Across the small towns of north-central Washington, summer runs on salmon, and this year the salmon have not shown up.
State regulators have cancelled the Upper Columbia recreational sockeye season, which was due to open July 1, after returns came in far below expectations. The Hanford Reach fishery, open only since June 16, was closed on June 20, and managers cut four retention days from the Lower Columbia season.
The numbers tell the story. The pre-season forecast called for roughly 275,000 sockeye over Bonneville Dam. Biologists now expect fewer than half that, around 100,000, about a third of the 10-year average for this point in the run.
"Sockeye returns are tracking well-below what fishery managers forecasted before the season, which means fewer fish are available to support fisheries throughout the Columbia River system," said Quinten Daugherty, the acting Columbia River fisheries manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In Brewster, the cancellation reads as a gut punch. "It's definitely heartbreaking," said Mike Mauk, who owns Brewster Bait and Tackle. Still, he refused to point fingers: "I'm not happy, but that's fishing. It's nobody's fault. The fish aren't coming."
Guide operators are already counting the cost. "All my clients are dropping like flies. We're losing deposits. It's hurting," said Jerrod Gibbons of Okanogan Valley Guide Service, who fears the fallout will bleed into next year. "It's going to put a hamper on bookings for next year."
Austin Moser, of Austin's Northwest Adventures, put the stakes plainly: "Salmon seems to kind of be the lifeblood of some of these towns."
The cause of the collapse remains a mystery. Chad Jackson, a WDFW regional fish program manager, called it "one of the lowest in the more modern era of sockeye" and admitted managers cannot pin down a single trigger. "I don't think we have a smoking gun," he said. "There's not any one or two or three variables that we can point to at this moment."
If there is a prime suspect, Jackson believes it lies in the fish's freshwater nursery years: "My curiosity goes to what happened in the freshwater as these things were rearing and migrating out."
It is a sharp reversal from 2024, when more than 750,000 sockeye streamed past Bonneville in a record run. This marks the second consecutive disappointing year on the upper river.
"We understand anglers in the Upper Columbia are disappointed by these closures," Jackson said.
Until the counts improve, the deposits get refunded and a stretch of Washington river country waits on fish that, for the second year running, are running late, or not at all.
