Salmon

The salmon is one of those mobs you barely notice until you realize how useful it actually is. Swimming around in rivers and cold oceans, minding its own business, the salmon is a passive aquatic mob that has been part of the game since the Update Aquatic in 2018. It does not fight back, it does not run away with any real urgency, and it drops one of the most reliable early-game food sources in the entire game.

What makes the salmon interesting — besides being dinner — is that it is the only fish mob that spawns naturally in rivers. Cod, tropical fish, and pufferfish are ocean-only creatures. Salmon? Salmon shows up right outside your riverside starter base like a free grocery delivery. It also comes in three different sizes in Bedrock Edition, which is a detail that matters exactly zero percent in gameplay but is fun to notice.

Whether you are looking for an easy food source, trying to tame a stray cat, or just wondering why a fish is flopping around on your beach suffocating in broad daylight, this entry covers everything the salmon has to offer.

Overview / Quick Stats

Appearance

The salmon has a distinctly elongated body compared to the stubbier cod, with a dark red-brown back and a lighter pinkish-red belly. The texture gives it a recognizable two-tone look that makes it easy to spot underwater even in murky river biomes. It has small fins on each side and a forked tail fin that wiggles as it swims.

In Java Edition, all salmon are the same size. Bedrock Edition mixes things up with three size variants — small, medium, and large — each with its own hitbox dimensions. The model stays the same across all sizes; only the scale changes. There are no baby salmon in either edition. Fish do not breed, so what you see is what you get.

When a salmon ends up out of water — whether by your doing or its own questionable life choices — it flops around on its side. In Bedrock Edition, it rotates while flopping, adding a small but noticeable visual difference between the two editions.

Behavior & AI

• Swimming Pattern: Salmon swim in schools of up to seven individuals. They move in loose groups, generally heading in the same direction. It is not tightly coordinated schooling like tropical fish, but close enough.
• Waterfall Climbing: Salmon can swim up approximately 4–5 blocks in waterfalls, mimicking how real salmon leap upstream to reach spawning grounds. This is unique to the salmon mob — no other fish does this.
• Idle Behavior: When not in a school, salmon swim around aimlessly in the water source they spawned in. They do not seek out the player, other mobs, or any particular destination.
• Out of Water: Salmon cannot survive on land. They flop around helplessly and take suffocation damage until they die. They also cannot breathe in cauldron water, which is Minecraft’s way of reminding you that a cauldron is not an aquarium.
• Despawning: Salmon follow standard passive aquatic mob despawn rules. They despawn if the player moves more than 128 blocks away, and can despawn randomly if 32+ blocks from the player. Salmon released from buckets never despawn naturally.
• Pathfinding: Salmon avoid land and try to stay in water. They do not pathfind around obstacles intelligently — they just bump into things and change direction.
• Bucket Collection: Using a water bucket on a salmon captures it in a bucket of salmon. The fish retains its data (custom name, etc.) and can be released elsewhere by placing the bucket against a block.

Abilities, Attacks & Status Effects

• Attacks: None. Salmon are completely passive and never deal damage to any entity.
• Impaling Vulnerability (Java): In Java Edition, salmon take extra damage from tridents enchanted with Impaling, since the enchantment affects all aquatic mobs except drowned. In Bedrock Edition, Impaling applies extra damage to any mob that is in contact with water, not just aquatic mobs.
• Status Effects: Salmon do not inflict any status effects and have no special immunities. They are affected by all standard damage sources.

Variants, Jockeys & Special Forms

Bedrock Edition Size Variants

Bedrock Edition spawns salmon in three size categories. The size is determined randomly at spawn and cannot be changed afterward.

• Small: 31.5% spawn chance. Scale factor 0.5. Hitbox: 0.25 × 0.25 blocks. Uses the normal loot table.
• Medium (Normal): 52.6% spawn chance. Scale factor 1.0. Hitbox: 0.5 × 0.5 blocks. Uses the normal loot table.
• Large: 15.7% spawn chance. Scale factor 1.5. Hitbox: 0.75 × 0.75 blocks. Uses the large loot table, which can drop 0–2 bones in addition to raw salmon.

Java Edition does not have size variants. All salmon are the same size regardless of where or when they spawn.

Spawning

Interactions with Environment & Other Mobs

• Axolotls: Axolotls are the salmon’s number one predator. They attack salmon on sight and will actively chase them down. If you build a salmon farm anywhere near axolotls, expect casualties.
• Polar Bears: Polar bears do not actively hunt salmon in-game, but they do drop raw salmon when killed — a nod to their real-world diet.
• Guardians & Elder Guardians: Guardians have a small chance (2.5%) of dropping a random fish on death, and 25% of those drops are raw salmon. Not a reliable salmon source, but technically connected.
• Cats & Ocelots: The raw salmon dropped by this mob is one of the items used to tame stray cats and gain the trust of ocelots. Cats have a 1-in-3 chance of being tamed when fed raw salmon.
• Dolphins: Feeding a dolphin raw salmon increases its trust and causes it to swim toward the nearest shipwreck or ocean ruin chest. The salmon mob itself does not interact with dolphins.
• Boats & Minecarts: Salmon can be pushed by boats and can technically ride in a boat or minecart if forced into one via commands, but this serves no practical purpose.
• Pufferfish: Salmon do not trigger pufferfish inflation. As an aquatic mob, they are exempt from the pufferfish’s defensive behavior.

Drops & Loot

Player Uses & Farming

• Early-Game Food: Raw salmon restores 2 hunger points and 0.2 saturation. Cooked salmon restores 6 hunger points and 9.6 saturation, making it one of the better early-game food sources — comparable to cooked chicken.
• Cat Taming: Raw salmon is one of the items used to tame stray cats. Each feeding has a 1-in-3 chance of success. If you are near a village and want a cat, a handful of raw salmon is all you need.
• Ocelot Trust: Feeding raw salmon to an ocelot increases its trust. While you cannot tame ocelots in modern versions, trusted ocelots will not flee from you.
• Dolphin Interaction: Feeding raw salmon to dolphins causes them to lead you to the nearest underwater structure with a chest (shipwreck or ocean ruin). Handy for treasure hunting.
• Villager Trading: Apprentice-level fisherman villagers will buy 6 raw salmon plus 1 emerald for 6 cooked salmon. Journeyman-level fisherman villagers buy 13 raw salmon for 1 emerald. Decent emerald income if you have a lot of salmon.
• Fishing: Raw salmon can also be obtained by fishing, with a base chance as part of the fish loot category. Fishing is more efficient than hunting salmon mobs if you have a good rod with Lure and Luck of the Sea.
• Wolf Healing (Bedrock): In Bedrock Edition, raw salmon can be fed to wolves to heal them by 2 health points. Cooked salmon heals wolves by 6.
• Farm Design: Dedicated salmon farms are rarely built because fishing is more efficient. However, if you want to farm salmon mobs, the key is creating a water channel in a river or cold ocean biome at the correct Y-level (50–64) and funneling spawned salmon toward a kill chamber. Keep axolotls far away from the farm, or they will eat your profits.

Commands & NBT

Here are some useful commands for working with salmon.

Summon a basic salmon (Java):

/summon minecraft:salmon ~ ~ ~

Summon a salmon that will not despawn (Java):

/summon minecraft:salmon ~ ~ ~ {PersistenceRequired:1b}

Summon a named salmon (Java):

/summon minecraft:salmon ~ ~ ~ {CustomName:'"Gerald"',CustomNameVisible:1b}

Summon a salmon with no AI (Java):

/summon minecraft:salmon ~ ~ ~ {NoAI:1b}

Summon a salmon (Bedrock):

/summon minecraft:salmon ~ ~ ~

Summon a large salmon (Bedrock — uses spawn event):

/summon minecraft:salmon ~ ~ ~ minecraft:spawn_large

Notable NBT Keys (Java):

• FromBucket — 1 or 0 (true/false). Indicates whether this salmon was released from a bucket. Bucket-released salmon do not despawn naturally.
• NoAI — 1 or 0. Disables the salmon’s AI, causing it to float motionless in place.
• PersistenceRequired — 1 or 0. Prevents the salmon from despawning, even if the player moves far away.
• CustomName — JSON text string. Assigns a visible name tag to the salmon.

Tags, Gamerules & Datapack Hooks

• Entity Type Tags (Java): minecraft:salmon belongs to the following tags: #minecraft:aquatic, #minecraft:axolotl_hunt_targets, #minecraft:can_breathe_under_water, #minecraft:not_scary_for_pufferfish.
• Type Family (Bedrock): salmon, fish
• Relevant Gamerules: doMobSpawning controls whether salmon spawn naturally. doMobLoot controls whether they drop items on death.
• Loot Table Paths (Java): minecraft:entities/salmon
• Loot Table Paths (Bedrock): loot_tables/entities/salmon_normal.json (small and medium sizes), loot_tables/entities/salmon_large.json (large size)

Difficulty & Edition Differences

• Difficulty Scaling: Salmon are passive mobs and do not deal damage, so difficulty level has no effect on their behavior or stats. They have the same 3 health points on Peaceful, Easy, Normal, and Hard.
• Java vs. Bedrock — Size Variants: Java Edition has only one salmon size. Bedrock Edition has small, medium, and large variants with different hitboxes and scale factors.
• Java vs. Bedrock — Spawn Biomes: Bedrock Edition salmon spawn in a wider range of ocean biomes, including lukewarm and normal oceans. Java salmon are restricted to cold, frozen, and river biomes.
• Java vs. Bedrock — Bone Drops: Java salmon have a 5% chance to drop bone meal. Bedrock large salmon have a 25% chance to drop 0–2 bones. Small and medium Bedrock salmon only drop raw salmon.
• Java vs. Bedrock — Impaling: In Java Edition, Impaling deals extra damage only to aquatic mobs. In Bedrock Edition, Impaling deals extra damage to any mob in contact with water or rain.
• Java vs. Bedrock — Flopping Animation: In Java Edition, salmon flop on their sides when out of water. In Bedrock Edition, they rotate while flopping.
• Java vs. Bedrock — Bucket Use: In Java Edition, only a water bucket can pick up a salmon. In Bedrock Edition, an empty bucket also works.

Sounds & Audio

Salmon are nearly silent mobs. Their sound events exist in the game data but are mostly empty or use generic fish sounds.

• entity.salmon.ambient — Ambient sound. Registered in the sound event system but has no associated audio file. This is a known quirk — the event exists but is silent.
• entity.salmon.death — Death sound. Plays a generic wet flopping sound when the salmon dies.
• entity.salmon.flop — Flopping sound. Plays when the salmon is out of water and flopping around on land.
• entity.salmon.hurt — Hurt sound. Plays when the salmon takes damage.
• Sound Category (Java): Salmon sounds fall under the Friendly Creatures category, meaning they are controlled by the Friendly Creatures volume slider in audio settings.

History & Major Changes

• Java 1.13 (18w08b): Salmon added to the game as part of the Update Aquatic. Prior to this update, fish only existed as items — there were no fish mobs.
• Java 1.13 (18w10a): Salmon can now be picked up with water buckets, creating buckets of salmon.
• Java 1.14: Cats reworked into their own mob. Raw salmon became one of the items used to tame cats.
• Java 1.17: Axolotls added. They immediately became the salmon’s biggest natural threat, attacking them on sight.
• Bedrock 1.4.0: Salmon added to Bedrock Edition with three size variants (small, medium, large).
• Bedrock 1.5.0: Salmon can now be collected in buckets.

Notable Bugs & Quirks

• Cauldron Suffocation: Salmon cannot swim or breathe in cauldron water. If placed in a cauldron filled with water, they will suffocate and die. This is tracked as MC-126819 and was resolved as “Won’t Fix” — meaning this behavior is intentional or at least not worth changing.
• Empty Ambient Sound: The entity.salmon.ambient sound event is registered but has no audio file assigned to it. This can cause “Unable to play empty soundEvent” warnings in the game log. It is a cosmetic bug with no gameplay impact.
• Surface Spawning (Bedrock): In Bedrock Edition, salmon sometimes spawn visible on the water surface rather than underwater, leading to situations where you can see a school of salmon flopping around at water level before they swim down.

Advancements / Achievements

• Fishy Business (Java): Catch a fish with a fishing rod. Salmon counts for this advancement.
• Tactical Fishing (Java): Catch a fish using a water bucket. Bucketing a salmon triggers this advancement.
• A Balanced Diet (Java): Eat every edible item in the game. Both raw salmon and cooked salmon count toward this advancement.
• A Complete Catalogue (Java): Tame all cat variants. Since raw salmon is used to tame cats, salmon is indirectly required for this advancement.

Spin-offs, Culture & Trivia

• Real-World Inspiration: The salmon’s ability to swim up waterfalls is based on real salmon behavior. In the wild, salmon leap upstream through rapids and waterfalls to reach their spawning grounds. Minecraft captures this in the simplest possible way — the fish just goes up the waterfall.
• River Exclusivity: Salmon is the only fish mob that spawns in rivers. If you are building near a river and need fish, salmon is your only option from the water itself.
• Minecraft Dungeons: Salmon appears in Minecraft Dungeons as well, though it plays a much less significant gameplay role.
• Update Aquatic: Before the Update Aquatic in 2018, fish in Minecraft were items only. You could catch them with a fishing rod and eat them, but they did not exist as living mobs in the water. Salmon, cod, tropical fish, and pufferfish were all added as mobs in the same update.
• The Axolotl Problem: When axolotls were added in 1.17, players quickly discovered that any aquatic build containing both axolotls and fish would result in a massacre. Salmon populations in axolotl-inhabited areas plummeted, which made for some unintentionally dark aquarium builds.

See Also

• Cod — Another common passive fish mob found in oceans.
• Tropical Fish — A passive fish mob with thousands of visual variants.
• Pufferfish — A defensive fish mob that inflicts Poison when approached.
• Axolotl — An aquatic predator that hunts salmon and other fish on sight.
• Cat — A tameable mob that requires raw salmon or raw cod to tame.
• Dolphin — An aquatic mob that can be fed raw salmon to locate underwater structures.