Salt River Fishing Guides and Conditions, Arizona

About the Salt River

The Upper Salt River Canyon is Arizona’s great wilderness float, and it exists only in spring. Snowmelt off the White Mountains and the Fort Apache lands fills the river from March into May, and boaters run the fifty-two miles from the Highway 60 bridge down to Roosevelt Lake through a canyon of saguaro, ocotillo and thousand-foot walls, with class III and IV rapids and no road access for most of it. By June the water is usually gone.

Fishing is smallmouth bass first, with largemouth and catfish in the slower water and, in the cold months in the upper reaches, rainbow trout. The smallmouth fishing on a spring float is genuinely good, worked along the eddy lines and rock gardens between rapids, and almost nobody comes here specifically to fish. Below Roosevelt Lake the Lower Salt through Mesa is a different, heavily used recreation river with stocked trout in winter and tubing crowds in summer.

The Roosevelt gauge tells you whether the trip is on. Late-summer readings are often only a few dozen cfs, which is a dry riverbed by float standards. The window opens when snowmelt or a big winter storm pushes it into the several hundreds or thousands, and outfitters watch that number all winter. Permits are required for the canyon, and the White Mountain Apache Tribe controls access on the north bank.

Globe and Show Low are the closest towns, and Phoenix is about two hours from the put-in. This is a trip to book in advance in a good snow year and to skip entirely in a dry one.

Access

Highway 60 Bridge near Carrizo: the standard put-in for the canyon float.
Salt Banks: tribal land access; a permit from the White Mountain Apache Tribe is required.
Horseshoe Bend and Gleason Flat: mid-canyon camps reachable only by boat.
Roosevelt Lake: the takeout at the bottom of the canyon, near the gauge.
Lower Salt River Recreation Area, Mesa: year-round road-accessible water below the lakes.
Permits are required for the Upper Salt; check current tribal and Forest Service rules.

Seasons

March through May: the float season, dictated entirely by snowmelt.
April: usually the best combination of flow, weather and fishing.
June through October: the upper canyon is too low to float; the lower river below Roosevelt still fishes.
November through February: winter trout stocking on the Lower Salt near Phoenix.