By Drew Dickson, Napa Valley Paddle
On October 1, a harbor porpoise surfaced in the Napa River in front of our boat. I've been guiding this river for 13 years. Before last year, I'd seen a porpoise here twice: once in 2015, once in 2021. Then in 2025 they were everywhere. Now they're back again. Porpoises don't wander up rivers for the scenery. They come for fish. To understand why that matters, you have to go next door, to Putah Creek, and back to 1969.
Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Green River" sounds like it was born in a Louisiana swamp. It wasn't. John Fogerty grew up in El Cerrito and spent his childhood summers on Putah Creek near Winters. He has said the song is about that creek. "Green River" was just what he called it in his head, a name borrowed from a lime soda syrup. For decades after that song, Putah Creek was in trouble. Diversions left long stretches nearly dry. As recently as 2012, no salmon returned at all. Then came a legal settlement in 2000 that restored minimum flows, followed by 25 years of patient work: gravel for spawning beds, fish passage fixes, more than 150 landowners and a lot of agencies pulling in the same direction. In fall 2025, a record 2,150 Chinook salmon came home to Putah Creek. UC Davis biologists counted them one by one. The Green River ain't green anymore. It's silver.
The Napa River has its own version of this story. Historically, it supported a run of 6,000 to 8,000 steelhead a year. By the late 1960s, that had fallen to around 2,000. The people who lived here first knew what this river was. Wappo and Patwin people fished the marshes at the river's mouth from tule rafts. Nobody agrees on what the word "Napa" originally meant, but one of the oldest accounts, from an 1873 county history, says the pioneers understood it to mean "fish." Whatever the true root, it's fitting. In the 1990s, Napa did something radical. Instead of lining the river with concrete, the community, the Army Corps of Engineers and dozens of agencies agreed on a "Living River" plan: reconnect the river to its floodplain, let it meander, restore its tidal marshes. Voters funded it with Measure A in 1998. [ADD: the 2050 restoration goal, with source.] That was nearly 30 years ago. Here's what we're seeing now.
One porpoise isn't a population study. But it's the kind of signal that people on the water notice first. Sea lions, river otters and porpoise follow fish, and this fall they're following them up the Napa.
If Putah Creek is any indication, and the porpoise is any sign, the Napa River ain't green anymore either. We may be looking at a big salmon year.
The next six weeks are the best wildlife season of the year on the Napa River and Carneros Estuary: Chinook salmon, striped bass, the first steelhead, sea lions, otters, porpoise and the fall migration on the Pacific Flyway. Napa Valley Paddle is running guided kayak and boat tours through mid-November. Come out and see what a living river looks like. Book our GUIDED or SELF-GUIDED tours. Drew Dickson has owned and guided Napa Valley Paddle for 13 years on the Napa River, Carneros Estuary and Tomales Bay