WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2025. BY STEPHANIE BOLTON, PhD, LODI WINEGRAPE COMMISSION.
This holiday season, witness one of nature’s coolest and most inspiring stories of strength and endurance: spawning salmon.
If you’re not feeling the cousin walk this year but still want to inject some fresh air and a sense of wonder into your holidays, say YES to adventure and head to the Mokelumne River. At the Mokelumne River Day Use Area in the Lodi AVA, you can watch (*for free without ads*) locally-born Chinook salmon completing their miraculous journey all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back up the river to lay and fertilize their eggs.
Mokelumne is pronounced “muh – kuh – luhm – me” and means “people of the fishing nets” in Miwok.
Chinook is pronounced “chin – ook”. Chinook salmon, or Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, are also known as King salmon.
After spending between two and five years in the Pacific Ocean, native Chinook salmon swim upstream (about 95 miles) all the way back to their Mokelumne River birthing site. There, female fish make nests (redds) in the riverbed gravel where they lay between 3,000 to 14,000 eggs, which are then fertilized by male fish. After this miraculous reproductive journey, the parents die of exhaustion and provide important marine nutrients to the surrounding ecosystem. Their eggs will turn into fry and begin their own downstream journey to the ocean.
The Ocean Wise video below explains this natural phenomenon:
Watch spawning salmon through December at the Mokelumne River Day Use Area, located at 25800 N McIntire Rd, Clements, CA. It is open every day of the year (sunrise to sunset) and is completely free to access. There is plenty of parking, plus short nature walks, picnic tables, and grills. The total park area stretches across about a mile of the Mokelumne River. Be sure to walk up to the Hatchery on the northeast end for the full experience. Our local community, including teachers, students, and watershed activists like Kathy Grant, along with the East Bay Municipal Utility District, have invested a lot of energy into maintaining the on-site Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery to mitigate the negative effects of the Camanche Dam while helping our keystone Chinook species survive.
If this post made you almost as hungry as a cousin walk, that makes sense. Chinook salmon are well-known for their delicious, buttery flavor and high fat and oil content.
Happy holidays!
Featured image at top is of Lodi grower Charlie Starr and viticulturist Mike Klouda, who enjoy the Mokelumne River Day Use Area often with their friends and families. Plenty of salmon are underwater in this photo and were jumping up and catching the sunlight as we grilled Lockeford sausages and enjoyed a picnic with our NASA DEVELOP crew. Photo taken on November 7, 2025 by Stephanie Bolton.
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