Steelhead runs dwindled after farm pumping lowered the valley’s water table in the 1930s, but steelhead and rainbow trout remain in parts of the watershed. W. C. Bartlett wrote in 1883 of mountain trout leaping for the hook in the creek’s upper pools.
Chinook salmon, strays from Central Valley hatcheries, arrived in the watershed in the 1980s and have been seen as far up Los Gatos Creek as Hamilton Avenue in Campbell.