Fall Chinook Harvest Season Closing Soon

Salmon fishing in Idaho will be over for the year when the fall Chinook harvest season on the Snake and Clearwater rivers ends Wednesday, October 31. The season opened September 1, on the Snake River between Lewiston and Hells Canyon Dam and, this year, in the lower Clearwater River downstream of the U.S. Highway 12 Memorial Bridge in Lewiston. As of October 22, anglers had caught 62 marked adults and 60 jacks fall Chinook and caught and released 235 unmarked fish in the lower Clearwater River. They caught and kept 382 adults and 486 jacks in the Snake River, for a total of 868 fish. Hatchery-origin fish are marked with a clipped adipose fin. This year, almost 41,000 adult fall hatchery-origin Chinook and more than 12,600 jacks crossed Lower Granite Dam, many of them returned to the Snake River above Lewiston. The fall Chinook run in the Snake River was protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 1992.