Witness the Salmon Run, Feed Trout, and See Giant Sturgeon on this Easy Day Trip from Portland
In today’s video, I’ll share how to take a fun, fish-filled day trip from Portland, Oregon. We’ll watch the Columbia River’s fall salmon run through the fish windows at the Bonneville Dam, and then head to the neighboring Bonneville Fish Hatchery, where we’ll feed rainbow trout, see giant sturgeon, explore the gardens, check out salmon-rearing ponds, and of course play in the fountains.
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It’s about a 40-minute drive from Portland to the Bonneville Dam visitor center, where you’ll find the underwater fish-viewing windows. The drive goes through the scenic Columbia River Gorge.
You can find it by navigating to Bradford Island Visitor Center on Google Maps—it’s on an island on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.
The Bonneville Dam spans the Oregon-Washington border, and there’s also a visitor center with underwater fish-viewing windows on the Washington side of the river. They look close together, but you can’t drive across the dam, so it actually takes about 20 minutes to drive between the Oregon and Washington visitor centers, and the route crosses a toll bridge.
The dam itself is controversial, and not really the topic of this video, but in a nutshell, it was built in the 1930s as part of the Depression-era jobs program. Like other major dams, it supplies a lot of renewable electricity, but it also destroyed Native American fishing sites and villages.
You can learn more about the history in the visitor center, and you can also take the elevator down to a fish-viewing area.
The underwater viewing windows allow visitors to see fish as they swim through the fish ladders that were built to enable them to get around the dam and continue traveling upriver.
We visited in September, during the fall salmon run, which is a great time of year to see lots of fish through the underwater windows. There are also other fish aside from salmon that use the fish ladders. The official fish counter sits in a room next to the public viewing room and tallies the fish as they swim by!
You’ll find plenty of fish info here, and interactive displays.
Head outside next to see the fish ladder system from above. The fish we saw through the underwater windows were swimming through this fish ladder system.
We had a great time watching the fish at the Bonneville Dam, but we actually enjoyed the nearby Bonneville Fish Hatchery even more.
You’ll find plenty of parking, and again no parking or admission fees. It’s a fish hatchery, but it’s set up like a beautiful park.
Our Little Explorer really enjoyed the trout ponds. She loves feeding animals imaginary food, and here, you can buy fish food from a little kiosk and actually feed the fish. This was highly exciting!
In addition to rainbow trout, you’ll also find plenty of ducks and other birds.
One of the top attractions at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery is the sturgeon-viewing area, where you can see huge sturgeon from above and through underwater windows.
The hatchery’s core operations focus on raising salmon and steelhead, and you can see the young fish in long, covered ponds.
You can also watch the return of the adult salmon and salmon-spawning in the fall, but we became so distracted by all the other fabulous happenings at the hatchery that we totally missed this awesome part of the experience. We’ll have to go back!
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Or salmon jumping up a waterfall at the Salmon Cascades in Olympic National Park here: • Salmon Cascades: Top Spot to Watch the Was...