We are nudging quickly into the summer months here in Redding California and it’s time to start thinking about Sacramento River King salmon fishing. 2020 was a year of challenges and our King salmon season was no exception. We booked over 200 King salmon trips on the Sacramento River and overall we had a pretty good season. Our lower river season started off great and we saw a great salmon opener below Red Bluff on July 16th. We dropped lines in at legal fishing time and immediately hooked several bright King salmon. It was a great day to say the least, but we saw a bit of a slow down during the early part of the season. Unfortunately it pretty much stayed that way on many of our trips until we moved up river in mid September to the Barge Hole in Anderson. We had a pretty good second half of the season and our guides got clients into a few hundred King salmon before the season ended on December 31st, 2020.
Sacramento River King salmon 2021
2021 will likely have its challenges because of this years drought conditions, but even with a smaller run forecasted by the PFMC and our state agencies, I personally think we are going to see a much better season than the experts are predicting. This years class of returning three year old Kings from 2018 were a high water class of King salmon and thats a really big deal. High water years provide the very best escapement for our juvenile salmon so it would stand to reason that this years returning Kings will be returning in better numbers thanks to higher than average survival rates when out migrating to the ocean from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery. 12 million Kings were released as smolt in 2018 unlike last years class of returning three year olds that only numbered 5.5 million at release in 2017. Thats more than double the number of salmon released in 2018 that will be coming home to spawn this year. The commercial ocean season has been cut dramatically this year because of over harvest last season and that will allow tens of thousands of salmon that would have been caught by the commercial fleets to return to the Central Valley river systems this year. For these reasons alone, we’re really excited to see what this years Sacramento River King salmon fishery will bring.
We don’t have a firm date on when the Sacramento River will open for salmon fishing, but it has opened every year for decades on July 16th. We will have one boat Captain (Capt. Justin Thompson) fishing right after the season opener, and we will have the remaining three guides fishing from Mid August well into October when the fall season winds down. This means we will have at least one boat on the river every day of the salmon season. Time on the water is key in the guide industry and thats where we really shine. We always have the best information on the waters we fish because of the number of days we spend targeting specific fish species. By mid August when the salmon season is in full swing, we will have 4 boats working different sections of the Sacramento River pretty much every day. The information we gather from each other during each season really gives us the needed details to consistently put our clients on the salmon. Locations, techniques, bait recipes, and many other fine details which pattern each seasons salmon behavior have to be identified if you want to put Kings in the box every day.
The details of this years salmon season still needs to be set in stone, but it sounds like we should have a close to normal season on the Sacramento River. It’s likely we’ll have a two salmon daily limit, but the retention size in this years limits may differ a bit more than in years past. Either way it looks good for our clients when it comes to taking a days catch home for the dinner table.
Book your 2021 salmon fishing trip
The most popular month of our Sacramento River King salmon season is September. It usually books up first and for some of our guides its already nearly full. Mid to late August is popular as well, with the first two weeks of October being very popular as well. Keeping those timeframes in mind will help to figure out when new or returning clients should be looking to pick a date for a trip. Dates in July and November thru December are available as well, but those months are a quality over quantity kind of salmon fishing. Either way, our clients will likely have 5 months of salmon fishing to look forward to again this year.
To book a trip give us a call at (530) 510-2925 or fill out our Contact Form.
