Ten below this morning. We've had ice flowing for a week. Weather is supposed to moderate this weekend. There will be fishable afternoons during December and January, days with no ice flow, but unpredictable, so scheduled fishing is over until late winter. Maybe I'll catch a few myself. There was only one day of ice in November, which is unusual. The chance of ice after mid-November is high enough that scheduling isn't reliable most years.
In November the river temperature was mostly 40 degrees or below, cold enough that upriver migration was probably minimal. The river stayed ice-free, so fishing pressure continued. The per centage of wild fish caught increased--probably because the hatchery fish were being caught and not replaced by migration. I suspect that there are a lot of fish wintering downstream that won't get up to the Salmon area until the river gets back into the 40s, sometime in March.
