Steelhead Fishing in Salmon area–13 February 2014

The Salmon River in the Salmon area is beginning to open up. Warmer weather last month began to chew away at the Deadwater ice jam, but the cold snap the first week of February brought ice again. Temperature dropped to 20 below last week, and ice jam increased back toward Salmon several miles. Warmer temperature this week is cutting the jam back. Yesterday the upper end of the jam was in the vicinity of the Tower Creek ramp. The river has been free of slush ice for a couple of days, and would be fishable upstream of the jam, with a little difficulty using the ramps upstream of Tower Creek. It is late enough in the winter now that as the ice jam recedes, BLM and F&G will likely push ice out of the ramps from North Fork upstream. I would expect that might happen in a week or so, though the ice jam at Deadwater will take longer to break up. When morning temperature is above 20 degrees, the river usually doesn’t run slush, so the local weather report is a useful tool this time of year.