The 2022 Sacramento River King salmon season to date has possibly been the worst season any of us have ever seen. Many factors play a role in the current situation we seem to be experiencing but its not necessarily going to be the conclusion we see this year. Low flows and warm water down stream are the biggest contributing factors. We won’t likely see an increase in the flows but we will eventually see a cooling trend in the river as we inch closer to fall.
30+ pound Barge Hole King salmon caught on September 1st, 2022
Just a drop into the low 70’s in Sacramento River temps will signal the green light for the bulk of the 2022 salmon run. We’ve already seen a bunch of new salmon up river this week and there are literally quite a few sitting in the holes below Battle Creek. It’s actually early in the season for the Anderson fishery so we could see a big turn on at any time now.
Small spinners have taken the majority of our salmon the past few weeks.
I’m not providing false promises, I’m simply telling it how it is. We’re only catching a few salmon a day and its frustrating because we see dozens upon dozens of salmon rolling in the holes we are fishing. It’s not that we don’t have salmon, we just don’t see any good bite periods that last for more than an hour or two in the morning. As the salmon in the holes acclimate to their new environment, we’ll see an improvement in the bite. This happens every year, it’s nothing new. We just usually have the opportunity to fish down river in July and August and for some reason they just bite better down there early in the season. By mid September those same fish are up river and we typically move up to fish for them. By October we’re catching lots of them every day.
Bright King salmon caught this week below Anderson.
If we do eventually see the bulk of the salmon that are currently in the ocean, we should have a great finish to the 2022 fall season. By late fall we’ll have cold water throughout the Sacramento River and our late fall salmon run should be good as well. Its a smaller run but we catch some great salmon for the smaller groups we fish in late November thru December.
