Chico Salmon Viewing Park — Attraction in Washington

Visited Dec 11th to understand how many fish had come up Chico Creek to plan for visits next year. From the photos you can see a lot of decaying fish. I bumped into a fisheries biologist. He told me that they estimate from their counting program that 40K fish migrated up the Chico this year. He suggested that most years the fish peak the last week of Oct and into the first week or two of November. This year the peak was 2 weeks early. He said this was the biggest year for a very long time.

The park isn’t very large but it is well marked and there is some good signage. It is a nice sized creek and the park stewards and park team are doing a...

Quiet and peaceful park. Excellent for viewing native plants and spawning salmon in late fall. Please respect this ancient annual occurrence and keep pups away from the water during spawning (dogs scare the salmon). If it's smelly during spawning season it's likely due to the salmon decomposing. Totally natural process and vital for bringing necessary nutrients to the area, recycling important substances for the animals, plants, fungi and microbes...as well as the next...

Native plant restoration project is contributing to the return of salmon. A short nature trail takes you to multiple viewing areas for the salmon run from August to December. We went for Kitsap Salmon tours (first Saturday in November) and there were multiple community organizations there to answer questions...