California Salmon Archives

Early signs point to salmon returning one year after Klamath dam removal

October 13, 2025 — Researchers said there are promising signs for salmon populations in the Lower Klamath River — including the emergence of “football”-shaped fish — in the wake of the nation’s largest-ever dam removal.

Environmentalists and tribal officials Thursday marked one year since the elimination of four dams along the river in Northern California and southern Oregon.

While it remains too early to evaluate whether fish populations — which have a three-year life cycle — are rebounding, researchers said salmon and other species are being recorded swimming in portions of the river that have been blocked for more than a century.

Read the full article at E&E News

CALIFORNIA: 50th annual Zeke Grader forum addresses California fisheries crisis

October 7, 2025 — Lawmakers, tribal representatives and state officials gathered on October 1, in Sacramento for the 50th Annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum, focusing on the mounting difficulties facing California’s salmon and Dungeness crab fisheries.

Hosted by California Senator Mike McGuire and the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, the forum highlighted the economic and environmental pressures impacting coastal communities. Officials discussed how warming ocean temperatures, drought, and habitat degradation have contributed to repeated salmon season closures and delayed crab opening along the West Coast.

Read the full article at KRCR

CALIFORNIA: Juvenile salmon released at the Pillar Point Harbor

June 2, 2025 — For the 14th year, the Coastside Fishing Club is releasing salmon smolt into the Pillar Point Harbor in efforts to boost the state’s beleaguered salmon population.

“We’ve seriously made a difference in the past,” Tom Mattusch, San Mateo County Harbor District commissioner and board member of the Coastside Fishing Club, said. “For a long time, our progress was one of the most successful. Now it’s being copied in other areas.”

Commercial salmon season in the state will be closed for a third year in a row in 2025, largely due to grim forecasts of Chinook salmon stock.

The idea behind the volunteer release efforts is both to increase the general salmon population and encourage salmon to return to the harbor once they have matured, ostensibly creating a new fishery at Pillar Point, Mattusch said.

Read the full article at The Daily Journal

CALIFORNIA: California Invests $15 Million On Salmon, Trout Habitat Resiliency

January 31, 2025 — California is investing $15 million to offset climate change threats to salmon and steelhead trout in river and stream habitats through projects that improve watersheds such as adding wood and plants.

In December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries determined after a five-year review of recovery efforts that four salmon and steelhead species of fish in northern California and southern Oregon should continue to be designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full article at Forbes

CALIFRONIA: Sonoma County’s fishing community facing uncertain future with potential salmon season closure

March 27, 2024 — In 2024, California’s ocean salmon fishing industry stands at a critical juncture. The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), cognizant of the challenges salmon populations face due to years of drought and environmental pressures, has laid out three potential paths for the salmon fishing season off California’s coast. These options range from limited fishing opportunities to a complete closure for the second consecutive year—a decision with profound implications for Sonoma County’s fishers, who grapple with the aftermath of previous closures and ongoing environmental and regulatory challenges.

Ogg also holds significant roles in various other environmental and fishing organizations. He serves on the Board of Directors for the California Salmon Council, is a director in the Bodega Bay Community Fishing Association, and is a member of numerous advisory councils, including the Cordell Banks Advisory Council, the Dungeness Crab Task Force, and the Gulf of the Farallons Advisory Council.

Read the full article at Sonoma County Gazette

CALIFORNIA: Gov. Newsom releases new plan to save California salmon

January 31, 2024 — There’s a newly restored wetland at the edge of Prairie Creek, a stream that crosses ancestral Yurok land in Northern California’s Redwood National Park. The site is humble at first glance: an expanse of mud along the streamside, where starts of native vegetation dot the ground, and quiet pools branch off from the main flow of the creek. But this carefully rebuilt backwater holds an array of rare young fish. On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood by as researchers pulled juvenile chinook and coho salmon along with steelhead and cutthroat trout from the water and displayed them in a clear plastic box.

Newsom and his entourage paid a visit to this area to see salmon restoration in action – and to announce a sweeping new plan intended to protect California’s iconic fish. The state’s once-abundant salmon have been devastated by sediment pollution from logging, overfishing and massive habitat loss due to decades of dam construction. As summer temperatures soar and snowpack dwindles due to human-caused climate change, there’s increasingly less of the cold water the remaining salmon need to survive.

Read the full article at High Country News

Commercial fishing groups sue 13 US tire makers over rubber preservative that’s deadly to salmon

November 9, 2023 — The 13 largest U.S. tire manufacturers are facing a lawsuit from a pair of California commercial fishing organizations that could force the companies to stop using a chemical added to almost every tire because it kills migrating salmon.

Also found in footwear, synthetic turf and playground equipment, the rubber preservative 6PPD has been used in tires for 60 years. As tires wear, tiny particles of rubber are left behind on roads and parking lots, breaking down into a byproduct, 6PPD-quinone, that is deadly to salmon, steelhead trout and other aquatic wildlife when rains wash it into rivers.

“This is the biggest environmental disaster that the world doesn’t quite know about yet,” said Elizabeth Forsyth, an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which is representing the fishing groups. “It’s causing devastating impacts to threatened and endangered species.”

The Institute for Fisheries Resources and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Wednesday against Goodyear, Bridgestone, Continental and others.

In an emailed statement, Bridgestone spokesman Steve Kinkade said the company would not comment on the lawsuit, but that it “remains committed to safety, quality and the environment and continues to invest in researching alternative and sustainably sourced materials in our products.”

Read the full article at ABC News

CALIFORNIA: Half Moon Bay fishermen reeling from lost income amid salmon fishery closure

September 21, 2023 — Commercial salmon fishing season has been closed in the state of California for the past several months and fishermen in Half Moon Bay are feeling the impacts.

At Half Moon Bay’s Pillar Point Harbor, it’s so quiet even the sea lions are bored.

“It’s quiet, you look at this harbor and it’s just empty, there’s no activity,” Porter McHenry, a commercial fisherman said.

McHenry says at this time of the year, from May to October, he would typically rely on salmon.

“There’s going to be nothing until crab season,” he said.

Back in March, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the drought from recent years limited salmon’s ability to breed and that there weren’t enough to open the commercial season this year.

Read the full article at ABC 7 News

CALIFORNIA: California’s Salmon Are Teetering on the Brink

July 12, 2023 — Arron Hockaday Sr. remembers fishing for salmon with his father in the late 1970s. Back then, it wasn’t just the number of salmon running up Northern California’s Klamath River that impressed him. It was the size.

“Back then, gosh, it was amazing to see the fish when the fish ran during the fall,” says Hockaday, a traditional fisherman and council member of the Karuk Tribe. “The salmon were huge.” On average, he says, you could catch fish ranging from 40 to 50 pounds—although members of his grandparents’ generation were known to catch 100-pound Chinook salmon at Ishi Pishi Falls, the tribe’s sacred fishing grounds. “Nowadays, our average is anywhere from 15 to maybe 25 pounds. We catch a 30-pounder and that’s a hog, that’s a big fish.”

A slow-motion disaster for tribes, commercial fishermen and conservationists, the decline of California’s once-abundant salmon population has been unfolding for decades. The crisis has its roots in decisions about the state’s water use made a century ago and, like so many stories of water wars in the West, it has pitted stakeholders against one another in a seemingly zero-sum contest over a dwindling natural resource.

The outlook is grim, but there are bright spots. As a future of increasingly hot and dry weather hangs over the state, can change come quickly enough to save the imperiled salmon from extinction?

Read the full article at Modern Farmer

California seeks federal help for salmon fishers facing ban

April 8, 2023 — California officials want federal disaster aid for the state’s salmon fishing industry, they said Friday following the closure of recreational and commercial king salmon fishing seasons along much of the West Coast due to near-record low numbers of the iconic fish returning to their spawning grounds.

Dealing a blow to the salmon fishing industry, the Pacific Fishery Management Council unanimously approved the closure Thursday for fall-run chinook fishing from Cape Falcon in northern Oregon to the California-Mexico border. Limited recreational salmon fishing will be allowed off southern Oregon in the fall.

Much of the salmon caught off Oregon originate in California’s Klamath and Sacramento rivers. After hatching in freshwater, they spend an average of three years maturing in the Pacific, where many are snagged by commercial fishermen, before migrating back to their spawning grounds, where conditions are more ideal to give birth. After laying eggs, they die.

Read the full article at the Associated Press