Hi everyone,
The most common question I get at this point of the season is, “how much longer are we going to be able to fish?” Well, I can say that we’ll at least be able to continue fishing through this upcoming weekend, and as always, we’ll look at the numbers and see if we’re able to remain open after that.
During the fourth week of the Upper Salmon River Chinook Salmon fishery (7/7 to 7/14/25) we estimated that anglers harvested another 78 hatchery adult salmon and 25 hatchery jack salmon, bringing our season total up to 377 adults and 87 jacks harvested. During the past week, anglers also released an additional 57 salmon (11 hatchery adult salmon, 4 hatchery jacks, 10 unclipped jack salmon, and 32 unclipped adult salmon). Angler effort was slightly lower than the previous week, with an estimated 2,250 hours of effort, for an average catch rate of 14 hours per salmon caught and a harvest rate of 22 hours per salmon kept.
The harvest share table below shows our season harvest total (377) and remaining harvest share (137). Based on this, the fishery will remain open at least through the upcoming weekend, and we’ll review the numbers again next Monday to determine if we’ll be able to fish any longer.
RIVER CONDITIONS
Flows in the upper Salmon River continue to be below average, and as of today is flowing at 800 cfs at the gauge below the Yankee Fork which is about 62% of the long-term average. Given the low flows and high air temperatures, fishing has been best in the morning.
HATCHERY TRAPPING & RECYCLING
The Sawtooth Fish Hatchery has trapped 1,440 hatchery adult Chinook Salmon as of July 15th. 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.
Sawtooth Hatchery staff will recycle another batch of approximately 100 hatchery salmon back into the river later this week. We would expect the recycled fish to start making their way through the fishery area by the following day.
RULES
The 2025 USR salmon fishery is open from the posted boundary approximately 50 yards upstream of the Yankee Fork Salmon River upstream to the posted boundary approximately 100 yards downstream of the weir and trap at the Sawtooth Fish Hatchery. Fishing hours are from 5:30am to 10:00 pm MDT. The daily limit is four (4) hatchery Chinook salmon per day, only two (2) of which may be adults (over 24 inches). For the full season rules, please click here.
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.
(via Greg Schoby | Idaho Fish and Game)
