Killing The Klamath River

[Keta]

The fishing on Upper Klamath Lake was never "hot" but the redband trout are large.  In the last 10 years the trout numbers have declined.  I was on the lake from sun up to after sundown on Friday and Saturday harvesting algae and saw no jumping trout.  Agency Lake is in better shape but not what it was in the past.  The trout fishing in the Williamson River should be picking up with the cool weather and the fishing on the Wood River should be good now.

[Gfish]

My first use/ownership of a baitcaster was on the shoreline of the Lake in the Winter, using a night crawler on a bottom rig. Didn't really know what I was doing casting or fishing at a new-to-me place. When I unexpectedly got bit, I got so excited I dropped the reel, and unbeknownst to me, the drag star hit a rock and bent. Every time I cranked the handle, the star hit the reel and would loosen-up. Of course I lost a nice Trout, got frustrated with using that type of reel and pissed about how cheap that Shimano Bantam seemed to be. Would of looked pretty funny to anyone watching...
After that, I mostly fished the Williamson River, which was great in the evening and at night.

[Keta]

Spring Creek keeps the Williamson River cool in the summer and "warmer" during a hard winter.

[jurelometer]

More good news -Nov 18, 2025:

From California Department of of Fish and Wildlife:

"The speed at which salmon are repopulating every nook and cranny of suitable habitat upstream of the dams in the Klamath Basin is both remarkable and thrilling," said Michael Harris, Environmental Program Manager of CDFW's Klamath Watershed Program. "There are salmon everywhere on the landscape right now, and it's invigorating our work."

https://wildlife.ca.gov/News/Archive/salmon-everywhere-one-year-after-klamath-dam-removal

It is worth noting that at the one year mark, this is the just the start of the recovery, with fish counts in the dozens to low hundreds at the various spots, but nonetheless very good news. This success is accelerating  other efforts to improve habitat in the watershed. The calculated risk of a one-shot, heavy disbursement of sediment appears to be paying off.

While it is getting sort of common to denigrate scientists working in government, it is worth remembering that no science grad got into government work to get rich. And it looks like these guys knew what they were doing after all.

My thanks to all of them!  Score one for Team Science.

-J

[Gfish]

Cool! That's what I like to hear.

[JasonGotaProblem]

We're on the verge of needing to rename this thread

[jurelometer]

More good news.  A study on the first two years after the dam removals was published  a few weeks ago.  88 percent of historic distribution recolonized!

We used a stationary high-resolution multi-beam imaging SONAR to quantify adult Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) passage into newly reopened reaches during the first two migratory seasons following dam removal. An estimated 7,742 (95% CI: 7,702–7,778) Chinook salmon migrated upstream in 2024 and 13,310 (95% CI: 12,876–13,733) in 2025, representing 18–19% of fish returning to the Klamath River Basin. Within this period, Chinook salmon recolonized 88% of their documented historical distribution, expanding into 345 km of reconnected habitats and reaching elevations of up to 1,250 m. Recolonization required fish to swim through dam removal sites, complex hydraulic corridors and engineered fishways, demonstrating the propensity for rapid recolonization at basin scale despite these challenges. These findings provide the first quantitative assessment of salmon response to the world's largest dam removal and demonstrate how reconnection can catalyze large-scale recolonization in historically fragmented river networks.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-65437-0

Here is the recolonization map.  Lee (Keta) can probably speak better to what to take from this, but it looks to me like the chinook are getting through the lake and managing to get past the remaining dams in numbers. 





Steelhead, Coho and Lampreys also appear to be recolonizing, but are not included in the study.

There are still plenty of challenges - more frequent drought, continuing battles over water diversions, and some remaining dams on the system. The next challenge is about numbers. There were only a few thousand fish spawning upriver in 2025. How many chinook will be able to spawn, and what will be the success rate in terms of offspring making it back out to sea and then returning.  This is going to take awhile.  Chinook typically come back to spawn at three to four years, and we have to go through a few droughts and good years to get a handle on the long term carrying capacity of the improved but not fully recovered watershed. 

The 2026 fall run is in progress now. Don't know when we will start seeing the observation numbers.  Maybe October?  They are starting to use some fancy tech to monitor the fish, including AI (glad to see AI being used for stuff other than junk youtube videos and autonomous killer drones). Hopefully, we will see more accurate data sooner this season.


-J

[Keta]

The furthest south star on Klamath Lake is a muddy bottom and spring fed, the star further north is a non existent creek and marsh. 

I am surprised the fish made it between the Keno Dam and Link River Dam as there is a stretch there with little to no oxygen.  The stars above Klamath Lake have sections of good spawning habitat and cool to cold water.

[mikeysm]

They shouldn't have put the dams in in the first place.

[Gfish]

Yeah. Where I grew-up, in the late 1700's, the European missionaries established the Mission San Jose right in the middle of the centuries old native village of Oryosome, with a nice creek flowing down through the site from foothill springs. After building the adobe brick church, they built a small dam/water wheel/mill system. It was in more than one sense, all downhill from there. Especially for the Native Ohlone people.

Anadromous salmonid habitat destruction? Given the size/flow of what was Mission/ Mill creek, probably not.
But, about 3 miles North was Alameda Creek, about 5-times larger. The first exploration to it by the Presidio soldiers from the Mission and they came across a Grizzly Bear, which they shot and killed. Kinda says it all.

Not to be denied their manifest destiny "right", a much larger mill was built there on Alameda creek in the 1800's. Latter in the early 1900's, 2-dams were constructed by the SF water company; Gotcha resident Salmon and Steelhead!

But, yeah, they're trying with the remnant Steelhead population caught up behind the creek/reservoir dam and reintroduced to the system for Bay/ocean access. Haven't kept up on their progress since moving away from there, but I would think the year around water flow would be a serious issue.

[Keta]

JC Boyle and the COPCO dams provided electricity to small communities in NorCal and at the time were needed, however their design was ignorance. COPCO #1, #2 and Irongate did not have fishpasses.  The dams above all did.    COPCO #2 dewatered a long section of the riverbed and there never was plans for fishpasses on the lower 3 dams.   The fishpasses at JC Boyle and the Keno Dam were/are OK, JC Boyle is gone now, and the relitively new one at the Link River Dam is one of the best in the country.

I think Irongate Dam was primary for flood control.

The Keno and Link River dams were constructed on natural basalt dams and were mostly to control flow.

What is rarely mentioned is historicly the flow out of Klamath lake dried up many years.  The upper basin is arid and mostly high desert,  KF averages 12" of rain a year.