Vancouver Saltwater Salmon Fishing Report
So far, the rains have held off and that means we have had a fantastic September off the mouth of the Fraser fishing for chinook and coho! We did have a full moon on the 17th and those big tides always trigger some fish to head up the river, as does any rain. Luckily the rain for Sunday has been significantly downgraded compared to earlier forecasts, but the low pressure and these big tides will thin out some of the fish lounging around T-10 and South Arm (Sand Heads). The good news is there are still more chinook and coho on the way!
As I mentioned in last week’s report, we often see the peak of in river migration of fall chinook from the 16th to the 22nd. The excellent fishing and the test sets in the river would indicate that this year is no exception. We had multiple boats down at the South Arm this morning (Friday morning) and fishing was great. If you can get out there this weekend, I would recommend it as the numbers of fish will potentially start to back off a bit in the coming weeks. That doesn’t mean fishing won’t be good, it just means it might a touch slower than this past week. In years past we have had some great chinook fishing in the back end of September and into October. The coho numbers will really start cranking right about now as well and will remain strong into October. The boats were into quite a few nice hatchery coho this week, some pushing 12 pounds!
Jason and crew with some chinook and coho from the South Arm. Yes, that fish bottom left is a massive hatchery coho!
Closer to home we have had some success for coho off South Bowen, Point Atkinson, West Van and the Cap Mouth. Usually, we would have seen a good push of chinook into the Cap Mouth area this week, but so far, the chinook fishing there has been slower than we would expect. It only takes one flood tide for the fishing to really get going in this area, and we are overdue, so I am thinking there should be a wave of chinook showing up any day now. The run often peaks there late September and the fishing can be good until the second week of October if there is no rain. It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks play out off the Cap.
A great example of some of the huge hatchery coho being caught in local waters! This one was caught not far from the Cap Mouth on Monday
I hope you have a chance to get out there the next few weeks and fish for some of the biggest fish of the year. If not, then perhaps we will see you for the winter chinook fishery, which is right around the corner. Until then…
See you in the shop or on the water,
Jason Tonelli