Home / Uncategorised / August 10th : Sockeye Opening!

August 10th : Sockeye Opening!

Sockeye officially opened this morning and already there have been reports of decent numbers of fish caught off the Fraser.  Prior to the opening we were catching sockeye while using spoons and bait targeting other species like chinook and coho, so that is a pretty good indicator at the numbers of fish around.  The daily limit is 2 sockeye per day while your total limit for salmon is 4 per day.  This means if you get your 2 sockeye you still have the chance to retain a nice Fraser River “red spring” or a few pinks, or maybe even a hatchery coho to round out the day.  So all in all this is excellent news for the local saltwater fishing scene as we have  literally millions of sockeye, pinks, chinook, and coho frequenting our waters in the next 6-8 weeks.

As if this sockeye opening didn’t provide enough fishing opportunity, there are also huge schools of pinks migrating up Howe Sound as well as coho, chinook, and pinks being caught off the West Van shoreline, and the usual August chinook fishery off the Bell Buoy, N. Arm, T-10, and S. Arm.

So fishing is has been good to great so far this week.  Check out some of these pictures of the fish that have been hitting our dock.  Nice size chinook, coho, and of course the plentiful pinks, soon to be followed by the plentiful sockeye!

A nice chinook taken from W. Van yesterday

A nice Howe Sound chinook

Over the next few days we will be looking at some of the techniques used to target all these local fish, so stay tuned for that.