Our guides, Jason, Eddie, Dimitri, and Gordy have have been out a lot these past few weeks hunting down chinook salmon.  The vast majority of our effort has been over at Thrasher Rock, and for the most part fishing has been pretty good.  There have been a few days when the Orcas have pushed in and slowed things down, but besides those days we have had some consistent fishing for chinook in the 10-20 lb range.  We have been fishing 100-200 feet on the downriggers with the best depths being around 140-180 when the water is clear and a 100-140 when the water is dirty.  Our most productive flashers have been the O’Ki Tackle Green Onion on the shallower rods and the O’Ki glow flashers on the deep rods.  Productive spoons have been the Pesca Leprechaun and Gut Bomb in 3.5 and 4.0 sizes as well as the Kingfisher 3.5 and 4.0 in Homeland Security, Irish Cream and Pink Sink.  Hootchies have also been very productive as per usual, and the spatter back in green, chartreuse, and blue have all produced fish.

 

Jason with a nice Thrasher Rock chinook about to hit the cleaning table.

On the local front, we are starting to book some 5 hour charters and Eddie has hooked some nice Fraser River chinook off the Bell Buoy.  The best depths for this fishery are 30-60 feet on the downriggers with Green Onion and glow flashers with a 6 foot leaders to a glow green anchovy teaser head.  If you don’t like to use bait you can use the spoons mentioned above, but bait is always the top producer for these Fraser River bound chinook.

We haven’t spent much time over at W. Van looking for coho yet as the vast majority of our customers this time of year are looking to take advantage of the chinook fishing over at Thrasher Rock.  The Capilano River has been low for about 3 weeks now and it is right about this time that the coho should start to show up so things could change quickly on this front.

Crabbing has been pretty awesome this week, but the commercial guys are now out there so watch out for the traps when fishing the Bell Buoy and expect the crabbing to slow down considerably over the next 2 weeks as a result of the commercial opening.  Usually by July 15th it is tough crabbing unless you set in out of the way areas.

We should start to get some numbers trickling in regarding the size of the projected sockeye return in about 2 weeks.  The phones are already buzzing as people are calling in to book dates in August for sockeye and chinook.  There are already some days in August when all our boats are booked so if you are looking to experience what will likely be some of the best salmon fishing in the past 100 years, you should phone and book a date now.

See you in the shop or on the water,

Jason, Eddie, Dimitri, Gordy