Outdoors blog 3/9 spring chinook

Salmon fishing interest keeps building in the lower Columbia River with almost 500 boats and 436 bank rods counted on Thursday’s flight.
Forty-one boats and 10 bank rods were counted sturgeon fishing.
In February, there were 8,200 angler trips with 37 spring chinook kept and 23 released. The steelhead catch was 105 kept and 60 released.
Those February numbers compare with 5,600 anglers trips, 280 chinook kept and 43 released in 2011.
The allocation of upper Columbia spring chinook is 12,700 kept fish plus release mortalities prior to the run size update in early May.
Regarding sturgeon, 167 fish of the 2,080 guideline for the area upstream of the Wauna power lines were taken through February. That’s 8 percent of the guideline.
In February, there were almost 2,900 sturgeon trips with 163 legals kept. It is the largest legal catch for February since 2004.

• Another spring chinook was counted on Monday at Bonneville Dam, bring the 2012 total to four. The 10-year average cumulative count through March 6 is 99.