Spring Chinook Salmon Fishing Update 5/27/2025: Rapid River Run, Hells Canyon, and Clearwater River Fisheries

The reason the harvest share for the Rapid River return increased is because we were able to evaluate the genetic data we have been collecting from Chinook Salmon trapped at Lower Granite Dam. This data shows that PIT tagged fish only represented 51% of the actual Rapid River return which is considerably lower than we typically see. For this reason, we increased our projected return estimate to what is shown in the table above (6,623 adult fish) which in turn increased our projected harvest share (1,212 adult fish).

 

FISHERIES

Clearwater River Basin

Total harvest last week in the Clearwater River basin was about the same (406 adult fish) as the previous week; however, where fish were harvested was quite different (see table below). Surprisingly, harvest dropped in the lower Clearwater (river codes 3A-B) even though effort went up. Many rumors were buzzing about for why catch rates were so low in the lower Clearwater. The truth is that when flows are low, Chinook Salmon will migrate further from shore in deeper water making them difficult to catch in pass through fisheries, especially in bigger rivers like the Clearwater River. Last week flows in the lower Clearwater River were in the low 20,000 cfs range which is considerably below average. Flows are projected to increase to above 30,000 cfs by tomorrow (5/28/25) due to the warm weather and increased high elevation snow melt, which should push migrating fish closer to shore.