North Dakota chinook snagging, archery, and spearing run through Oct. 31 on Sakakawea

North Dakota’s chinook salmon snagging, archery, and spear season is in its fall window. Game and Fish marks the rule “new in 2026”: sunup to sundown, Sept. 25 through Oct. 31. Only salmon and nongame species may be taken. The salmon limit is five a day and 10 in possession. Nongame fish have no limit.

The water is Lake Sakakawea from Garrison Dam upstream to the Highway 23 bridge near New Town, including tributaries up to the first bridge or road crossing. Each snagger must cast, hook, and reel their own fish. More than one snag hook per line or lure is illegal. There is no size restriction on snag treble hooks. Snagging is legal from boat or shore unless a sign says otherwise; the east side of the spillway is closed.

Bow and spear are legal from a boat, and from shore except inside Lake Sakakawea State Park and Fort Stevenson State Park, where shore archery and shore spearing are illegal. Legal bows are hand-drawn longbows, recurves, compounds, or rubberband-assisted sling bows with a line-attached arrow and a harpoon-style or wire-barbed point. Crossbows need a special director’s permit for a permanent disability. A legal spear is a manually powered shaft with barbed points. Possession of a snag pole, bow, or spear counts as a hook-and-line pole. This is the salmon method season, not the September walleye report already on the desk.

This is a The Gillnet news desk summary, not a reprint.

Source: North Dakota Game and Fish — Chinook Salmon Snagging, Bow (Archery) and Spear Fishing.