The Salty Dawg was out of the water last week during the heavy NW winds for her annual service. The boat is in mint shape and I was excited to get her back out on the water. Fresh cut polish, new bottom paint, engines all serviced, she was ready to go!
Cut polish, new bottom paint, engines serviced, time to fish!
On the long weekend the NW winds finally died down enough to let us on the water and gave us the opportunity to run over to Thrasher Rock on Gabriola Island.
Saturday was a great day to be on the water with nice weather and flat calm seas. The fishing was pretty slow by Thrasher standards and many anglers were scratching their heads and wondering where the chinook were. We managed a nice one mid day but packed it in to go pull the crab traps at 2:30pm. I did hear of a bite later in the day on the back end of the flood between 3pm and 5pm but overall it was pretty slow considering this weekend last year was producing up to a dozen fish a day.
Sunday we headed back across to Thrasher hoping it would pick up. As mentioned previously, this time of year at Thrasher the fishing is usually very good. We didn’t see much action and as the morning hours passed by we heard of a few fish offshore in 1000-1200 feet of water off the Grande, and that was about it. I was just pulling the gear to head that direction when I got a call from fellow guides Andrew and Preston who were on the Seastar. They were into a good pod of chinook off the South end of Bowen and had just hooked a double! I fired up the twin 200’s and got over there in a hurry. We ended up putting 4 chinook in the box in about 3 hours.
Happy clients with 4 chinook salmon from Saturday afternoon
The fish were relatively shallow with most of the action in the 70-100 foot range on spoons (Glow/Green and Irish Cream in 3.5 size) and anchovies in glow teaser heads (glow green and bloody nose). For flashers we were using glow flashers and UV Kinetic yellow/green. Leader lengths were 6 feet.
Monday we headed back out on the water, it was very rough, but we were able to do some wind drifts and keep fishing. It paid off with the first hatchery coho of the year and big spring.
This big buck slammed a 3.0 Night Rider spoon
Spoons were the ticket again. The coho came on a 3.5 Glow/Green spoon at 45 feet and the chinook came on a 3.0 Night Rider (glow/black) at 97 feet.
I have trips this Wednesday and Thursday as well. I will likely give S end of Bowen a try before heading over to Thrasher unless i hear of some hot reports from that area. Some guides and friends are on the water today so I will see how they make out and make the call from there. Expect a report Friday morning when I get back in the shop, and then back out on the water on Saturday and Sunday.
See you in the shop or on the water,
Jason Tonelli