Well June was the “Month of Gabriola” this year as the bulk of our fishing efforts were in this area.  The chinook fishing was generally good to excellent with even a few fish hitting the box on the slow days and on the good days we were hooking double digits and limiting out on nice chinook. Last year by mid June we were doing a good number of charters off W. Vancouver and were having great success for coho and even a few chinook, but this year that has not been the case.  Very few coho have been hooked despite a decent amount of fishing pressure off W. Van in anticipation of the great action there last year in mid to late June. As we…

I was back out on the water on 10 hour charters on Monday and Tuesday at Gabriola and Eddie was on a 5 hour charter on Wednesday in local waters.  The fishing at Gabriola continues to be good for chinook salmon in the 10-25lb range. At Gabriola on Monday we hooked 5 and landed 3 and Tuesday we hooked 7 and landed 5.  Locally the fishing has been fairly slow off the Bell Buoy, QA, S end of Bowen and West Van.  A few chinook are getting caught, but it is pretty spotty.  So… If you are thinking of heading out or booking a charter I strongly recommend going to Gabriola for now.  About mid June last year we stared to get some good fishing…

We were scheduled to head out Thursday with some of our regular clients, Tim, Doug, and Chris and as the day came to a close on Wednesday I wasn’t too happy with the wind forecast.  We had already postponed a few winter spring trips with this group earlier in the year due to strong wind warnings so I was really hoping the winds would die off so we could get out to Thrasher on Thursday.  When I got down to the dock at 5:00 am on Thursday morning the forecast indicated the winds would be backing off as the day went on so the trip was a go.  The crossing was a bit lumpy to say the least but the conditions at Gabriola were quite…

The Pacific Angler Pro Staff had a rare day off yesterday, so we did what we always do on our day off.  We went fishing of course!  It’s not very often that the staff here at Pacific Angler get the chance to actually fish together because we are usually too busy covering each others shifts as we chase salmon, steelhead, sturgeon and trout, keeping us pretty busy 12 months of the year.  So when we went fishing this Monday we were all very excited to get out on the water together and hit one of our favorite fisheries of the year, the Thrasher Rock chinook salmon. We were lucky enough to have amazing conditions; it was flat calm and sunny for the better part of…

In our last report we talked about the slower start to the chinook fishery this late April and hoped that perhaps the fish were just a few weeks behind, just like the rest of mother nature this year.  Well it looks like that was the case as the fish showed up a few weeks back and the fishing has been solid to on fire ever since.  There has been some great days had around the Bell Buoy, QA, and S end of Bowen.  When the weather has allowed a comfortable crossing, we have headed over to Thrasher and have had some good to amazing days over there as well.  Some of our best days for chinook last season were in the first 2 weeks of…

April turned out to be an interesting month.  It was so cold it felt more like February or March then April!  All in all there was some good fishing for those who braved the cold.  Earlier in the month we had some good fishing off W. Van, the Freighters and Bell Buoy area, and some good days up Howe Sound.  The fishing wasn’t what I would call consistent but if you put your time in you were rewarded with some good days and some nice size fish for this time of year.  There were some great fish caught in the low to high 20’s and that makes it all worthwhile.  As the month progressed we expected to see some more fish off the QA and…

Our local fishing has picked up in a major way over the last few days and the size of fish has bumped up a couple of notches as well! The majority of fish which have been landed on the last few trips have been in the 14-25 pound mark! Over the last couple of weeks us at Pacific Angler and our associates  have been on the water doing charters. We’ve had reasonable success fishing in Howe Sound. West Vancouver and the Harbour in amongst the freighters are still producing fish.  We’re expecting the South Bowen areas such as the Slash, the Hump, Mid Strait, the Bell Buoy, the QA and Point Atkinson to heat up VERY quickly.  A few exploratory jaunts in these areas further offshore haven’t produced as of yet. However, any day now,…

Most of this month has seen some decent action but you definitely need to be out there on the right day.  It will be slow for a few days and then it seems like some fish move into the area and fishing is good for a day or two.  Like most fishing, timing is everything, and this is especially true with the chinook that frequent our area in March.  These are aggressively feeding fish, so if they are around in any sort of numbers they usually let you know about it in a hurry!  Mid to late last week was one of those slow periods and then a school of fish showed up on Saturday.  Fellow guides Jason Assonitis and Craig Mumby had 5 bites…

It snowed hard all night and when I went down to the boat this morning it was covered in a foot of snow and it was still coming down.  I was wondering if I had made the wrong call, fishing fever can cloud your judgement, but there was no turning back now.  As the sun came up, the snow stopped coming down, the skies brightened up, and the boat was cleaned up and ready to go.  I felt it was going to be a good day, at least it would look amazing with all the fresh snow, so we headed out at 7:30 am with a crew of 4 guests. We made a few passes in the 100 foot zone and moved offshore and hit…

The snow didn’t keep us off the water today…  We headed out to fish the high slack and were rewarded with some good chinook fishing!  The first fish of the day had some weight to it, had big powerful head shakes and was peeling some good line off the Islanders.  Unfortunately during a bought of deep head shakes it spit the hook.   It’s always hard to say how big a fish is, but this one felt like it was one of those larger fish that showed up late last week and throughout this week.  These fish are in the high teens, including an 18lb fish taken off W. Van and some fish of the same size and slightly bigger over at Hut and Tunstal.  Even…