Chinook salmon on their option to spawning, view from Ballard Locks in Seattle | picture by Wlodzimierz
Trying again, the massive story of 2025 was the miraculous restoration of the Klamath River. Following the ultimate elimination of the 4 decrease dams (Iron Gate, Copco 1 & 2, and J.C. Boyle) late final 12 months, 2025 grew to become the “Yr of the Return.” Stories from California Trout and the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Division confirmed what optimists hardly dared to hope: by late October 2025, over 7,700 fall-run Chinook had handed the previous Iron Gate web site, pushing into tributaries just like the Williamson and Sprague rivers that haven’t seen anadromous fish in over a century. The pictures circulating on Instagram—silver kings holding in water that was a stagnant reservoir simply 18 months in the past—are nothing in need of religious for the angling neighborhood.
Nonetheless, the temper is starkly completely different within the Pacific Northwest’s Snake River basin. Whereas the Klamath flows free, the battle to breach the decrease Snake River dams hit a legislative concrete wall. In a pointy reversal of 2024’s momentum, the brand new political administration moved in June 2025 to rescind Biden-era agreements that paved the way in which for breaching. Discussion board chatter on native boards turned heated, with anglers debating the “vitality vs. ecology” trade-off as salmon returns proceed to flatline. This will stay the one most polarizing matter within the fly fishing zeitgeist as we transfer into 2026.
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