ODFW to add boost smolts to Youngs Bay

ASTORIA, Ore. (AP) — The state Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to deliver an extra 250,000 spring chinook smolts to Clatsop County's Youngs Bay net pens next March, a move expected to improve survival and catch rates of salmon throughout the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Biologists predict a 10-fold increase in survival and catch rates if the fish if are released from Youngs Bay as opposed to the upriver tributaries because they will be bigger and closer to the ocean when they swim free.

"While they're in the net pens, they get a little bigger, a little stronger, and they swim right out from Astoria into the ocean and don't have to run the gauntlet down and back," said Rick Swart, spokesman for the department's Northwest region.

Youngs Bay is one of four sites in the lower Columbia River that ODFW has designated for its Select Area Fisheries Enhancement (SAFE) project, a salmon stocking program funded primarily by the Bonneville Power Administration, The Daily Astorian reported.

The aim is to reduce the impact of fishing on wild and weak upriver salmon stocks by increasing the availability of hatchery fish in off-channel areas of the lower Columbia.

"We hope that by creating a larger return of hatchery salmon in the SAFE zones we can protect upriver stocks and provide more fishing opportunity for everybody," said Steve Williams, deputy director of ODFW's fish division.

And Swart said stocking the SAFE zones is a necessary step in moving more commercial fishing off the mainstem.

"In order to steer the commercial guys into the SAFE zones, you've gotta have some fish for them to harvest," he said. "We can't say, 'You go fishing in Youngs Bay' when there aren't any fish in there."

The smolts will come from a group of 2.2 million hatchery chinook salmon bing raised on the Clackamas and McKenzie rivers. They will be added to about a million fish already scheduled for release from the Youngs Bay net pen fishery. The fish will be released next spring, when conditions are favorable to out-migration, and return three years later.

The transfer was directed by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission based on opinions gathered from recreational anglers, commercial fishermen and tribal representatives during public meetings last year.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.