The run corridorThe mouthOak Orchard Creek Dam — the run stops here
The colour is this river's run stage today, read off NYSDEC
run-timing guidance. Where along the corridor the fish are is not
modelled here — only the sixteen rivers the staging estimator covers
carry that.
Drawn 30 September 2026, north up, and it is a map of the river rather
than of the lake it runs from.
5 species run Oak Orchard Creek out of Lake Ontario — chinook salmon, coho salmon, steelhead, lake-run brown trout and atlantic salmon. The corridor is 5.9 miles of run water over 5 NHD reaches, from the harbour mouth up to Oak Orchard Creek Dam. As of 30 September 2026, chinook salmon is at first runners, coho salmon is at first runners and steelhead is at first runners.
5.9 corridor miles · Lake Ontario · windows curated from New York guidance ·
page built 30 September 2026
The run species, one by one
Every species the corridor file records on this river, with the field mark that calls it at
the net. Windows are New York's curated guidance; a species that runs twice on one
calendar carries both entries.
Chinook salmon — king salmon
A dark, heavy salmon with a black gum line and black spots on both lobes of the tail. The gum line is the field mark that separates it from a coho at the net.
Kings hold off the mouth until the river cools into the 60s F and then move on a rise. They stop feeding as they ripen, so a take is territorial rather than hungry.
Window on this river
Sept–Nov · peak Oct–Dec
Size
Eight to twenty pounds in the run, and the occasional thirty.
White gums with a dark tongue, and spots on the upper lobe of the tail only. Smaller and brighter than a king of the same date.
Coho run behind the kings and further into the autumn, and they stay aggressive longer — a fish that will still chase a spoon three weeks into the river.
A chrome rainbow off the lake, the stripe faint on a fresh fish and loud on one that has wintered in the river.
Two runs on one calendar: a fall push that winters in the river and a spring run onto the gravel. The fall fish are the reason a January river is not empty.
Window on this river
Sept–May · peak Mar–Apr
Size
Five to twelve pounds, and bigger on the Manistee-type rivers.
Buttery flanks with black and red spots, and no spotting on the tail worth the name — the mark that separates it from everything else in the run at the net.
Runs with the autumn steelhead and behind the salmon, and is the most nocturnal fish in the corridor. Many hold over into February and March.
X-shaped spots above the lateral line, a narrow wrist to the tail, and none of the black gum a king carries.
A stocked fishery in the Great Lakes rather than a naturalised one, and it enters warmer and earlier than the Pacific salmon beside it.