Fall coastal salmon management

2026 wild fall Chinook and coho fishing regulations for coastal rivers will be set by the Commission at their June 26 meeting in Redmond. 

Early proposals have been posted on ODFW's Rulemaking Page where there is also a link to provide public comment. ODFW will post more information on this page when it is available.

Wild Chinook‌‌

Management of fisheries for wild fall Chinook in Oregon coastal rivers is guided by the Coastal Multi-Species Conservation and Management Plan (CMP) for rivers from the Elk River northward and the Rogue Fall Chinook Conservation Plan (RFCCP) for rivers south of the Elk River. ‌‌‌

The CMP established a tiered sliding scale approach for managing Chinook fisheries. Based upon the prior year's return and the current year's forecast, daily and seasonal bag limits may be reduced or increased for a set of rivers within the same geographic area—or fishing may be closed entirely at a certain critical threshold. Likewise, the RFCCP specifies management objectives and regulatory measures based on abundance though some provisions differ from the CMP. ‌‌‌

The Plans recognized that adaptive management would be necessary due to unavoidable uncertainty. In recent years, rapid climate and ocean change is undermining assumptions and increasing forecast uncertainty for wild Chinook. Populations on neighboring rivers, despite similar freshwater and marine conditions, are performing substantially differently in some cases. Spawner abundance has shown large variations, with 11 of 14 monitored populations at or below the critical threshold for one or more years since the CMP was adopted. Finally, a generally increasing freshwater harvest rate in some rivers (vs. generally decreasing ocean harvest rate) may indicate increasing vulnerability to harvest. ‌‌‌

Due to these factors, more conservative management and restrictive bag limits and seasons than what the Plans' original sliding scales called for will be necessary during some years, as they were in 2023 and 2024.‌‌‌