Anglers Log: Troubling environment for salmon

Because of very low numbers, the ocean south of Cape Falcon is closed to the retention of all chinook salmon until September, when chinook from our coastal waters return. The ocean is currently open for the retention of hatchery coho. Bay fishing for chinook will return to the Siuslaw River in September with a one-salmon-per-day, five-per-season rule.

I have been working on the river and in the Oregon wilderness for better than 40 years now and I was pretty naive to a whole list of environmental changes that I remember watching happen. For instance, from 1980 to 1985 we received more than 40 inches of rain each year and that average held steady right up to the 2000s. From 2016 to 2022 that average was only about 22 inches – a decline…

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