Wednesday October 7, 2026
Active NorCal —
Every fall, thousands of Chinook salmon wrap up a journey of more than a hundred miles from the Pacific, and they do it in plain view just 15 miles east of downtown Sacramento.
The Nimbus Fish Hatchery sits on the lower American River below Nimbus Dam, where the California Department of Fish and Wildlife traps and spawns returning fish. The fall Chinook run peaks from early November through mid-December, when visitors can watch salmon leap up the hatchery’s fish ladder. Steelhead follow in winter, with egg-taking operations running January through February.
The hatchery exists because Folsom and Nimbus dams, completed in 1955, cut fish off from their historic spawning grounds in the Sierra foothills. To make up for that lost habitat, the facility raises and releases about four million fall-run Chinook smolts and 430,000 steelhead yearlings into the river every year.