Oregon has shut steelhead and salmon fishing on most of the Deschutes River from 15 August, after wild returns to the Columbia came in among the worst ever counted.
The rule that closed it is mechanical. ODFW's Deschutes River Steelhead Management Framework requires 9,900 wild steelhead to pass Bonneville Dam during July to keep the fishery open. The count came to 7,388.
ODFW fish biologist Jason Seals expects this run to sit in grim company. "We won't know until later this fall or maybe even next spring exactly where this year ranks," he told The Bulletin. "But it seems very similar to 2021. Based on what we're seeing at Bonneville, it appears Deschutes steelhead are going to be in the top five lowest returns on record dating back to 1976."
The 2021 run was the lowest ever recorded and forced the river's first steelhead closure since 1978. The framework was written afterwards to make these decisions predictable for anglers, guides and the towns that depend on them.
"We've monitored those fisheries for decades," Seals said. "The risk is very low with those fisheries of having an impact on steelhead."
Wild steelhead were already catch-and-release only on the Deschutes, with retention limited to hatchery fish. ODFW's point is that handling still kills a share of released wild fish, and weak runs also make hatchery broodstock collection harder.
The causes stack. A drought running the better part of a decade has stripped flows from spawning and rearing tributaries. Ocean conditions have been poor, and steelhead, which spend much of their sea life near the surface, are unusually exposed to warming surface water. Abundant pink salmon years add competition for food.
"Fish need water," Seals said. "Less water means less steelhead."
Upriver summer steelhead heading above Bonneville, Snake River fish included, have returned poorly for more than ten years and must pass as many as eight dams to reach spawning gravel. They have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act since the late 1990s.
None of this arrived unannounced. The Native Fish Society's Daniel Ritz wrote in June that 2026 returns were tracking on par with or below a ten-year average he called abysmal, citing ODFW's own forecast: "While steelhead returns are challenging to forecast, the 2026 forecast for upriver summer steelhead is poor, and fishery managers are planning for another low return."
Ritz has also pressed a criticism of the framework itself. The river can open early based on the previous year's escapement, a threshold of 625 wild spawners, which he argues is a poor predictor of the run actually swimming upstream. Early season is also when the water is warmest, pushing catch-and-release mortality up. Lower-river temperatures were already above 68 degrees in the day by mid-June.
A reopening on 15 September remains technically possible if more than 23,100 wild steelhead clear Bonneville by 31 August. Seals rates the odds poorly.
"We'd have to average almost 500 unmarked steelhead a day at Bonneville," he said. "We've only had one day, so far, over 500, and typically as August progresses we're past the peak and the numbers decline."
ODFW has warned closures could run into the new year, because A/B-Index fish hold above The Dalles Dam through winter and spring. The John Day, Umatilla, Grande Ronde and Imnaha each have their own frameworks, with decisions due later.
"Nobody wants to see this," Seals said. "We're just trying to do what we can to conserve steelhead. Hopefully next year and the year after we'll see more steelhead, and we'll be back to fishing again."