South Fork Salmon Update: June 30, 2025

Hi everyone. 

The South Fork Salmon River fished really well over the past week and we are really close to achieving our harvest share. As such, the Directors Office has signed a closure order for adult harvest at the end of fishing on Wednesday. However, the fishery will remain open to harvest for jacks-only through Sunday, July 6. Read on below for more details. 

SFSR Fishery Recap

We just wrapped up our second week of fishing for Chinook Salmon on the South Fork Salmon River. Fishing effort certainly picked up, and fishing conditions were really good during this past interval with catch rates averaging about 7 hours per fish caught and 15 hours per fish kept. Overall, we put our hands on 218 clipped adults at the check station from this past week of fishing, which expanded to an estimated 240 clipped adults kept for the interval (see table below).

As you can see in the table above, our estimated harvest for fishing interval 1 (6/19-6/22) is 91 clipped adults harvested. You may remember from my update last week (6/25) that we reported 84 clipped adults harvested during that interval. The reason this number went up is because a lot of anglers camp on the South Fork Salmon for multiple days before coming through the check station. So there were a few fish that came out through the check station after last week’s update, that were harvested during fishing interval 1. Likewise, the 240 clipped adults estimated kept during interval 2 will likely increase as more fish come out through the check station this week. 

We have harvested an estimated 331 clipped adults and 21 jacks as of the end of fishing Sunday 6/29. We use an assumed catch-and-release mortality rate of 10% to account for our impacts to unclipped fish and caught-and-released clipped fish. Therefore, our total impact to clipped adults for the season thus far is 347 (331 kept + 15.6 C&R). 

Harvest Share

We are operating the fishery with an intended harvest share of 520 clipped adults at this point. This is our final harvest share number we are targeting. The reason our estimated harvest share started out a lot higher this year was because the fish were early coming over Bonneville Dam. Our forecasting program assumed that if fish were returning on an average run-timing there would be a relatively high harvest share based on the large number of fish that started coming over Bonneville early this year. That’s when I started to get REALLY EXCITED. However, it turns out the run was just exhibiting an earlier-than-normal timing, so fewer fish came over than we predicted early in the run. In addition, conversion rates from Bonneville to Lower Granite Dam were slightly lower than average this year. For those reasons, harvest share was reduced to 520 based on the best data we have for the number of fish destined for the South Fork. 

Fishery Projection

With approximately 170 clipped adults left in the harvest share, we certainly wouldn’t be able to keep the fishery open to adult harvest through the 4th of July weekend. We would likely hit our adult harvest share by Friday or so. However, as long as we have enough clipped adults remaining in our harvest share (for the catch-and-release impacts I mentioned earlier), we can operate a jack-only fishery to take advantage of some of the 300 or so jacks in our harvest share this year. 

We’ve decided to close the South Fork Salmon River to adult harvest at the end of fishing hours on Wednesday, July 2, and operate the fishery for jack harvest only through Sunday, July 6 – at which point the fishery will close for the season. If another 120-ish clipped adults are harvested between Monday and Wednesday this week (40 fish a day), we’ll still have around 50 clipped adults in our harvest share after adult harvest is closed. We may have been able to squeeze out 1 more day of adult harvest, but we are being fairly conservative to ensure we have the catch-and-release impacts needed to operate a jack-only fishery through Sunday, July 6. 

Jacks tend to show up on the river slightly later than the adults. We currently estimate there are around 350 clipped jacks in the South Fork, and we’ve estimated only 21 harvested so far this season. For those who can make it over to the South Fork by Wednesday to try to take home another clipped adult or two…..good luck! And for those of you who want to fish the South Fork this Thursday – Sunday for the jacks-only fishery, I think fishing will be decent, and hopefully you’ll pick up a bunch of jacks to take home to finish out your season! Have fun, be safe, and good luck out there!