Fishery managers from Washington and Oregon will hold a Columbia River Compact hearing Wednesday to set the March and April seasons for spring chinook fisheries.

The public meeting will begin at 10 a.m. at Longview City Hall, 1525 Broadway, Longview.

The meeting comes after the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission altered its approach to the two-month stalemate with Oregon over spring chinook salmon allocations for Columbia River sport and commercial fisheries.

At its meeting Friday, the commission voted unanimously to allow the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to work with Oregon to adopt sport and commercial fishing seasons for Columbia River spring chinook in March and April.

But the commission held the May and June portion of those fisheries in abeyance due to the disagreement with the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission over catch-sharing policies, said a release from the department.

Spring chinook salmon have already started entering the Columbia River, but the bulk of the run does not arrive until March and April.

Here is the rest of the news release:

"Time is running short to get fishing seasons in place for sport and commercial fisheries," said Washington Commissioner Jerry Gutzwiler. "This approach will allow us to move forward with the season-setting process, without abandoning our principles."

Those principles were outlined by the Columbia River Fish Working Group, which included commission members, fishery managers and citizen advisors from both Washington and Oregon. A key provision of the group's recommendations was a catch-sharing model for spring chinook that would allocate 65 percent of the limited impacts on wild fish to the sport fishery and 35 percent to the commercial fishery.

But the Oregon commission voted to adopt a base allocation of 55 percent sport/45 percent commercial, then modified it to 60 percent sport/40 percent commercial.

"Our disagreement with Oregon isn't just about an allocation formula for spring chinook fisheries," Gutzwiler said. "It's about the integrity of the decision-making process. The two states created the Columbia River Fish Working Group to help us find common ground on these issues, and we're not going to just turn our backs on that joint, four-month effort."