Harvest is over. Dry Creek Valley now has a second season, and it runs on a different calendar from the grapes. It starts at a fish ladder below Warm Springs Dam that opens by mid-October each year. It moves down into the creek itself in November, when wild Chinook spawn. It ends in mid-April, when the last steelhead are spawned at the hatchery.
For about six months, the creek that runs past the valley's vineyards is busier than it is at any other time of year. Since 2012, the creek's channel has also been rebuilt for this season, one reach at a time.
A ladder at the top of the valley
The Don Clausen Fish Hatchery sits just downstream of Lake Sonoma at 3246 Skaggs Springs Road, about 11 miles west of Highway 101 on Dry Creek Road. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife runs it, and the agency also calls it Warm Springs Hatchery. It raises coho salmon and steelhead for the Russian River drainage.
The ladder works simply. CDFW describes fish jumping seven steps to reach the top. From there they swim into a channel and through a finger weir that lets them into the holding pond but not back out. The hatchery traps between 3,000 and 5,000 steelhead a year.
That mid-October opening is why the start of the season is easy to miss. The ladder opens while the last fruit is still coming off the hillsides. By this week it has been running for about two weeks. The spawning work that most visitors come to see doesn't start until mid-November.
The season, by species
Each species has its own window and its own location along the valley. Taken together, they cover late fall, winter and early spring.
| Fish | Where | Window | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hatchery fish of all runs | Don Clausen ladder | Opens by mid-October | CDFW |
| Chinook salmon | Spawning naturally in Dry Creek and the upper Russian River | Usually November through January | Sonoma Water |
| Coho salmon | Spawned at the hatchery | Mid-November through February | CDFW |
| Steelhead | Spawned at the hatchery | January through mid-April | CDFW |
The table shows two separate operations. Coho and steelhead are hatchery programs, managed in raceways below the dam. Chinook are different. Sonoma Water says Russian River Chinook are not hatchery-produced. They spawn on their own in the upper mainstem and in Dry Creek, usually from November through January. The Chinook season happens in the creek bed downstream of the dam.
The Chinook count that's already running
Sonoma Water tracks the Chinook run with a video camera in the Mirabel Dam fish ladder on the Russian River mainstem, well downstream of Healdsburg. According to the agency's October 5, 2026 update, staff installed this season's camera on September 1. The first Chinook of the 2026–2027 season swam past it on September 4, and staff had counted three Chinook in footage reviewed through September 19.
Three fish is a small number, but the agency's own baseline explains it. Staff typically don't see many fish until October or November. The more useful comparison is last year's total. Sonoma Water's January 2026 update put the preliminary 2025 Mirabel tally at 4,175 Chinook, the fifth-highest in the agency's 23-year dataset.
The camera can only run while the inflatable Mirabel Dam is up. The dam comes down when mainstem flows are forecast to rise above 1,600 cubic feet per second, which typically happens between mid-November and mid-December. So the count stops at about the same time Chinook start spawning in Dry Creek. The first real winter rain ends the count at Mirabel and starts the spawning season upstream.
The young fish already in the tributaries
The summer surveys give a sense of what is coming back in later years. Between June and mid-August 2026, Sonoma Water technicians snorkeled sample pools in Russian River tributaries. By September 2, they had covered 58 reaches in 39 creeks and counted 6,116 juvenile coho and 25,257 juvenile steelhead.
Sonoma Water compared each species with earlier seasons.
- Steelhead: the 2026 juvenile count was the highest since 2019, when it peaked at more than 40,000. Pena Creek, with 4,975, and Porter Creek, with 2,875, had the most steelhead of any surveyed creek.
- Coho: the 2026 juvenile count was more than 50 percent below the 2025 season but in line with most years since the surveys began in 2013. Green Valley Creek, with 1,450, and Purrington Creek, with 749, led the coho counts.
The previous winter's spawning surveys measure something different, counting spawning redds made by adult fish. From November 17, 2025, to May 4, 2026, Sonoma Water ran 549 surveys in 23 lower-basin tributaries. Crews recorded 169 steelhead redds, 39 coho redds and 16 Chinook redds, and the agency described the coho redd count as below average. Steelhead redds far outnumbered coho redds. Combined with the summer snorkel results, those surveys show steelhead in a strong stretch. For coho, the summer's juvenile count was in line with most survey years, while last winter's coho redd count was below average.
A creek rebuilt for this season
Dry Creek runs 14 miles, from Warm Springs Dam to the Russian River. Sonoma Water's Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Project was set up to restore six miles of that channel as habitat for coho and steelhead.
At a community meeting on January 12, 2026, Sonoma Water reported that construction was complete. Crews had built 24 habitat reaches between 2012 and 2024, enhancing roughly 4.5 to 5 miles of creek, and the project had moved into monitoring and maintenance. The work came in phases:
- Phase I, Reach 7, from 2012 to 2014
- Phase II, Reaches 8 and 14, from 2016 to 2018
- Phase III, Reaches 2 and 4 from 2017 to 2018, and Reach 5A from 2020 to 2021
- Phases IV and V, built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, covering Reaches 10 and 13 and Reaches 2 and 4, from 2022 to 2024
Twelve years of construction ends roughly a mile short of the six-mile goal, and the remaining work is now mostly upkeep. The same January presentation said the Corps still had to repair three sites in Reach 10. It also said the final phase would be replaced by an alternative project under the 2025 Biological Opinion. The Corps project page, updated February 20, 2026, describes planning and design underway to repair winter-storm damage in Reach 10. A joint Sonoma Water and Corps presentation dated January 21, 2026, listed possible 2026 maintenance at Reaches 4, 5 and 10. The work could include vegetation work, fish rescue and sediment removal, depending on what spring field checks found.
The permits for that long-term upkeep are moving. Sonoma Water filed applications with CDFW, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Corps in early March. The Regional Board issued its water quality certification in late July, and the other applications are still under review. As of its October update, Sonoma Water had no public meetings scheduled.
Much of the restored creek runs past private land. The reach numbers are project labels, not trailheads. The public place to see the fish is at the top of the valley.
Seeing it at the hatchery
The Milt Brandt Visitor Center sits at the Lake Sonoma park entrance. Its exhibits cover the cultural and natural history of Dry Creek Valley, and the hatchery is just behind it. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the hatchery doors open onto the raceways whenever the visitor center is open.
Some details for planning a visit:
- Hours vary, so call first. The Corps lists visitor center hours as 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week, and notes that volunteers run the center. CDFW lists the hatchery at 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily and the visitor center at 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The visitor center number is 707-431-4533. The hatchery's CDFW line is 707-433-6325.
- The viewing bridge. The Corps' last posted notice about the hatchery viewing bridge, from May 2022, described it as closed until further notice. When you call about hours, ask whether the bridge is open.
- Group tours. The Corps says group tours of the hatchery can be arranged from January through April through the visitor center.
- The steelhead festival. Sonoma Water held the free Lake Sonoma Steelhead Festival on Saturday, March 7, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the visitor center and hatchery, with fish-spawning demonstrations and guided tours. The 2027 date hasn't been announced.
In practice, the hatchery's busiest stretch runs from mid-November, when coho spawning begins, through mid-April, when steelhead spawning ends. Those are the same months the Corps offers group tours and Sonoma Water holds its festival. Chinook spawning in the creek downstream overlaps the first half of that stretch. For anyone who lives along Dry Creek Road, the 11-mile drive from Healdsburg to the dam runs along the same creek the fish are using.
Graham Sarasy lives in Dry Creek Valley, and he pays attention to the creek in winter as much as to the vineyards in summer. If you own land along Dry Creek and want to talk about its future with someone who knows this valley well, Graham Sarasy is glad to talk. Request a confidential consultation.
