In May, I sat in the boat with my brother on the Clearwater River, fishing for spring Chinook. Our excitement had been brewing for a year, since last season ended.
The river looked right. The water felt right. It was the kind of morning that reminds you why people in Idaho wait all year for these incredible fish to come home. But by the end of the day, we had not gotten a single bite.
Getting skunked happens, especially in salmon and steelhead fishing. Nobody is owed a fish, but this felt like something more than a slow day on the water. It felt like another reminder of what anglers, tribal fishers, river communities and salmon advocates have been living with for far too long: there simply are not enough fish coming home to Idaho.
The fish just aren’t there
It was clear from pre-dawn conversations with guides at the boat ramp and checking in with other anglers throughout the day, that this run and the season were going poorly.
A day later, Idaho Fish and Game made it official; the agency closed Chinook fishing on a portion of the mainstem Clearwater River and reduced adult bag and possession limits on other parts of the Clearwater drainage. That action followed an earlier update warning that the “bottom has really fallen out” of this year’s spring Chinook return.
Those words should stop all of us in our tracks.
They should especially stop anyone still arguing that the current system is working.
Fishery managers are doing what they are supposed to do. They monitor the run, track harvest, protect broodstock needs and adjust seasons when the fish do not show up. These fisheries are managed carefully from the time salmon enter the Columbia River until they reach Idaho waters.
But careful management of scarcity is not recovery.
Closing fishing seasons is not success. Cutting bag limits is not abundance. Asking river communities and anglers to accept shorter seasons, fewer fish and less opportunity year after year is not a functioning mitigation program.
Mitigation isn’t rebuilding abundance
For more than four decades, the Northwest has relied on mitigation to make up for the damage caused by the federal hydrosystem, especially the four lower Snake River dams. We have barged juvenile fish around dams. We have spilled water over dams. We have built hatcheries. We have adjusted operations, studied survival and fine-tuned a system that still leaves the Snake River basin’s salmon runs hanging by a thread.
And when the fish do not come back, all of us feel the loss.
It is felt by the Nez Perce Tribe and other Columbia Basin tribes whose treaty-reserved fisheries and cultures are tied to these fish. It is felt by river towns that should be seeing reliable fishing seasons and economic activity. It is felt by outfitters, tackle shops, families and anglers who still believe that a spring Chinook season on the Clearwater should be more than a short window of hope followed by emergency restrictions.
Mitigation was supposed to make us whole. It has not.
If it had, we would not be treating a few days of fishing opportunity as something to celebrate before the door slams shut. We would not be watching IDFG reduce opportunity in real time because the run is underperforming. We would not be asking people to accept crumbs from a river system that once delivered abundance.
Fish and communities need a free-flowing lower Snake River
The lower Snake River dams remain the biggest piece of the problem. Those four dams slow and block one of the greatest salmon migrations on Earth. They turn a living river into a series of reservoirs at the exact point where Idaho’s salmon and steelhead need fast water, cold temperatures and survival.
The Clearwater did not feel empty on that Sunday because Idaho anglers failed. It felt empty because the dams prevent too many fish from reaching their spawning grounds high in Idaho wilderness and take too big of a toll on young fish trying to reach the ocean.
The status quo is not enough. Mitigation is not enough. Managing decline is not enough.
We all deserve healthy, harvestable salmon runs. Tribes deserve the fish they were promised. River communities deserve more than closures and excuses. And those of us who sat in boats this season, waiting for a bite that never came, deserve an honest conversation about what it will take to bring these fish home and rebuild their numbers.
That conversation must include breaching the four lower Snake River dams and restoring a free-flowing lower Snake River.
Restore a free-flowing lower Snake
Removal of the four lower Snake River dams is the single most important step we can take to recover abundant, fishable and harvestable Snake River salmon and steelhead.