The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to donate about 150,000 servings of salmon to the Oregon Food Bank this holiday season, agency officials said.

Oregon Food Bank, in turn, will distribute the fillets to every county in Oregon through a statewide network of 20 regional food banks and 780 hunger-relief agencies.

The spring chinook and coho salmon donated to the food bank are hatchery-reared fish that have returned to Oregon's hatcheries from the ocean.

This year, as in several of the past years, many more fish returned than were necessary to produce the next generation of hatchery fish, according to agency officials.

About 13 percent of Oregon households reported occasional hunger between 2001 and 2003, the eighth highest rate in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.