COLUMBIA COUNTY, The coho are in the St. Helens stretch of the Columbia. In the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Oct. 17 creel count, 69 boats carrying 167 anglers between Warrior Rock Lighthouse and the Longview bridge kept 50 coho and five jacks and released 21 chinook, 16 coho and four jacks, according to the agency’s Columbia Zone fishing report posted Oct. 22. That was the most boats and the most fish of any section on the lower river.
Upstream, from Portland to Warrior Rock, 15 boats kept 16 coho and two jacks. Below Longview the count fell off: one jack kept by a bank angler between the bridge and Puget Island, nothing at all from Puget Island to Tongue Point. At Buoy 10, 53 boats kept 16 coho. Three bank anglers in the Warrior Rock section went home empty.
ODFW rated coho angling “fair to good near the mouths of some tributaries.” Chinook are being released; check the regulation update page before you go, since in-season changes post there rather than in the weekly report. The report carries no counts for Scappoose Bay, Multnomah Channel or the Clatskanie River.
The Oregon Health Authority has fish consumption advisories for parts of the Columbia because of mercury and PCBs; the report links to them.