Fishing forecast for Sacramento, CA

Sacramento is a freshwater river city with a tide table. NOAA lists the Port of West Sacramento gauge as a tidal station, with a predicted swing of nearly four feet within a single day in August 2026, and USGS reports that the tide reverses the river's flow as far upstream as Freeport, less than 15 miles below the city. The fall-run Chinook that come up the river spawn most heavily in October and November.

Best fishing times in Sacramento this week

Majors run an hour either side of the moon crossing the meridian over Sacramento, CA; minors, half an hour either side of moonrise and moonset. Where those widths come from: best fishing times and how we compute these times.

When these windows are not the right tool

Solunar theory is John Alden Knight's 1926 prediction; the ±60 and ±30 minute widths are convention, not calculation. The times are computed astronomy, the claim that fish feed inside them is not. The day rating follows moon phase — identical nationwide, so every city shows it the same. A moving front beats the moon: apps that read pressure.

Where to fish in Sacramento

This page is built around Sacramento River, with Delta in reach — both salt and fresh water, about 15 minutes from the middle of Sacramento.

The tide reaches Sacramento, but the reversing current stops below it. USGS reports that tides reverse the river's flow as far upstream as Freeport, less than 15 miles downstream of the city, while NOAA still lists the Port of West Sacramento gauge as tidal, so at the city the water level rises and falls with the tide.

The Delta below the city is protected from daily flooding by levees: DWR counts 730 miles of privately owned levees and 380 miles that are part of the State Plan of Flood Control.

The levees of the Delta total about 1,100 miles, EPA says, and they protect 625 square miles of productive agricultural land and some 500,000 residents in small rural communities and urban areas.

The nearest grids we publish are San Francisco, CA (121 km, San Francisco Bay) and Los Angeles, CA (582 km, Santa Monica Bay). Different water, and different minutes.

What you can catch in Sacramento

State listings put these 6 fish in the water around Sacramento. Plan around the peak, not the open season.

Fall-run Chinook come up the Sacramento River system to spawn, with peak spawning typically in October and November, according to the Central Valley fall-run species account hosted by CDFW. Returns vary enough between years that river fishing for them was closed for three consecutive years before reopening in 2026, according to CDFW.

Summer in Sacramento is nearly rainless: the 1991–2020 normals at Sacramento Executive Airport give 0.23 inches in June, 0.00 in July, 0.04 in August and 0.09 in September, while May and October still average 0.75 and 0.85 inches.

A harmful algal bloom in the summer of 2022 killed tens of thousands of fish, CDFW says, including at least 864 sturgeon, and the agency cites that bloom together with long-term declines in adult white sturgeon as the pressures on the population.

Tackle sits outside a forecast page: start with how to catch striped bass.

Water temperature and season in Sacramento

Air here swings 28.6 °F across the year, from 47.3 °F in December to 75.9 °F in July. Water is measured separately, and it is not the same number: against these air normals the gauge reads 2.5 °F warmer in December and 3.4 °F colder in September.

Monthly climate for Sacramento, CA. The air line is the NOAA NCEI climate normal for 1991–2020 — the thirty-year average of a calendar month, not the weather of any one year — measured at SACRAMENTO EXECUTIVE AP, CA US (USW00023232), 8.1 km from the middle of town, with 29–30 of the thirty years behind each month. The water line is neither a normal nor the air: daily means at USGS gauge SACRAMENTO R A FREEPORT CA (11447650), 13.9 km out, averaged by calendar month over 2016–2023 — 6–7 complete years per month. It is the surface at the gauge, not the water on any particular spot, and it lags the air by weeks, so the two lines are not interchangeable. Read into this site on 2026-09-22.

The Port of West Sacramento gauge records water level but not temperature, so what the table holds is the valley's air, and that air runs two climates a day. A July afternoon averages 92.6 degrees and the night falls more than thirty below it; January's daily spread is half as wide. December through February brings 10.58 of the year's 18.14 inches of rain, so this river is read by its flow before its warmth.

Sunrise, sunset and daylight in Sacramento

The moon window moves daily; the sun does not. Plan a season against this block.

The longest day of 2026 is June 21, 14h 52m; the shortest, December 21, 9h 28m. The meridian passing drifts about 50 minutes later daily: a dawn window this week is an afternoon window in a fortnight.

CDFW estimates the Central Valley's harvestable white sturgeon at about 33,000 fish as a recent five-year average, down from about 200,000 in 1997. Individual fish can live about 100 years, the agency says.

Striped bass reach the rivers above the Delta on a spring spawning migration, and its timing moves between years: a study in Scientific Reports, drawing on monitoring that began in 1969, found the fish migrated later in years with greater Delta outflow and cooler sea surface temperature.

About four-fifths of Sacramento's rain falls from November through March: the 1991–2020 normals at Sacramento Executive Airport give 14.92 of the year's 18.14 inches in those five months, against a combined 0.36 inches from June through September.

License and seasons in California

Rules for California come from the California agency, and the calculation behind the table is set out in how we compute these times.