below the 10-year average and less than half of last year’s return. These disappointing numbers are becoming part of a troubling pattern. Without decisive action, today’s disappointing returns risk becoming tomorrow’s new normal.

I want to take families fishing. I want customers to return year after year. I want young guides to believe they can build a future on these rivers.

That future requires more than forecasts and apologies.

Wendt has been part of the recreational fishing industry in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley for more than 21 years as a professional fishing guide.

Lewiston Tribune OPINION: Action needed: A fishing season cannot survive on promises