Spring Chinook Salmon Fishing Update 6/3/2025: Rapid River Run, Hells Canyon, and Clearwater River Fisheries

Hi everybody. 

It is time for another weekly update for the Clearwater Region’s spring Chinook Salmon fisheries (June 3, 2025). Good news! There will be no changes to the seasons or limits this week for any of the spring Chinook Salmon fisheries.

HARVEST SHARES

The run of Idaho-bound spring Chinook Salmon passing over Bonneville Dam for all practical purposes is complete, so I don’t really have any new information to share with you on that front. As such, I am going to jump right into what our PIT tag estimates are telling us about harvest shares. The table below is now updated through June 2, 2025, and shows that the Clearwater River return’s harvest share is projected to be 5,014 adult fish (darker peach row) which is up from what was reported in my last update (4,857 fish). The Rapid River return (blue row) is projected to have a harvest share of 1,894 fish which is up considerably from my last update (1,212 fish). Finally, the Hells Canyon fishery (green row) is projected to have a harvest share of 626 fish which is up slightly from my last update (614 fish). 

The reason the harvest share for the Rapid River return increased is because we were able to include more fish in our genetic assessment to evaluate what portion of the run PIT tags are representing. With more data, it now shows the PIT tag representation for the Rapid River bound fish is about 48%, which is down slightly from what I shared with you last week (51%). Additionally, we have learned that survival of these fish as they migrate from Bonneville Dam to Lower Granite Dam is higher than we projected last week. The combination of these two things resulted in an increase in the harvest share projection to 1,894 adult fish.

FISHERIES

Clearwater River Basin

Last week in the Clearwater River basin we documented harvest in every river code that was open (see table below). Fish are now starting to stack up in terminal areas (river codes 3C, 5, and 6) and is where we saw the most harvest and highest catch rates (6-20 hrs/fish). Good numbers of fish are also starting to move into the South Fork Clearwater River (river code 7) and could provide good fishing opportunities this week. For those paying close attention to the harvest numbers below, you may have recognized that they have changed some from what I shared with you last week. The reason for this is we decided to use the electronic tag (e-tag) data that is being uploaded each time somebody e-tags a fish to calculate our harvest estimates. We decided to make this change because enough people are now e-tagging their fish that we believe this data provides more accurate estimates than our traditional creel techniques. For those wondering, the total adult harvest shown below (2,224 fish) is very similar to what our traditional creel estimated.

Something to start paying attention to now are the numbers in the blue box above that show how close we are getting to our harvest distribution goals. For example, we estimate that in the North Fork Clearwater River (river code 5) 551 adult fish have been harvested and 452 remain before we reach its goal (20% of the harvest share). If harvest in the North Fork remains red hot like we saw last week, we may get close to achieving our harvest goal by the end of this week. However, for this week, it doesn’t look like we are at risk of exceeding any of our harvest distribution goals in any of the river codes, and as such, no changes in the seasons or limits will occur this week in the Clearwater River basin. 

Harvest in lower Clearwater (river codes 3A-B) dropped significantly last week, but that doesn’t mean you should give up fishing that area if that is a place you like. Fish are still moving into the Clearwater River each day. To give you a feel for this I provided a figure below that shows daily counts at Lower Granite Dam (based on PIT tags) for fish that are destined for the Clearwater River. However, river flows are supposed to drop below 20,000 cfs this week which are not ideal for fishing this area. To be effective you may need to find areas further offshore where fish are traveling through.

Rapid River Return

Harvest dropped off considerably in the lower Salmon and little Salmon rivers last week due to high, dirty water (see table below). In the four days the fishery was open, we estimate that 101 adult fish were harvested. Flows are dropping right now in the Salmon and Little Salmon rivers and are forecasted to continue dropping for the rest of the week. This should provide good fishing conditions and expectations are harvest will pick up considerably this week (Thursday through Sunday). With the light harvest that occurred last week and the increase in harvest share, no changes in the seasons or limits will occur this week for this fishery. If you look at the blue box in the table below, you will see how many adult fish we project can be harvest before reaching our harvest distribution goals.

One thing that I want to bring to your attention is that when we manage the lower Salmon River fishery, one of our goals is to harvest less than 10% of the upstream fisheries harvest shares. To ensure we achieve this goal, we look at fish passage at Lower Granite Dam and try to estimate when fish destined for Sawtooth Hatchery or the South Fork Salmon River will be passing through the lower Salmon River. The figure below shows daily passage at Lower Granite Dam of Salmon River hatchery stocks. This figure shows that over the last six days we have been seeing a steady passage of fish destined for the South Fork Salmon River and Sawtooth Hatchery. We believe these fish will enter river code 11A next week. To ensure we don't harvest more than 10% of these fisheries harvest share, it will likely be necessary to make changes to river code 11A next week.

Hells Canyon

We estimated that 100 adults and 64 jacks were harvested last week below Hells Canyon Dam (see table below). Catch rates were 14 hrs/fish which is the same as we observed the previous week. There are no plans to trap fish at Hells Canyon Dam this week, so fishing should remain good. Over 300 fish remain in our harvest share, so this fishery will remain open for at least another week.

I expect that this week will be one of the better weeks of the year for spring Chinook Salmon fishing!

Good luck and stay safe.