Your brochure states that chinook salmon season is currently closed, but gives absolutely no information as to when it is open. When IS it open? What about sockeye? Your brochure states that there is no season for sockeye. Does that mean we can NEVER fish for sockeye in Idaho, or does it mean that it's a year round open season? your brochure is just not very clear.
Answer:
There are a great deal of unknowns when it comes to setting annual Chinook salmon seasons so we like to wait until we have some idea how many Idaho fish have reached the lower Columbia River before setting seasons and bag limits. Typically, we go to our Fish and Game Commission in March with a proposal and open the season in April on the Clearwater and lower Salmon rivers. All indications point towards 2013 being a poor year for Chinook salmon returning to Idaho. For that reason, we are going to wait until early April to set the 2013 seasons.
Sockeye salmon are listed under the Endangered Species Act and it is currently illegal to harvest a wild sockeye. We are just completing construction on a fish hatchery capable of producing 1 million juvenile sockeye annually. If we boost the number of hatchery fish returning to Idaho, there is no reason to believe that we can't someday have a sockeye salmon season on hatchery fish in Idaho.
Answered on:
Thursday, February 28, 2013 - 4:49 PM MST