Upper Salmon River Chinook fishery update - 6/23/2026

The upper Salmon River fishery opened last week (6/18/26), and we estimated that 15 hatchery adult Chinook Salmon were harvested during the first four days of the fishery. There were also 4 wild Chinook Salmon that were caught and released. Angler effort was relatively high during the opening weekend with an estimated 1,343 hours of effort (see table below). Also, through yesterday (6/22) Sawtooth hatchery has trapped a total of 363 adult hatchery Chinook (read more about that below).

Since last week’s update, we have not seen any additional Sawtooth PIT tagged fish move over Bonneville Dam. While we still may see another tag or two, it likely signals the end of the Sawtooth run at Bonneville, bringing the season total to just over 2,000 adult hatchery Chinook. Since last week, we did have one more PIT tagged Sawtooth fish convert from Bonneville Dam to Lower Granite Dam, bringing the season total over Lower Granite to 1,342 Sawtooth fish. That also brought our in-season conversion rate much closer to average than we had seen earlier in the run (currently 75% vs. 78% average). Our current harvest share is 204 adult hatchery Chinook, and there are still two more Sawtooth PIT tags moving through the system. If those fish convert over Granite, our harvest share will bump up a little.

We’re continuing to see Sawtooth bound fish at the instream PIT tag array on the Salmon River near Elevenmile (approximately eleven miles upstream of the town of Salmon). In last week’s update I noted that we had detected five hatchery PIT tags crossing the array between 6/8 and 6/16, suggesting that a good portion of the run (~400 - 500 fish) was already upstream of Elevenmile and were either in the fishery area or close to it. Over the past week, we’ve seen another good push of wild fish as well as another three tagged hatchery fish, indicating that we should see a big portion of the overall run returning to Sawtooth over the upcoming week or two.

The top panel of the figure below shows streamflow (blue line) at the Salmon River gauge at Salmon for the last thirty days, as well as adult Chinook PIT tag detections for both hatchery (green bars) and wild (black bars) Chinook at the Elevenmile array. I’ve added the daily trap catch at Sawtooth hatchery in the bottom panel of the figure. These two figures combined show how the first wave of the Sawtooth run were detected at the Elevenmile array and then moved into the hatchery trap about 10 days later.

Based on the information above, there are fish in the system, and I predict the best fishing will be over the next week or two. Fingers crossed they will slow down their migration and cooperate rather than just blazing by everyone’s lines and into the hatchery. 

In Pahsimeroi news, we detected another tagged fish at Bonneville on 6/19, which brings our in-season estimate to 191. This is likely an underestimate of the overall Pahsimeroi return, as hatchery staff have trapped 106 adult Chinook at the facility since 6/12. I’ll continue to provide updates on the Pahsimeroi return, and trapping numbers will be updated on our website as traps are checked and the data is uploaded.  

Thanks, and as usual, if you have questions, comments, or would like to be added to my email update list, please reach out to me at: greg.schoby@idfg.idaho.gov or call the Salmon Regional Office at (208) 756-2271.