Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report As we are coming into late October, the season is slowly winding down, or is it?  Today’s report will be two-fold. First, naturally, a fishing report, but also some end of season maintenance tips, which I will get to in the latter portion of the report. In terms of the Cap Mouth, I think most of the fish that were there are now up the river, especially with yesterdays rain. Our guide fleet haven’t fished there in over a week now, and I haven’t heard any reliable reports. We focused our efforts up Howe Sound in the first part of the week for springs, and we did find some good fish early in the week. We fished close to the…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report As we are nearing the end of the saltwater season our guiding team is slowly shifting their focus to our freshwater trips. There is always a last wave of chinook showing up at the Cap mouth this time of year and while there are fewer chinook around, if you get a hookup its usually a trophy size this time of year. The forecast calls for sunny weather for the next 10 days, so any chinook that shows up will likely stage off the Cap mouth waiting for the next push of rain. So there is still a good chance to catch that big chinook. I guided a yesterday today and while we marked 2-3 fish on the sonar, they were…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Well fall is certainly in the air with nighttime temps in the single digits and frost on the dock in the morning! This also signals the back end of our Cap Mouth fishery for chinook. The fishing this week has been a bit slower, but the big fish are finally showing up.   We probably have at least another week of decent fishing if more fish continue to show up, as there isn’t much rain in the forecast the next 7 days. We often see fresh fish show up until Oct 15th, so it isn’t over yet. The week after next it looks like it is going to be a wet one and that will push any remaining chinook up…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report This past week we have been focusing our efforts close to home, which is always nice after a long season of running to the Gulf Islands in the spring and the South Arm in the summer. Fishing on Friday last week for the DNV derby was good at the Cap Mouth. We went 4/7 on chinook, but no derby winners for us. The hot combo for us was a purple Phantom flasher, 7-foot leader, and Rhys Davis anchovy teaser head in blue/green glow with a 5.5-inch anchovy. Thanks again to all who made this derby possible. I hear it was quite successful and they raised a lot of money for their two charities, the Seymour Salmonid Society and Athletics for…

Sockeye Update: The late portion of the run was upgraded and that is what stalled the closure by about a week. Now we are being told that the announcement of a marine closure will likely come out on Monday, which means that it will be closed on Wednesday of next week at midnight. The upgrade in the late portion of the run allowed for a commercial opening and there were reports of as many as 35 seine boats out on Wednesday. That combined with the rain and low pressure (causing many holding fish to go up the river) definitely slowed down the fishing. It is pretty scratchy from the North Arm down to Iona and T-10 isn’t much better. If you are looking for some…

The big question on everyone’s mind is when are they going to close sockeye? The river is closed, the commercial fisheries have been closed, but we are still open and the good news is it looks like we are going to be open for this weekend. There is a panel meeting today, and from there DFO will make their decision, but my sources have told me that it will be open this weekend and will likely close on Monday. I think they will make an announcement via email around 3:30 pm today (Friday, September 7th) that it will close on Sunday, September 9th at midnight.   There will be some lobbying for it to stay open past Monday but I don’t think that will happen. Regardless,…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Sockeye: There was some pretty red-hot fishing this week on the morning bite. If you can, try and get out at first light. In general the first few hours have been so good it can be hard to get the gear down on both sides and things get progressively slower as the morning goes on. It seems to slow down around 9:30 to 10:30 am. Hot depths have been 80-115. Later on in the day you can have some decent action but you will have to go deeper, from 125-145, and you will see the fish on the sounder but there just isn’t as strong a bite as there is in the morning. Test sets on the approach areas took…

There is a lot going on this time of year so we will take a look at all of the major fisheries, sockeye, chinook, and coho. Sockeye: The fishing has not been what I would call easy, by sockeye standards. We have had some amazing catches, but until recently it has been confined to a fairly narrow window of opportunity from first light until about 9:30 or 10:30 am and then they go off the bite and you have to grind for them. If you are able to get on a good school first thing in the morning though, look out, as it has been hot and heavy. If you aren’t on a school right away and you don’t find one by mid morning, you…

 Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report Lets start with sockeye fishing as this seems to be the hot topic. There were some pretty hot days earlier in the week from the Bell all the way past the North Arm and Iona Jetty and all the way down to Sandheads. So yes, everywhere, but it definitely slowed down these past few days. There were some schools around the last 48 hours but you had to land right on them early in the day and get that first few hours of action or you had a tough day. Don’t despair, this is just the tip of the iceberg as they say, and millions more are on the way (literally). Sockeye fishing is going to continue to get better…

Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report  Well what a week it was for coho, best described as feast or famine. There were a few charters where we felt lucky to get a bite and then there were a few charters where our guides literally hit the mother lode! Below are a couple of pictures from 5-hour charters, yes 5-hour charters, not 10 hours of coho fishing. In fact these impressive limits were caught in a few hours for the most part, as midweek our guides got on a huge school of hatchery coho. One of the days Eddie limited out so fast he had enough time to zip over to the Bell and get a chinook before he had to leave at 11:30 am to be…