Upper Salmon River Chinook update - 7/8/2026

Here’s the latest update for the upper Salmon River Chinook fishery, with the most recent numbers through Sunday July 5, 2026. 

For the upper Salmon River Chinook fishery to date we estimate: 

• Anglers have harvested 103 hatchery adult Chinook salmon and 8 hatchery jacks and have released an estimated 19 unclipped adult salmon.
• Angler effort over the past week was 1,386 hours, which was a decrease from the 2,019 hours estimated during the week prior.
• Angler catch rates improved to 22 hours per fish caught this week, compared to the 36 hours per fish caught last week.
• The sport fishery harvest share is 204 hatchery adult Chinook salmon, so with an estimated season harvest to date of 103 we have harvested about 50% of our harvest share.

RUN TIMING and HARVEST SHARE UPDATE

We continue 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). The top panel of the figure below shows streamflow (blue line) at the Salmon River gauge at Salmon since the end of May, 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 trapping totals at Sawtooth hatchery to the bottom panel of the figure. 

HATCHERY TRAPPING & RECYCLING

The Sawtooth Fish Hatchery has trapped 853 hatchery adult Chinook Salmon as of July 7th. Updated hatchery trapping numbers can be found on the IDFG Hatchery Returns webpage so make sure to bookmark that page if you want to stay up-to-date with the trapping totals.

RIVER CONDITIONS

Flows throughout the upper Salmon River basin are dropping after the much-needed rain and snow a couple of weeks ago. Flows on the upper Salmon River increased because of this, but despite the increase, they continue to be slightly below average. The figures below show the Salmon River flows near the Yankee Fork Salmon River and the flows in Valley Creek over the past month. There is no streamflow gauge in the fishery area, but these graphs show the general trend in flows across the upper Salmon River basin. The visibility remained clear throughout the past week, and we expect good fishing conditions for this coming weekend.

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 at the Salmon Regional Office at (208) 756-2271. Also, if you had been receiving my email updates and are no longer, please check your inboxes to make sure they aren’t full or reach out to me to confirm I have the correct email address – I’ve received a lot of undeliverable notices each week when I send these out. Thanks!