The American River Parkway is the crown jewel of the Sacramento Metropolitan Area. Salmon fishing has been closed on the American, Feather and Sacramento rivers for the past two years – and may be closed again this year. Photo by Dan Bacher.
Despite the closure of salmon fishing in California river and ocean waters in 2023 and 2024, the number of Fall Chinook Salmon returning to both the Sacramento and Klamath River Basins was well below the numbers forecasted by state and federal officials one year ago.
Under the 2024 regulations, the projected spawning escapement in the Sacramento River Basin was 180,061 hatchery and natural area fall Chinook adults, according to the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s just-published Review of Ocean Salmon Fisheries. However, only 99,274 hatchery and natural area adult spawners were estimated to have returned to the Sacramento River Basin in 2024 .
That number is only 55 percent of the 2024 conservation and management objective of 180,000 fish: https://www.pcouncil.org/documents/2025/02/review-of-2024-ocean-salmon-fisheries.pdf/
The fishing closures resulted from the collapse of Sacramento and Klamath River salmon populations. Whether there could be any ocean and river salmon fisheries in California this year won’t be known until the final numbers are in and the ocean abundance estimates are released at the CDFW California Salmon Informational meeting on February 26. Then three options for ocean fishing seasons will be developed at the PFMC meeting in March and then finalized at their April meeting.
What we do know is that fall Chinook returns to Sacramento River hatcheries in 2024 totaled 26,834 adults and 8,301 jacks (two year-old fish) while escapement to natural areas was 72,440 adults and 10,864 jacks, according to the document.
Spawner escapement in 2024 of endangered Sacramento River Winter Chinook, an endangered species under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, was estimated to be only 789 adults and 578 jacks. Even after Shasta Dam was built, good numbers of winter-Chinook salmon ran up the Sacramento River to spawn below Keswick Dam. In 1969, 117,000 Winter Chinook returned to the main stem of the Sacramento.
However, the number of Winter Chinook showing in the Sacramento had declined to around 2,000 fish by the late 1980s when a group of us, including my former boss Hal Bonslett, showed up at Fish and Game Commission meetings and wrote many articles calling for the fish to listed under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA). Now we are back to square one with numbers lower than when we originally petitioned for the listing.
The main cause of the winter-run Chinook’s demise was the export of big quantities of water from the Delta by the state and federal water projects to agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, according to then California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Frank Fisher. After a brief recovery of the salmon in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the population began to decline again as water diversions from the Delta pumping facilities increased with the expansion of almond tree acreage and other water-thirsty crops in the Central Valley.
Escapement of Spring Chinook to the Sacramento River system in 2024 totaled only 2,646 fish (jacks and adults), with an estimated return of 176 to upper Sacramento River tributaries and the remaining 2,470 fish returning to the Feather River Hatchery. Most of those 176 fish returned to Butte Creek, the last stronghold for wild Spring Chinooks.
The estimated San Joaquin River Fall Chinook spawning escapement in 2024 totaled 31,045 fish (jacks and adults) in natural areas, and 11,789 fish (jacks and adults) to hatcheries. The majority of these fish returned to the Mokelumne River. However, the Mokelumne River is not included in the Sacramento River Index that helps determine ocean and river fishing seasons.
Scott Artis, Executive Director of the Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA), responded to the release of what he called “grim” salmon numbers.
“When the Governor’s water policies favor big ag over healthy rivers, sadly salmon and the fishing industry pay the price,” said Artis. “Starving salmon of cold water means fewer fish, lost jobs, and devastated communities. This is a manufactured crisis, not a mystery—without enough cold water, there’s no future for fishing families or the environment. It’s a policy failure and it needs to stop.”
He noted that over the last week, the Governor sent a letter to the State Water Resources Control Board urging changes to water rights permits to support the Delta Conveyance Project, known as the Delta Tunnel. It was also announced that a required Incidental Take Permit was granted to advance the project.
“The Governor’s plan is to divert large amounts of fresh water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary to industrial agriculture and major cities south of the Delta, including areas outside the Bay-Delta watershed. The Bay-Delta’s health, along with its salmon and the commercial and recreational fishing industries, depend on cold water flowing into the Bay,” he observed.
“Now I know what the Governor means when he says they are ‘preparing to use every last drop’ of water – that salmon and everyone who relies on the salmon fishery for their livelihoods and their culture are going to get the shaft,” said Artis. “There was no salmon fishing last year to have any impact on spawning adults.”
“The low return numbers don’t lie. Fisheries and hatchery managers did their jobs to get salmon back to the rivers to spawn but our water was managed so poorly that baby fish couldn’t make it to the Golden Gate Bridge. This is the result of the Governor’s failed water policies,” Artis stated.
The Sacramento River wasn’t the only river system seeing low numbers of the salmon return. Klamath River Fall Chinook (KRFC) numbers also returned in much lower numbers than originally estimated.
The 2024 preliminary postseason river run size estimate for KRFC was 36,568 adults compared to the preseason-predicted ocean escapement (river run size) of 65,138 adults. The escapement to natural spawning areas was 24,032 adults, just 66 percent of the preseason prediction of 36,511 adults.
The estimated hatchery return was 4,489 adults. Jack returns to the Klamath Basin totaled 7,085 including 5,959 that escaped to natural spawning areas.
“Spawning escapement to the upper Klamath River tributaries (Salmon, Scott, and Shasta rivers), where spawning was only minimally affected by hatchery strays, totaled 7,317 adults,” the PFMC wrote. “The Shasta River has historically been the most important Chinook salmon spawning stream in the upper Klamath River, supporting a spawning escapement of 27,600 adults as recently as 2012 and 63,700 in 1935.”
The escapement in 2024 to the Shasta River was 4,951 adults. Escapement to the Salmon and Scott rivers was 1,520 and 846 adults, respectively.
The good news is that in 2024, four dams were removed from the Klamath River, allowing salmon to move upstream from the site of Iron Gate Dam for the first time in many decades.
“Newly available mainstem and tributary habitats were occupied by salmon following dam removal,” the PFMC reported. “Substantial monitoring efforts Oregon and California provided age-specific spawner estimates for the 2024 run. The estimated run size in the Klamath mainstem and its tributaries from Iron Gate (California) to Keno Dam was 1,494 adults and 151 jacks in 2024.”
If you want to learn more about the status of salmon populations, you can attend the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s annual Salmon Information Meeting (SIM) via webinar on Wednesday, February 26, 2025, at 10 a.m. Meeting details, informational materials, and instructions for attendance will be published in advance of the event on CDFW’s Ocean Salmon webpage.
“The 2025 SIM will provide informational presentations on topics including last year’s spawning escapement, estimates of forecasted ocean abundance, and management objectives for 2025 ocean salmon seasons,” the CDFW reported. “The SIM also marks the beginning of a two month long public process used to develop annual sport and commercial ocean salmon fishing regulations, and also informs the development of inland salmon fishing regulations later in the spring. The annual pre-season process involves collaborative negotiations between west coast states, federal agencies, tribal co-managers, sport and commercial salmon industry representatives, and other stakeholders interested in salmon fishery management and conservation.”
California representatives will work together to develop a range of recommended ocean fishing season alternatives at the March 5-11, Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Vancouver, Washington.
Final season recommendations will be adopted at the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s April 9-15, meeting in San Jose, California. The range of inland salmon fishing regulation options will be discussed at the Fish and Game Commission meetings on Feb. 12-13, and April 16-17, in Sacramento, California with final inland season recommendations and adoption scheduled for the May 14, Teleconference meeting.
Please see the Ocean Salmon webpage and the Fish and Game Commission meetings webpage(opens in new tab) for a complete calendar of events and contact information regarding the salmon preseason process, including other opportunities for public engagement.
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