By Roy Akins
August 19, 2026

My wife, Karen, and I moved to Riggins in 1995 to build a life along the Salmon River. We raised our family here and built Rapid River Outfitters around a simple belief: Healthy rivers and returning salmon can support working families and rural communities.

Our business employs guides, buys locally and brings customers to Riggins restaurants, motels, campgrounds and stores. During spring Chinook season, the economic activity reaches far beyond our boats.

But that only happens when the salmon come home.

This year, they did not return in the numbers Idaho was promised.

Idaho Fish and Game opened the 2026 spring Chinook season on April 25. By late May, the lower Salmon River had closed after expected late-season pulses failed to materialize. On June 2, the agency reported returns well below preseason expectations and announced some of Idaho’s earliest spring Chinook closures in recent years. The remaining Little Salmon River opportunity closed June 8.

For people outside Riggins, those dates may look routine. Here, they mean canceled trips, empty boats, lost guide days and customers who never make the drive into town.

When a trip is canceled, the loss does not stop with the outfitter. A guide loses work. A motel loses a reservation. A restaurant loses a table. A gas station sells less fuel. Families who might have stayed several nights instead go somewhere else.

Idaho Fish and Game has documented what a strong salmon season can mean. Following the 2001 spring Chinook season, the department estimated anglers generated $46.1 million in direct spending. That was in 2001 dollars and did not include the broader economic activity created as those dollars circulated through Idaho communities.

That is the opportunity rural river towns lose when salmon do not return.

Nobody in Riggins expects every season to be perfect. Fishing has always involved uncertainty, and we understand that Fish and Game must protect broodstock when returns are poor.

But managing scarcity is not the same as recovering salmon.

For decades, the federal government has told Idaho communities that the Columbia and Snake River hydropower system could operate while maintaining healthy, harvestable salmon runs. Billions have been spent modifying dams, transporting juvenile fish, producing hatchery salmon, controlling predators and studying the same problems.

Yet here we are again: fewer fish, shorter seasons and rural communities absorbing the consequences.

The federal agencies responsible for the hydropower system do not lose a paycheck when the season closes. Their offices remain open. Their budgets continue.

My guides do not have that luxury.

A canceled fishing day cannot be saved for next year. These are seasonal jobs and businesses. When the opportunity disappears, so does the income.

Idaho was promised more than survival. We were promised recovery and fishable runs supporting anglers, outfitters, tribal fisheries and river communities.

A salmon run that cannot reliably support a fishing season is not recovered. A system producing an occasional good year surrounded by closures is not working for Idaho.

From where I sit, that truth is visible in an empty boat, a guide who expected to work but did not and a Main Street losing spring fishing traffic too soon.

Idaho’s elected leaders should demand a full accounting of federal salmon mitigation. How much has been spent? What measurable recovery has it produced? Why are Idaho businesses still bearing the economic cost of a federal hydropower system that continues to fall short?

Riggins has upheld its end of the bargain. Our guides work hard. Our businesses welcome visitors. Our community supports responsible fishing regulations and conservation.

It is time for the federal government to uphold its end by delivering what Idaho was promised: abundant, harvestable salmon returning to the Salmon River reliably enough to sustain the people and communities that have waited far too long.

Roy Akins is the owner of Rapid River Outfitters in Riggins.

Idaho Statesman Opinion: If we let Idaho salmon vanish, places like Riggins will pay the price