Upper Salmon River Steelhead Update - 11/14/2023

Hi everyone, this is the Upper Salmon River steelhead fishing report for November 14th, 2023. The data for this report was collected between Monday, November 6th and Sunday, November 12th. 

During the past week, steelhead angler effort on the Upper Salmon River remained high for the third week in a row. Most of the angler effort was located downstream of Salmon, ID in river location codes 15 and 16. Angler effort upstream of the Lemhi River in location code 17 was low.

Catch rates were also similar to last week’s report. Anglers interviewed downstream of the Middle Fork in location code 14 averaged 26 hours per steelhead caught, and anglers interviewed downstream of North Fork in location code 15 averaged 15 hours per steelhead caught. Anglers interviewed downstream of the Lemhi River in location code 16 also averaged 15 hours per steelhead caught. Few interviews were obtained from anglers downstream of the Pahsimeroi in location code 17, but those anglers that were interviewed averaged 6 hours per steelhead caught. 

Poor river conditions impacted the fishing early in the week and were caused by the precipitation the area received two weekends ago. River conditions improved considerably by Wednesday and stayed excellent throughout the rest of the week. On Sunday, the river had clear visibility in all areas with water temperatures near 40° F. Currently, the Salmon River is flowing at 1,980 CFS at the USGS gauge near Shoup, ID which is 100 percent of average for today’s date.

We would like to continue to remind anglers that the City of Salmon has started a construction project at Island Park in downtown Salmon, ID. This project required the city to temporarily close all of Island Park through the middle of December. For more details, please follow this link, and for questions, the public is asked to contact the City of Salmon at (208) 756-3214.