Well I was out guiding yesterday and finally some sun! It was one of those magical days where the sun was shining, the ocean was flat calm, and the chinook were biting.
A nice sunny and flat ride across the Strait of Georgia!
I was out with guests Monte and Kelly on their annual Tharsher Rock trip. Expectations were high as last year we had great fishing and sunny weather. As luck would have it things were pretty much a repeat of last year.
We were fishing the structure at Thrasher Rock in 100-180 feet of water. On the sounder you could see lots of bait stacked up on structure and even some nice chinook arcs. The bite was on in the morning and in the first two passes we hit 4 chinook and landed 2. By 11:00 am we had our limit of 4 springs in the boat so we decided to go into Silva Bay for a few refreshments and get some ice on the fish. We made a couple of passes later in the afternoon and lost a fish and released one.
Kelly and Monte with 4 nice chinook
The tally for the day was 8 hookups. 6 of the 8 fish came on small spoons and 2 came on hootchies. The fish are feeding on very small herring so the small Kingfisher 3.0 spoon seemed to produce well due to the shorter length and narrower profile.
These smaller Kingfisher 3.0 spoons were deadly on Wednesday as the fish are feeding on small bait. Night Rider, Glow Kitchen Sink, Irish Cream, Glow Green
We were hitting the fish at Thrasher Rock in 100-180 feet of water and 117 to 147 on the downriggers with most of the action being near the shallower range in the morning around 120 and then deeper around 137 later in the day. We also heard of some fish over at Grande and Waterfall in the afternoon on the flood tide. It looks like the wave of red springs we see this time of year has arrived as all the fish we cleaned were red.
Red springs fillets from Thrasher Rock
Closer to home we haven’t seen or heard of any consistent coho fishing off the West Van shoreline. That being said, we are getting some good to excellent reports from the anglers fishing the river. It sounds like there are some bigger fish in the 6 -8lb class hitting the river as well. We are hoping some of these fish will start to stage along West Van and the Cap Mouth so we can get a shot at them before they head up the river.
In the meantime we will continue to run across and fish the Garbriola area until the chinook fishing slows down and the coho fishing on this side picks up.
To book a trip please call us at 604-872-2204 or come by Pacific Angler at 78 E Broadway on the corner of Quebec and Broadway for your saltwater tackle needs and solid advice on what to use and where to go.
See you in the shop or on the water,
Jason Tonelli