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Idaho Alters Bag Limit for Coming Fall Chinook Fishery by Eric Barker Moscow-Pullman Daily News, August 6, 2026

Fall chinook fishery operates on a sliding scale in which more conservative harvest regulations
are recommended when the number of returning fall chinook is projected to be under 5,000.

Idaho fall chinook anglers may have a more difficult time achieving daily bag limits when the season opens Aug. 18.

Responding to a forecast that calls for a return of fewer than 5,000 wild fall chinook, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission recently changed the daily bag limit on the popular salmon fishery. Normally, anglers can keep three adult fall chinook per day including those with intact adipose fins indicating they may be wild fish. Under the change, the bag limit will stay at three fish per day but only one of those can have an intact adipose fin.

Fisheries managers are forecasting a return of just less than 21,000 hatchery fall chinook. However, many of those fish have not had their adipose fins clipped.

John Cassinelli, anadromous fish program manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said the fall chinook fishery operates on a sliding scale in which more conservative harvest regulations are recommended when the number of returning fall chinook is projected to be under 5,000.

"Our 2026 forecast is going to be below that threshold," he told commissioners at the panel's July meeting.

Snake River fall chinook are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Compared to other ESA-protected salmon and steelhead in the Snake River basin, fall chinook have performed relatively well over the past 15 years. In 1990, just 78 adult wild fall chinook were counted at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River. Since that time, the Nez Perce Tribe advocated for and led an expansion of the fall chinook hatchery program including releases upstream of Lower Granite. Now returns of fall chinook, including hatchery and wild fish, are large enough to support fisheries in most years.