Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report: Chinook Regulations Explained
It’s that time of year where the overly complicated chinook regulations take effect.
I will start by saying these closures are not warranted based on the abundance of chinook in our local waters that are not stocks of concern. Your chance of hooking a chinook stock of concern (Upper Fraser River) is less than 1% right now.
The science is in, and it is clear it should be open for chinook right now, but because of political pressure from NGOs and First Nations on DFO to keep it closed, you won’t be out there selectively harvesting even a hatchery chinook. We are still working hard to change that, but for now, let’s take a look at the regulations.
The main thing to understand is that the shaded areas with the lines in area 28 and 29 the regulations state no fishing for chinook. This means no catch and release.
Coho don’t open for retention until June 1, so that basically means you aren’t fishing those areas until then. Good news is the juvenile coho look to be around in good numbers and I expect we will have a good coho fishery again this year. Technically you could be out there fishing catch and release for small coho, aka Bluebacks, but I would advise leaving them alone until they are bigger and hatchery coho become open for retention on June 1.
Also keep in mind 29-6, 29-7, 29-9, 29-10 are always closed for salmon fishing and in general its very shallow in those areas, with the exception of 29-6, so don’t go fishing in those areas. You could go fish way up Howe Sound or Indian Arm for catch and release chinook in the unshaded portions of 28, but I suspect your success will be modest at best.
If you want to fish for chinook catch and release you could fish the yellow, pink and blue sections of area 29 and 17 to the west. The pink sections of 29 will open up for chinook retention July 15th, as they have the past few years. The blue section of area 17 will also open up for chinook retention July 15th, and the yellow section opens up August 1st.
We will also very likely get an opening for chinook along West Van in area 28-6 on August 1st like we have the past few years and then area 28-9 opening up later in August.
The date on the SRKW Management zone may also be extended into October, but as of today the information I could find shows September 30th.
If you want to do some travelling, there are marked select retention opportunities in area 16 to the west and area 17 to the south.
In the meantime, we will do some fishing for chinook (catch and release) as we have DNA permits to provide stock composition data to DFO. Crabbing and prawning have also been good, so we will be dropping traps. Rockfish and lingcod also open up May 1st in some areas, so we will be crossing to do that soon enough.
See you in the shop or on the water,
Jason Tonelli