Merry Christmas and Best of the Season from all of us at Pacific Angler! December fishing in the Vancouver area has been slow to get going and overall the fishing has been lack lustre. There have been a few bright spots and in between those bright spots, we haven’t been on the water a whole lot as strong winds and torrential downpours have kept us warm and dry indoors! LOL. The reason for the lack lustre fishing around Vancouver this past month has been the absence of the large bait concentrations which characteristically attract and hold fish. When we find the bait concentrations, surprise surprise, the fish are close behind. When we have been on the water, the Salty Dawg and our associates have been finding a few undersize Chinook in…
Archives
December 2010: Outlook
As November draws to a close, it’s time to start looking ahead..and I’ll have to admit…I’m already excited at the upcoming prospects! December is typically the month when winter spring fishing really picks up–particularly the second half of the month into the holiday season! If the past is any indication of the future, we’re in for some fairly consistent action and should be into a few quality fish on each charter…most which will be close to legal if not legal. This is extremely convenient for us and you as our guests! Looking ahead at the tide charts, some of the BEST tides of the winter will soon be upon us. Generally, big flood tides push the baitfish and salmon far into some of our favorite bays that we like to fish. This is good because the fish seek shelter in…
November 20: Snowcapped Peaks!
It’s time! You know it’s time to go salmon fishing when….there’s SNOW on the mountains! So I headed down to the boat, extra hot latte in hand, hosed the snow off and decided…calm water…so why the heck not…let’s go for a cruise. The sun was peeking in and out of the clouds and the North Shore mountains gleamed white with last nights fresh snow. Headed out under the Lions Gate, headed for the middle of the bay…as I neared I spotted some gulls and Western Grebes diving bang smack in the middle. Pulled up and made my approach in about 150 feet of water and made a pass through there and my sounder blacked out at 90 feet. I figured..what the heck..may as well put the rods down as this is…
November 2010: Checking in…
Hi there folks! 🙂 It’s November and Winter Spring fishing is now the focus of our Saltwater efforts. It was a nice sunny day out there with no wind and overall a pretty pleasant experience! After giving the boat a nice scrub I decided I’d head out and wet some lines not too far from home. I focussed most of my efforts in the outer portion of English Bay (Vancouver Harbour), and along the West Vancouver shoreline following depth contours and keep my lines in close proximity to the bottom in 100-140 feet of water. After fishing for 3 hours I released two 17″ to 18″ undersize Chinook and couple of other little ones. Fishing for Winter Chinook is a technical sport and requires skill, dedication, area knowledge and persistence. In the…
October 2010 Wrap Up
It’s now late October and our mature Chinook fishery is over and the fall rains have called our Chinook upstream. Captain Eddie on the Salty Dawg found a TANK SIZED Coho (Silver) Salmon at 18.5 lbs last week! I’ll have to say that I was VERY ENVIOUS of his guests as it is not often that our guests manage to encounter such a large Coho. By late October mature Coho are not easily enticed to any of our offerings as they bite more out of irritation and anger than feeding instinct. Congratulations Eddie on very skillfully coaching your angler to a trophy late season Coho! It’s that time of the year when us Guides get together, have a few pops and relax after a disciplined and diligent past few months of being early…
October 2010: Smiles and Chinook!
October is always a bitter sweet month for us guides…we know that our guiding days are numbered for mature returning fish. However, the BEST part is that at this time we’re just about the LAST location on the BC coast enjoying the terminal Chinook fishery! Right here, 5 minutes from downtown Vancouver! Over the years I’ve fished many places on the British Columbia coast and when it comes to consistent opportunities to find mature Chinook salmon in October, Vancouver is the place! So far this month we’ve been on the water every day and we’ve had a mixed bag of results with lots of rain putting a damper on the fishing in more ways than one. As a result, the Capilano River has been running high and most…
Sept 2010:Sockeye Continued and Chinook!
Well…hot on the heels of August, the Sockeye bite rolled right on through to about September 10. While it wasn’t quite as fast and furious as it was in August, as we got further into September the millions of Sockeye continued to hold but several weather and pressure changes and the long staging time of these fish frequently put these fish off the bite. However, in the early part of the month, while fishing for Sockeye, we continued to find near limits or limits for our guests on a reasonably consistent basis. Due to the density of the holding Sockeye Schools and the popularity of the Sockeye fishery with our guests (which only occurs every 3rd and 4th year), our guides largely missed out on trolling for the medium to extra large…
July 16th 2010
Eddie was out today and smacked them pretty good! He was on a 5 hour charter and put 3 coho and 2 springs into the box. They lost some coho and lost a nice spring that was taking some good line on a double header with a coho. He was fishing off W. Van for coho using the typical coho gear, white hootchies, glow/green spoon, and wonderbread spoon. Not to mention he was fishing fast and shallow as usual for these fish. The fact they hooked 3 springs using these tactics shows you there are decent numbers of chinook getting pushed into the harbor on the flood. There were also some chinook hooked off the QB, the freighters, and the Bell Buoy, so they seem…
July 15th 2010
There were some more chinook caught off the Bell Buoy this morning on the flood tide so this is a nice change of pace as we have been hitting the coho at W. Van pretty hard for more than a month now. The test sets in the lower Fraser remain strong so looking for these fish off the Bell Buoy on the flood tide is a good bet. Most of the fish today were hit in the 50-80 foot range on the downriggers using a flasher/anchovy rig. There were also some coho caught off W. Van. The Fraser Mouth opens up tomorrow so we will soon have the option of fishing the T-10 marker and Sand Heads for the Fraser chinook.
July 14th 2010: The Summer Chinook are Here!
There was still some decent action of W. Van this morning for coho but it looks like some of the Fraser River chinook that have been heading up the S. Arm got pushed around Pt. Grey this morning on the flood tide. Multiple boats hooked fish up to the mid 20lb range and from the looks of the fish they are all Fraser River chinook, aka Fraser River reds. We have been watching and waiting as we can see lots of these fish in the test sets in the lower Fraser but not many have been getting caught off Pt. Grey in the typical spots like the Bell Buoy, or QA marker. Hopefully this trend of fish getting pushed into the harbor continues, the next…