Iron Gate is a place name now
J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2 and Iron Gate are gone. Copco No. 2 came out first, in 2023. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation began drawing down Iron Gate in January 2024, had every reservoir drained that month, and declared removal of the other three complete on October 2, 2024. The corporation counts more than 400 stream miles reopened to salmon and about 2,200 acres of old lakebed under restoration; CDFW uses 420 miles. Five day-use river access sites in the former reservoir reaches opened on August 1, 2025.
Fish did not wait. CDFW says passage was restored on September 26, 2024, and on October 15 biologists watched fall Chinook spawning in Jenny Creek, 4.3 miles above the old Iron Gate site, the first anadromous fish above that point in California since 1961. On November 13 seven coho swam into the new Fall Creek Hatchery, the first coho in the upper basin in more than 60 years.
What the first two seasons showed
By November 18, 2025, counting stations inside the old reservoir footprints had tallied 208 adult Chinook in Jenny Creek and 260 in Shovel Creek, and about 65,000 wild juvenile Chinook were counted in Fall Creek. CDFW reported juvenile salmon or steelhead in nearly all the newly opened tributaries, less of the C. shasta parasite, and smaller algae blooms. The $35 million Fall Creek Hatchery, about 7.5 miles above the former dam, has yearly goals of 3.25 million fall Chinook and 75,000 coho, and had spawned 416 females by that date.
The bigger change for anglers is the run itself. The Pacific Fishery Management Council put the 2025 Klamath Basin river return at 51,400 adults, up from 36,600 in 2024, and the 2025 postseason estimate came in at twice the preseason forecast. Its 2026 ocean forecast of 157,286 age-three fall Chinook is why the Commission reopened river salmon fishing this year. None of the agencies has yet published a steelhead effect beyond juveniles turning up in the new creeks, so treat any claim of more adult steelhead as early.
Copco Road, I-5 and Weitchpec: where the rules change
The Klamath main stem is split by bridges in CDFW's 2026 rules, all barbless. From the Oregon line to the Copco Road bridge at Copco, the river is open November 1 through February 28 and from the fourth Saturday in May through August 31, artificial lures only, nothing kept. From Copco Road bridge down to the Lakeview Road bridge near Iron Gate it is closed all year, as are the anadromous parts of Fall, Jenny and Scotch creeks. From Lakeview Road to the Interstate 5 bridge you may keep 2 hatchery steelhead but no Chinook. From I-5 to the Highway 96 bridge at Weitchpec the fall season runs August 15 through December 31 on a 552-fish quota, and below Weitchpec the quota is 1,624 of the 3,248 basin total.
That lower quota was met at 11:59 p.m. on September 13, 2026, so below Weitchpec only jacks of 23 inches or less may be kept for the rest of the year and the spit at the mouth is closed. Above Weitchpec the season stays open. Also closed: 500 feet around the mouths of the Salmon, Shasta and Scott rivers and Blue, Bogus, Fall and Shovel creeks from September 15, and Ishi Pishi Falls from August 15. Wild steelhead and coho are always released. Call 1-800-564-6479 before driving; quota status is updated weekly.
Half-pounders along Highway 96
The middle river is road water. Highway 96 follows it from Weitchpec up through Orleans, Somes Bar, Happy Camp and Seiad Valley, and the steelhead fishing there is mostly a swung-fly game. Marble Mountain Ranch, which guides the mid-Klamath, fishes a greased-line swing in fall and switches to nymphs in winter, and calls fall the prime season. The Fly Shop in Redding runs the lower river from the mouth past Johnson's Bar by jet boat beginning mid-August to mid-September, and drift boats from Iron Gate to I-5, where it says wade access is scarce. It puts adult steelhead at 4 to 5 pounds, up to about 10, reaching the upper river from mid-November through mid-March.
Most of what you hook in September and October will be half-pounders, and The Fly Shop is not even consistent on their size, giving 14 to 18 inches in one place and 16 to 20 in another. Nymph rigs from its winter report: Pat's Rubberlegs in 4 to 8, Red Copper John and Amber Wing Prince in 14 to 18, egg patterns once the Chinook spawn. Above I-5 the same shop times salmonflies and golden stones from late May to mid-July for the resident rainbows.
Reading Orleans
USGS 11523000 at Orleans sits in the middle of the Highway 96 water, below the Salmon River and above the Trinity, so it catches rain from the Marble Mountains and the Siskiyous as well as whatever comes out of the upper basin. No shop publishes a fishing range for it. The 1,500 to 3,800 cfs on this page is the September to November run of monthly means from 2010 to 2025, about 1,685, 2,263 and 3,774 cfs. The first two falls after removal looked ordinary: 1,528 and 1,569 in September and October 2024, 1,633 and 2,049 in 2025. On September 24, 2026 the gauge read 1,530. A reading climbing past a few thousand in fall means a storm, and colored water for a day or more.