I work just a couple of miles from the American river in the Sacramento Valley and I live 50 miles up the hill towards Lake Tahoe. The salmon runs this past year were almost non-existent.

One theory was that Lake Folsum was so low that it caused the water they let out of Nimbus dam to be a lot warmer than it usually is. That temperature difference kept the salmon form coming up the river as far as they normally would.

However, I heard an interview on the local public radio station with a manager from the Nimbus Fish Hatchery. He said that they did catch enough salmon to get the proper amount of eggs for the hatchery. He said that the hatchery count won't be low next year even with low spawning levels this year.

However, guides that were catching 20 or 30 salmon per boat two years ago were catching 1 or 2 salmon per boat this year. Some weren't catching any at all.