JULY 16TH, 2021 SEASON OPENER!

Opening day was a good one again in 2021! Captain Justin with our first salmon of the year!

Overall the 2021 Sacramento River King salmon season was a big hit! We had favorable fishing conditions pretty much most of the season and our guides put our clients on hundreds of King salmon. Just like every season, there were tough days, good days, and some great days as well. Our July 16th season opener below Red Bluff was pretty good and we saw a lot of salmon caught in the early morning hours. The last two openers have been good which is a nice change from the years prior where its been pretty tough. We always fish plugs at first light and last year we had fish on before we had sun on the water. The bite in 2021 slowed quickly, but not before we put some nice big Kings in the box. We were excited to see lots of salmon caught and that always sets the tone for the salmon season looking ahead.

EARLY RUN KINGS

Two week timeframe after the season opener was fairly productive, but we had just one boat working salmon trips most days. As usual, we fished in the Red Bluff area until August 1st and our clients caught some of the best fish of the fall salmon season without a doubt. The crowds are light and the King’s are bright! It’s a great time of the year to chase the freshest King salmon of the early fall season, and 2021 lived up to our expectations for sure. We’ll be sending out more boats in 2022 after the mid July opener and hope to get our clients into some good fishing to start the new season. Its a quality over quantity trip, but we land some very impressive Kings early in the season every year.

AUGUST 1ST, 2021 BARGE HOLE OPENER

Zach Collins jumped in on the opener and scored our first King salmon of the morning!

The August 1st opener above Red Bluff was a big hit this year! Well over 100 King salmon were counted above Red Bluff on August 1st this past year which was a big improvement over the lackluster Barge Hole opener we saw in 2020. Lots of salmon were landed just after first light and lots more were lost after hooking up. The August opener really gives us a feel for what kind of fishing we can expect in the months ahead and this opener was inspiring to say the least. We continued to run our salmon trips in the Red Bluff area, but by mid August we were down in the Corning area fishing below Woodson Bridge.

FALL RUN PEAKS IN SEPTEMBER

We see some of the best fishing of the season in September!

Woodson Bridge produced most days and we saw lot’s of Kings moving through the system while fishing down there. We had four boats working King salmon trips during the run peaks in the Woodson Bridge area again in 2021. It was hit and miss most days with smaller pods of salmon moving through the system rather quickly. The Woodson Bridge salmon have been blowing through the area and definitely haven’t been stacking up down there like they have in years past. 2020 was the same so we have a few plans in place to lock down the areas the migrating salmon are holding up in during the 2022 season. Spreading our boats out will be part of the game plan this year. The busiest areas of the river haven’t been as productive the past few years and it will be nice to see some new water throughout the seasons ahead.

FALL RUN FINALE!

We don’t get them like this every day, but we catch more fish in October than any other time of the year!

October was really good in the Barge Hole last season and we caught a lot of Kings in that area in 2021. We had the numbers and the impressive sized Kings again as well. Several King’s over 40 lbs, a few high 30’s, and lots of 20 plus pound Kings came over the rail for our clients again in 2021. We didn’t see as many bright salmon in the Barge Hole this past year, but their numbers made up for the older salmon we did catch. These Kings are mostly smoker quality salmon, but they sure fight hard. They definitely don’t act as if they have migrated 260 miles up river to get to the Barge Hole and they are always full of fight! We’ve had to go to heavier gear the past few years to handle these bigger 3 and 4 year old Kings. Lots of our clients wore themselves out trying to wear out these big salmon in an attempt to get them to the net. It was a great fall run of Kings on the Sacramento River in 2021.

LATE FALL RUN IN NOVEMBER-DECEMBER

Big bright kings are what we see during the tail end of the Sacramento River salmon season

The late fall run was a little off from prior seasons, mainly because we had lots of rain in October and November which is fairly unusual here in Northern California anymore. We had several big rises in river levels and we saw a lot of our late fall Kings come and go. They never really stacked up in the Barge Hole and we only got a shot at the Kings that were there for the day. High water kept the inventory down, but it did also keep the Kings coming, just not in big numbers. We also experienced some very cold water in November and December and that definitely slowed the bites we saw from day to day. It seemed like the bite periods were short and the bites we saw at any point in the day were all we might see all day long. Fortunately, we saw the bites come in two’s most days and if you hooked em good we’d see a few in the net during a lot of the trips we fished. We saw some great quality Kings some days and we had some days where we caught older salmon as well. The size was up again this year and for that we were once again grateful.

We will be fishing further down river for late fall Kings this year in the month of November. We’ve seen a long lull between our fall run and our late fall run in recent years and want to fill the gap by fishing down closer to the Sacramento Metro area when our late fall Kings push through the lower part of the Sacramento River system. The Kings are very fresh and move through the lower river quickly after leaving the saltwater environments of SF Bay and the California Delta. We’ll be able to offer King salmon trips closer to the population centers of the Sacramento Valley and Bay Area regions as well.

WHAT OUR KING SALMON SEASON WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2022

Ocean conditions have been great the past few years and our 2022 king salmon run will be the byproduct of a good water year period in 2018-2019. Good water conditions mean good salmon returns and we are expecting another solid salmon run to return in 2022. We’ll hear about the current drought conditions from the media outlets and all the drama that goes along with it, but the fact is, this years water conditions have nothing to do with the 2022 King salmon return on the Sacramento River. We will have lots of water in the Sacramento River for this years return and we are anticipating a good run. I always point to our ocean seasons which open well before we see the salmon in the Sacramento River. If the charter boats in the ocean in May, June, and July are catching lots of salmon, well that just means all those salmon will be in the rivers by mid July on through the end of the year. Its not rocket science, they are either here or they are not and more years than not we have good King salmon returns on the Sacramento River.

We have already booked a lot of king salmon trips for 2022, especially in September. Prime time dates are mid August trough mid October and these dates typically fill first. Our late fall salmon trips from November through December will be popular again this year, especially since the Sacramento River has one of the few remaining King salmon fisheries that is available in that time frame up and down the west coast. We’re seeing more and more people looking for salmon trips during the late fall salmon run.

Contact Jaynie Goodwin at (530) 510-2925 or hit the book now button on this site for more information and available dates for the 2022 Sacramento River King salmon season. Thank you!

Captain Jeff Goodwin