Thankyou USA for the Chinook
By Dan MacLeod, Pursuit Sport Fishing
Spring is here and salmon fishing all along the coast is warming up fast. Excellent catches of Chinook from Kyuquot to Bamfied and Cambell River to Vancouver have been reported over the last 4 weeks. Lots of healthy, hard fighinting Chinook have been hitting the decks of boats since early May and the fishing is just getting better! I know at Pursuit Sport Fishing, we have experienced some of the best winter and spring Chinook fishing in years here in Vancouver and Ucluelet.
We have been sending most of our charters out to the mid-strait and west of Bowen Island in the Georgia Strait with excellent results. It is a one of the ‘hottest’ times of the year for fishing for us here in Vancouver but it is a bit off an ‘odd one’. Most of the chinook we catch are found in 400’ to 900’ feet of water with no definite structure or funnel points to speak off. Traditional chinook hunting grounds are kelp beds, reefs, bays, river mouths or sand flats but this spring Georgia Strait chinook fishery is in ‘no mans land’. Trolling spoons behind flashers from 60’ to 160’ in very deep water until you locate a pocket of Chinook is the technique. Some times we troll for hours to suddenly have all the rods bounce at once in a tandem dance. Staying on top of these fish is imperative or you may go another hour before you find another pocket of migrating fish. These Chinook are actually making their way down the middle of the strait from the north and are not really staging or hanging out in the area for long.
The west coast of Vancouver island has a fantastic May and June Chinook fishery as well, one that we anticipate each year. Eager anglers flock to places like Ucluelet and Tofino each spring to capitalize on excellent Chinook fishing and the off-season rates of hotels and fishing guides. The fish are not as large on average as the late Summer and Fall Chinook runs but I, and many others consider these chinook to be the best table fare of the year. There are massive amounts of aggressively feeding and hard fighting chinook ranging in sizes from 10-25lbs. To put it in perspective, one of our coorporate groups fished with us in Ucluelet last June and hooked well over 150 chinook in only 4 days of angling. 99% of these fish were hatchery marked fish and undoubtabley were on their way to the USA. If it was not for these American hatchery fish I believe we would have hooked next to none. This is a sad fact and one that really makes me dissapointed about our Chinook management here in B.C.
The vast majority of these fish are headed down to the United States to rivers along the Washington, Oregon and California coasts. Huge hatchery initiatives and enhancement projects over the last 20 years in the Puget Sound, Columbia River and Klamath River, to name just a few, have produced millions of healthy Chinook. Canadians are the first to get a crack at these hatchery fish as they pass both on the west and east side of Vancouver Island.
Have a look at the Bonneville Dam fish cameras on the Columbia River watershed any time in June or July and see for yourself how prolific the return Chinook runs are. Well over 1,000,000 Chinook have returned each year to this system over the last 3 years. It is highly likely that the majority of the hatchery fish you catch on the west coast from April to July are U.S. hatchery fish.
We do have a few good early chinook runs making their way up the Fraser River to tributaries in the Lower mainland, Thompson-Nicola and Chilcotin regions but none of these runs explain the large numbers of Chinook in the Georgia Strait and West Coast for May and June. In fact, we also have some very poor runs of Chinook that are at critical points in the Fraser River. Some Thompson-Nicola Chinook runs are so low they are counted in single digits, rather than in the thousands and even millions seen in streams further south. This is a direct result of poor fisheries management, over-harvesting by all user groups, poor logging practices and non-existent watershed management here in British Columbia. There are some fantastic fall Chinook runs here in B.C. like the Skeena, Kitimat, Harrison, Vedder and Stamp rivers to name a few, but our early Chinook runs are not ones of which to be proud.
We can be thankful we still have a great spring Chinook fishery both here in Vancouver and on the West Coast but it is sobering to think what it would be like without the salmon enhancement projects our American friends have invested in. We owe it to them for these Chinook and I hope one day we too will have a robust, home grown, spring Chinook fishery as well.
Rather than just moan and groan about this issue, a few things we can do is donate time and/or money to wonderful initiatives like the Pacific Salmon Foundation or any of your local watershed or hatchery initiatives. Get out there and enjoy this fantastic spring and early summer Chinook fishery our American friends have given us here in Vancouver and Ucluelet.