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After an unprecedented three-year shutdown of California’s commercial salmon fishery, Chinook salmon runs are beginning to rebound, particularly in the Klamath Basin.

On Wednesday, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) hosted its Annual Salmon Information Meeting where fisheries scientists and industry stakeholders shared the latest ocean salmon abundance forecast and offered a basin-by-basin breakdown last year’s salmon returns and a first look at what’s to come in 2026.

The annual meeting marks the beginning of a two-month public process to develop management criteria for the upcoming sport and commercial ocean salmon fishing seasons, both of which are tentatively scheduled to open on May 16. The Pacific Fishery Management Council will determine whether any in-season actions are required before the start of the season. The council will issue its final recommendations in mid-April.

California’s salmon stocks have declined dramatically in recent years due to decades of drought, habit loss and deteriorating conditions in the waterways where the fish spawn each year, including the Klamath and Sacramento rivers. The three-year closure of the commercial fishery was intended to give struggling Chinook salmon populations an opportunity to rebound. The preliminary numbers are encouraging, said CDFW environmental scientist Emma Keller.

“[The commercial fishery was closed] for three straight years, and the recreational fishery got a taste of a season last year, but people are anxious to get back on the water in a meaningful way,” Keller said. “There are potentially some bright spots for California stocks this year, and any good news is welcome news.”

“[There are] lots of exciting things happening in the Klamath Basin,” she added.

In the 18 months since the last of four dams came down on the lower Klamath River, scientists have seen remarkable improvement in fall-run Chinook salmon populations. 

“For those of you who maybe just tangentially followed this dam removal thing … it is a completely different world [for these fish],” said Dan Troxel, an environmental scientist at the CDFW. “Adult Chinook returns to the basin were approximately 180% of what was previously forecasted. The preseason adult projection for 2025 was approximately 28,600 fish, and we definitely achieved that with 51,400 [returning adults].”

“The escapement objective for last year was 19,417,” he added. “Needless to say, that was met to the tune of double, so certainly good news there.”

Troxel acknowledged that the basin still “has a ways to go in terms of rebuilding the stock to full capacity,” but was optimistic about upcoming runs. 

“The future is bright for the Klamath, but it might be a while until we get there because we still have some broods that are going to be affected by the dam-removal process that we have yet to see return and or contribute to ocean fisheries,” he continued. “We’ve been in an ‘overfished’ designation since 2018 — not specifically to say that fishing is the issue; it’s just this stock has not been meeting conservation objectives for a while now. What was needed was approximately 67,400 adults to achieve ‘rebuilt’ status for the stock. We didn’t get there, but this 40,000 does get us out of the ‘overfished’ status and puts us into what is rebuilding status.”

During Q&A, a fisherman named Rob asked if scientists were able to identify any similarities in “high years” when Chinook salmon abundance exceeded 300,000 returning fish, as seen in the graph below. “Is there any data or research being done to see what the commonalities are in these high years to possibly have answers for future years, to make it better?”

Keller noted that 2012 was “a good ocean condition year,” which surely contributed to overall fish health and species abundance. 

“I think there’s more conclusions that could be drawn in the low years, particularly relating to drought in 2016 and 2017,” she said. “Klamath stocks [have been designated as] ‘overfished’ since 2018, and that was following the 2017 return year. We had some pretty serious drought in 2014, 2015 and 2016, so the broods experienced some low-survival conditions.” 

Lifelong salmon trawler Chris Iverson noted that conditions in the Upper Klamath Basin in Oregon are drastically different from those in Northern California. He asked if the CDFW had any concerns about the ongoing drought and what would happen if fish became trapped in tributaries.

“I believe Oregon is doing some out-migration studies to try and assess whether or not juveniles that spawn in those upper reaches will start to out-migrate,” Keller responded. “They’re looking out for it, but they don’t have that data yet [because] those fish have yet to come down. The water conditions are drastically different in that section of river, and we’ll see how fish populate the basin as the years go on.”

There’s still a long road ahead for California’s salmon, and there’s still a couple of weeks to go before the Pacific Fishery Management Council issues its preliminary guidance for the upcoming commercial and recreational fishing seasons. 

The council is scheduled to adopt regulatory guidelines for public review on March 9 — those guidelines will be posted here once they’ve been approved — and make its final decision by April 15. There are a few meetings between now and then. A complete schedule can be found at this link.