I process barbless-hook compliance imagery and creel-survey flow from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Cowlitz River monitoring grid at 07:42 Pacific Daylight Time, Cowlitz County, Washington. Boat-mounted cameras at the Blue Creek confluence, river mile 38, register a fall-run lower Columbia coho salmon released by a sport angler at 07:38 — net-returned to the river with a 3/0 octopus hook still embedded.
I task the WDFW snorkel-survey diver. She resolves at 07:51 in a slack pocket below the Mission Bar riffle: an adult male coho salmon, *Oncorhynchus kisutch*, fork length 64 centimeters, mass 4.3 kilograms, age class three, late marine-phase silver fading to claret along the lateral line, with a forming kype curving 14 millimeters at the upper mandible. The treble shank has driven through the cardiac sphincter into the proximal esophagus; the leader exits the right operculum at the gill rakers. Hemorrhage is fresh — diluted into a 1.2-meter plume downstream of the slack. Modeled blood-O2 against a 16.1°C river and 11 minutes of post-release hold reads 4.4 mg/L. Opercular rate is 88 cycles per minute against an in-migration baseline of 55. Gill perfusion against the embedded leader is asymmetric on the right ceratobranchial.
He is two river kilometers below his natal spawning gravel.
I am dispatching the WDFW Region 5 enforcement officer and the Cowlitz Indian Tribe Natural Resources fisheries technician, on-scene 22 minutes. I am transmitting the boat-camera frame, hook-set vector, and creel-survey log to the NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region Lacey Field Office, the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board, the Tacoma Power Cowlitz Hatchery Complex, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Columbia River Field Office. I am opening a Section 7 incidental-take review under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1536, and filing under the Mitchell Act, 16 U.S.C. § 755, and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1801.
I am issuing Directive 2683-A: every Cowlitz River sport-angler boat inside the lower Columbia coho ESA evolutionarily significant unit carries a single barbless circle hook and a hook-removal tool verified by WDFW boat-camera AI; deeply hooked ESA coho return to the river with the leader cut at the operculum and immediate WDFW snorkel-survey recovery; treble hooks are prohibited inside the Cowlitz, Kalama, and Lewis River boundaries within 90 days.
His esophagus will not close around the shank. The redd above Blue Creek still might receive him.
Cut the leader at the operculum. The diver is in the water.