Watch Wild Idaho Salmon & Trout

Each year, around mid-July, adult salmon, colored with a brilliant spawning-orange, return to the Johnson Creek spawning beds at the headwaters of the Salmon River that run through Wapiti Meadow. For a 6-8 week period, you can witness their ritualistic mating dance over the gravels that line the stream.

Cutthroat like the one pictured here divvy up river 'holes' with the behemoth Salmon during the latter part of our fishing season.

The modern-day Nez Perce Tribe has 'adopted' one of its traditional fishing waters here and is actively engaged in supplementing and replenishing the wild Salmon run with some wild-spawned but hatchery-raised fry which are released back into Johnson Creek in early Spring each year.

The Salmon are born in the stream and are then 'flushed' out to the Pacific Ocean, mature there and then make the 900 mile migration through the Columbia, Snake, and Salmon Rivers up to the South Fork of the Salmon, the East Fork of the South Fork and then into Johnson Creek to complete their life cycle by spawning on the same gravel beds in which they were spawned.