CDFW fisheries staff can confirm that hundreds of salmon—many of them Chinook—have been spotted over the past few months in Bay Area streams and rivers, especially in the east bay. Chinook salmon stray for a lot of reasons, including natural repopulation strategies, lack of attraction flows coming from natal streams, release location and large attraction flows at the right time of year. This fall, we had substantial early rain that coincided with the adult fall-run migration back into freshwater. This helped attract salmon to these areas. Salmon may attempt to spawn in these streams, but because they do not have sufficient year-round stream flows, they can’t maintain a run. Due to poor environmental conditions in the Central Valley rivers and Delta, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) typically trucks millions of juvenile salmon to the San Pablo, San Francisco and Monterey bays to help increase their chances of survival to the ocean. When these fish return to spawn, the majority will find their native streams or be caught near their release location. However, a proportion of the hatchery-origin fish will stray into alternative streams. This straying is exacerbated by low natal stream flows and high localized flows in other locations.