Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Well the fish showed up this past week, like they have for the past few years now in early April, off South Bowen and out on the Hump.  I am sure there are some fish over in the Gulf Islands as well, but I haven’t been over there or talked to anyone who has. Obviously with the chinook non-retention, effort is way down, and with Covid-19 there are no charters and many of the boat launches are closed, so there aren’t too many boats out there.  I was able to get out once this week to do some sampling for the Avid Angler program where you record your location, fish caught, hatchery or wild, fork length, and take a DNA…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Well right on que the fish showed up.  The past 48 hours off South Bowen and on the Hump have been pretty outstanding.   I haven’t been out, too busy fighting for our fisheries and trying to keep the store running on a 2-man crew.  All my fishing buddies have been out though, so thanks for all the texts and pics I get all day long.  The fishing has been dam good, as I get hourly updates from these guys for better or worse.  It was tough last week but it really lit up recently!  Can you say torture when stuck at work? In terms of gear, the exact flashers and spoons I featured on the Pacific Angler Sportfishing Facebook and…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Well I don’t have a heck of a lot to report.  Our charter operations are shut down and our store doors are closed, but we are accepting phone orders and email orders and then shipping them out or allowing curbside pick-up.  More details on that in the outlook and on our website. I did decide to go check on the boats yesterday on my day off, turn the engines over, check on the heaters, and spray off all the bird poop.  I even went out on a brief solo mission, released a few undersize chinook and a small hatchery coho and headed back to the docks.  That’s about all I have to report first-hand, but I have received a number…

  You can see spring is here, still the odd cold morning, but the afternoons are heating up into the teens and the cherry blossoms are coming out around downtown.  Spring is in the air, and this means we start to see more fish around as well and some suspended fish as the algae in the water makes it a little darker and the bait comes up and so do the fish.  This past week, there has been decent fishing all through Howe Sound, in the Harbour around the freighters and the Bell Buoy, further up the Sunshine Coast and over in the Gulf Islands.  In short, its go time.    Some of the reports have been very good and I am fully confident we are about…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report  Finally, some calm seas for the winter chinook anglers and maybe a little sun this weekend as well.  You can see winter slowly losing its grip as we start to get more nice days on the water.  Before long, it will be sunny out and we will be complaining about the NW 35 knot winds!     Speaking of things to complain about.  As mentioned in last week’s report, it looks like DFO is going to roll over management actions from last April.  So that means there will be an announcement on April 1st that there will be no chinook retention.  They aren’t done analyzing how last year’s drastic management measures have affected the 2019 chinook returns of the endangered interior Fraser stocks. …

We had quite a few trips this past week and for the most part the fishing was pretty solid.  I was up and down Howe Sound on a 2-day trip and found bait and some keeper chinook in all the usual spots.  Eddie was also into some fish and on a few days, we had to cancel some trips due to wind.  So pretty much a standard week in the land of winter fishing, anywhere from fish in the boat to cancelled trips.  Looking back on the last couple of months, fishing has been average this year in my opinion.  It isn’t going to go down as red-hot fishing, but just consistent.  Put in that time and you will get your fish.  This pattern will…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Finally, we had some sun and calm waters this week, with yesterday almost feeling like spring with the mid-day sun bringing temps up into the teens.   Looks like we are back to the wet stuff this weekend though.   The winds look manageable at least, and we have some trips, so if you are heading out this weekend, we will see you out there. Prawning continues to be good and we are dropping prawn traps on all of our full day trips.  I saw DFO out there recently and pulled up to have a chat with them.  They had quite a few traps that they had confiscated as they were set on sponge reef closures.  There really is no excuse for…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report We finally got a break in the weather a few times last week and there were certainly no shortage of boats out there enjoying the conditions.  I can’t say I was surprised, after one of the wettest and windiest months in recent history, there was some serious cabin fever going on! The fishing was what I would call standard, if you put in a good solid effort you got your chances at legal fish.  In terms of location, we are about midway through the winter season and the fish are well spread out.  The harbour is starting to pick up, right on que, as more herring start to congregate in the area.  The past few weeks there have been decent…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Well we are glad to put one of the rainiest Januarys on record behind us and lets hope that February has less wind and rain in the forecast.  We are about midway through the winter chinook season and I would say so far so good.  The main challenge has just been getting out there, but when we have been able to, the fishing has been good and so has the prawning. So what’s in store for this weekend?  Well looks like some sun actually, but with that we often have some NW winds and this weekend is no exception.  We have a few trips planned so we are going to keep a close eye on the weather and hopefully we…