A8
LOCAL
Wallowa County Chieftain
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Coho fi shing season opens on Grande Ronde
EO Media Group
ENTERPRISE — For
the second consecutive year,
anglers will be able to har-
vest coho salmon in the
Grande Ronde River.
The season started Fri-
day, Oct. 1, and the daily bag
limit for adult coho salmon
over 20 inches is two. For
jack coho salmon 20 inches
or less, the bag limit will be
fi ve with two daily limits in
possession. The regulations
are in place through Nov. 30
or until further notice from
the
Oregon-Washington
border upstream to the Wild-
cat Bridge, approximately
seven miles upstream from
Troy.
Last year’s coho season
was the fi rst on the Grande
Ronde since 1980.
Fish managers don’t
expect to see coho being
caught for a few more
weeks. Fish have recently
begun to cross the Lower
Granite Dam on the Snake
River, the last dam of eight,
and will need just a bit of
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife/Contributed Photo
Kyle Bratcher of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
holds a coho salmon trapped at the Lostine weir in 2018.
time to make their way up
the Grande Ronde. Man-
agers also expect that most
coho catch will be inciden-
tal while anglers are target-
ing hatchery steelhead, and
they don’t expect additional
anglers on the river.
“While we didn’t see a
lot of directed eff ort or catch
of coho last year, it’s nice to
give anglers the option for
harvest when they do land
Wallowa County
Chess Club
But coho were extirpated
from the basin as early as
1912 due to overfi shing,
dam construction and dam-
age to their spawning and
other habitat, according to
the ODFW.
State offi cials tried to
restore coho runs several
times up to the early 1970s,
but though there were
enough fi sh to have a har-
vest season as late as 1980,
the salmon didn’t establish
persistent runs.
The Nez Perce Tribe,
for which coho and other
anadromous fi sh were vital
sources of food, reintro-
duced the salmon to the
Clearwater River in Idaho.
Then, working with
the ODFW, the Nez Perce
in March 2017 released
500,000 coho smolts —
baby fi sh — in the Los-
tine River near the town of
Lostine.
Those smolts migrated
down the Lostine, Wal-
lowa, Grande Ronde, Snake
and Columbia rivers to the
Pacifi c Ocean.
By RONALD BOND
Wallowa County Chieftain
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403 Main Street Joseph, Oregon
were reintroduced by the
Nez Perce Tribe and the state
in 2017, Columbia River
coho returns have improved
including the Lostine River
stock, allowing the ODFW
to open the fi rst recreational
fi shery in 2020 and continue
with that opportunity in
2021. Offi cials with ODFW
and the tribe expect more
than 4,000 Lostine River
coho to pass Lower Granite
Dam, before returning to the
Grande Ronde River Basin.
Coho salmon were rein-
troduced to provide for har-
vest in both treaty and non-
treaty fi sheries and to restore
ecological function lost in
their absence.
Coho, which are some-
what smaller than their sal-
monid cousins, the chi-
nook, were once plentiful
in the Grande Ronde basin,
including the Lostine River,
one of the major streams
fl owing from the Wallowa
Mountains.
An estimated 20,000
adult coho returned to the
basin annually.
Vigil sheds light on suicide prevention awareness
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one,” said Kyle Bratcher,
district fi sh biologist at the
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife’s Enterprise
offi ce. “With generally low
catch rates of coho, we don’t
see a lot of anglers targeting
them specifi cally.”
Creel clerks will be mon-
itoring the fi shery regularly
to assess potential eff ects
to wild fi sh and assess suc-
cess of anglers. Information
gained from creel surveys
helps the ODFW minimize
impacts to wild fi sh pop-
ulations and informs pro-
grams that can improve the
fi shery over time. Anglers
are encouraged to engage
with the creel clerks when
they can, as they have their
fi nger on the pulse of the
fi shery and can often pro-
vide anglers with benefi cial
information.
In addition to a strong
coho return, Bratcher says
that fall chinook salmon and
bull trout are also encoun-
tered on an annual basis
during the Grande Ronde
steelhead fi shery.
“One of the great things
about the Grande Ronde
from a fi sh biologists view is
the diversity of fi sh species,”
he said.
Bratcher added that
“anglers should remember
that fall chinook, bull trout
and wild steelhead cannot
be harvested in the Grande
Ronde and must be released
unharmed.”
Since Lostine River coho
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Rxd42
ENTERPRISE — The
Wallowa Valley Center for
Wellness recognized Sui-
cide Prevention Awareness
Month — which annually
falls in September — by
shedding light on the issue.
The center held a lumi-
nary vigil on Thursday,
Sept. 30, the fi nal day of the
awareness month, by plac-
ing hundreds of lit bags —
many of them decorated
— on the lawn and walk-
ways in front of the Wal-
lowa County Courthouse in
Enterprise.
Tosca Rawls, WVCW
BARGAINS
OF THE
Tosca Rawls/Wallowa Valley Center for Wellness
Lit, decorated bags lined the sidewalk leading to the front steps of the Wallowa County
Courthouse in Enterprise on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021, as part of a vigil for Suicide Prevention
Awareness Month.
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public relations and devel-
opment director, said the
vigil was moving.
“It was powerful. Peo-
ple were emotional,” she
said. “... We want to give
people the opportunity to
come, remember and be
supported.”
The vigil was one of
many held across the coun-
try to bring awareness to
suicide prevention, Rawls
said, and to provide a sup-
port outlet to those in the
community impacted by
suicide.
“There’s been a couple
here in the last six months.
That has really rocked this
community and been hard
on the community,” she
said. “We really wanted
to give people an opportu-
nity to come together and
not only recognize those
who have been lost but
also fi nd hope and support
in coming together.”
WVCW placed bags
through the community
during September and
encouraged people to deco-
rate the bags — perhaps in
a manner of remembrance
or support — and to come
to the vigil, especially of
they had dealt with a loss
through suicide.
The messaging for the
event, Rawls said, was
“together, we can prevent
suicide.” She noted that
aligns with national messag-
ing from the National Asso-
ciation on Mental Illness.
Part of the message, too,
she said, was “letting peo-
ple know that nobody’s
alone, that we’re all in this
together.”
In all, about 100 of the
500 bags were decorated,
many with words of sup-
port or with art. Rawls
said, though, that the center
placed all 500 at the court-
house for the vigil.
“We just put all of them
out because we thought it
would be more powerful,
have more lighting,” she
said.
The sidewalk in front of
the courthouse, she added,
was pretty full with peo-
ple as the event reached its
7 p.m. kickoff .
“It was pretty quiet and
somber,” she said. “We
really let people go at their
own pace, do their own
thing. There wasn’t any-
thing formal. “(Show up
and remember), and support
each other.”
She added it was the fi rst
time doing the event, but
there are no plans on it being
the last.
“We plan to make this
an annual event during Sui-
cide Prevention Awareness
Month,” she said.
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