Post-Thanksgiving River Time: Celebrating Salmon at Nimbus

Adult fall-run Chinook salmon congregate near the Nimbus Hatchery Fish Ladder on the American River in Sacramento County, California. October 15, 2012. Credit: Carl Costas, CA Dept. of Water Resources.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of blogs written by FOR staff, Board members, and volunteers, on our favorite places and ways to enjoy California’s rivers.

Every year during the holiday period I reflect upon wondrous experiences I had with my family along the Lower American Parkway, seeing the returning and spawning Fall-run Chinook and being able to appreciate the semi-wild river that flows through Sacramento and its suburbs.

For six years in the early 2000’s, on the day after Thanksgiving, we biked the 20-mile round trip from the Arden Way entrance to the Nimbus Fish Hatchery. We saw the salmon swim upstream, past the people standing in the river trying to catch them. We were excited by the female fish flicking their tail fin to sweep away gravel to make a nest, and the male fish fighting among themselves to achieve dominance, and witnessed the fish unsuccessfully trying to leap over the closed hatchery gates when the facility had enough eggs for their needs.

My young daughter remembers being pulled in a bike trailer, ascending to a tandem bike, and then “graduating” to her own bike. My older son was amazed by the dying fish with their skin falling off, still moving upstream, only to perish and have the seagulls dine on their eyeballs.  I was in awe seeing the salmon life-cycle up close and was inspired by the reactions from locals and visitors, many of whom were seeing this for the first time.

I became sad as I noticed the obvious decline in numbers of fish as time progressed, knowing that some of it was part of the natural variability but also knowing that the lack of cold freshwater outflow from the watershed was also responsible. I was determined to have more of the public to see salmon spawning in the Central Valley rivers as well in the local watersheds in the San Francisco Bay Area to help them become advocates for restoring the Salmon Nation to the Bay-Delta watershed. 

As a result, I harnessed the knowledge and support of my colleagues to create a ”Salmon Viewing Map” that shows the  publicly accessible salmon viewing areas in the Central Valley and San Francisco Bay Area.

P.S. It’s not too late to see salmon and steelhead spawning in the Lower American River and ascending the ladders into Nimbus Fish Hatchery. Salmon run through mid-December, and steelhead run January through February. Click here for more information on Nimbus Fish Hatchery.